Living with Loss

Rule your mind or it will rule you."  — Horace What a powerful thought when applied to grieving.  It made me think... When grieving, one must rule their mind, or grief will rule. Grief is sadistic and insidious.  Grief cares not for the heart. Grief is selfish. Grief smothers your breath, steals your joy,  eclipses your soul.  Grief is powerful.  Grief will hijack your thoughts and  take you down  a treacherous path     of haunting memories  and lost dreams. Grief is a part of you,         never separated,                    never disentangled.                             Grief must be trained and controlled. Grief must be guided, cultivated, refined,  embraced, loved, accepted, respected, &  held.    mwlambeth   © 2021

  Wyatt It's been over ten years since we said our final goodbye to the human form of our son. Following his death we created a nonprofit organization to help support the Wyatt Lambeth Legacy Welding Scholarship at Lively Technical College. Through this foundation, we granted $500  scholarships to 38 students in the Lively Welding Program and distributed multiple  grinders and Georgia boots.  The scholarships have been a healing salve and each donor, each recipient, and each person who applied for a scholarship was and is a valuable part of our grief journey. Selecting recipients was challenging and we always wished we could give more, could help more. Ultimately, the gift is knowing we do what we can and each person who received a scholarship, a grinder, or a new pair of boots, was one step closer to the future he or she set in motion.  In our hearts we are confident Wyatt would be pleased to help his fellow students in this way.  While we have dissolved t...

My friend died. Its been a few months now, but in the process of grieving, that is not a long time. In my life, I haven't lost a lot of friends, so this path is a bit uneasy for me. Yet, with this loss, as with the others I've experienced, I can't help but first be grateful for the gift of a unique and wonderful life. I miss her laugh, her visits and telephone calls that always began with "hello sweetie." I miss singing at the top of our lungs to old time rock and roll, dressing up at Halloween and driving around at Christmas to look at the lights. This was my friend with whom I shared most of my life, from early childhood to well into my 50s.  My friend with whom I slugged through adolescence, and dared and dreamed a brief bit of our twenties. Ultimately our differences tore us apart and there was a long period of separation of our daily lives. We did not separate ourselves out of hatred or disdain, we simply recognized we had become very different people fr...

A little step away from my personal grief journey and a turn toward the current times.  As of today, over 100,000 humans around the world have died due to the worldwide pandemic of Coronavirus or COVID-19. People are isolated. Borders around the globe have closed. Schools are closed. Airlines are grounded. Massive amounts of food sits rotting unable to be distributed. People are hoarding and supply chains are stressed. Businesses have closed. Governments scramble. Hospitals are maxed.  Care centers are incubators of death.  Medical personnel are at higher risk than ever yet we demand more and more from them.  The bodies of the dead are left to rot on the streets, held in morgues, or turned into mass graves. Funerals and memorials are in abeyance. There is neither time nor place for grieving. Isolation is wicked. Tensions can be high and panic pervasive.    Blame begins. Anger festers to hatred.  The fragile nature of our ex...

As with many things in our lives, there is a requirement for balance. Life is a bit like the human body, fragile, complex, and unpredictable. We know the story when the balance is off…. It’s generally bad, if not initially… it gets there.  The balancing act of life is encompassing and requires synchronizing various parts to produce a fluid and positive outcome. This all makes sense in the world of doing… but not so much in the world of being.  Of being human, filled with emotion, tossed about by life’s ups and downs.  That balancing act requires us to hurt, to push through the wall of emotion, and to either break through to the other side, or succumb and die.  Think about emotions and their counter-point… With confidence, one must also know fear. With intolerance, one must also know empathy; with joy there is the shadow of sorrow. When the balance is off and one emotion takes the hill, we enter the danger zone. Danger is sinister, it smells vulnerabilit...

A husband and wife (spouse/partner) generally have different ways to soothe their sorrows, express their grief, and to move forward in life. Finding a balance that respects each other is imperative to land in a healing place. Moving forward can be challenging and scary because all the while you want desperately to keep alive the memory of what was once the living representation of your union.   My husband and I have very different ways of coping with our grief. I see him as an active griever. My way is a bit more clandestine. He finds comfort in listening to the songs our son enjoyed, driving his truck, visiting the places he went. For him, these things are a connection to our son.  To be in concert with a person who knew Wyatt, or to be in a place they were together is a heartbeat for him.  Me, I retreat to a veiled silence. The songs, the places, the things; more often than not, they evoke fear and sorrow in my heart.  The marrow of my being hurts an...

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.   Carolyn A. Rose I've had the distinct privilege in life to have traveled to various places, some vastly different from my home, and some quite similar.  Regardless of the magnitude of differences, I can always feel the uniqueness of the place. After a while, certainly I long for the familiar comfort of home... but I always return with a fuller heart and a more open mind. Then it's like a siren song calling me back to seek more, ask more, learn more and inwardly digest it to build me into a more understanding and compassionate being.  In a class I am taking, we were posed this question: How have ...

As I was driving home last week my mind told me I finally had energy to put into living. I had this moment of complete joy. Then, almost instantly, guilt pushed into my mind. Grief is a wicked beast.  I drove down the road contemplating the battling emotions. I decided love must win; but, love only wins when we work at it.   Love must be coached out of and in to us.  We must be thoughtful about love.   Love is a powerful thing ... and yet it's fragile, not to be toyed with or taken lightly.   Love is a treasure that becomes more valued with time; each little nick and tear, each loss and each new beginning makes us need and want love even more. We are desperate for love.  Love is the antidote to sorrows, but it can be a fickle thing, and we are leery of its power, uncomfortable with the prerequisites for accepting it's healing.  Love is healing, but we fear it, shy from it and close our minds to its power. Being open to love means we will be expo...

I learned years ago to actively practice bringing my thoughts to the present moment, particularly when my mind goes to some wicked place and even sometimes when it goes to a beautiful memory.  There is no predictability in grieving. This practice of being in the present moment has been life-saving for me, literally. But sometimes my heart yearns for the lost moments. Do you ever have one of those days when you need the past?    A little sliver of light is shining on the memory of reading stories to my son. I can see us there, settled in among the pillows and stuffed animals, my head laying next to his on the pillow, book in hand. Then, I would read with active voice the stories so they jump from the page and become real.  What a wonderful beautiful memory, vivid with sound and color. I hear his laughs and questions and our discussions on the meaning of the stories.  Oh, how I want to bring it all back to being real, being here and now.  An evenin...

Sitting on the roadside this evening, I balanced my camera and tried to take a picture of the moon. It's a special place under the light of the moon. We have shared time together, sacred time. It was the moon that guided us home after Wyatt died, my heart knew it was him following us as the dark winter night carried on for hours. We've had many a conversation, me and the moon.  We are usually alone so we can talk. But tonight was different. There were others with us. After Wyatt’s death we quickly found shelter in the world of others who had lost a child. We, all different, knew similar pain. The parting gift of our children was bringing us together as friends who could hold each other in the darkness of grief and beyond. As I said, the moon and I were not along tonight. Do you see them, the children who brought us together? There they are. Our beautiful children dancing in the sky.  Greeting us with love. I know y...

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day going through my son's things. I am the mother of an only child, thus I was want to save every little item he ever created. I recall from my years in a strong and wonderful support group there was this recurrence of the year seven. It seemed to me, people had the capacity to act at the seven year benchmark.  We are in year seven and I finally have the capacity to work my way through 20 years of memories. Coincidence, possibly. It doesn't matter why, it just is.  This time, seven years later, I was able to manage the memories and not quickly turn into a puddle of tears. I consider this a gift. I am grateful for capacity. I have come to this point by way of consistent support and love from family and friends, through counseling and medication, through exercise and meditation, through prayer and faith. The sources of my persistence are nearly endless.  When the fear takes hold, the pra...

Death is Just a Thing The summer sun shines on me with a brilliance that warms my bones, but my heart is lonely for the ones who have gone. My ears long to hear their words. My eyes to linger upon their beauty. But only memories remain, some blurring with the sand and the wind. Time marches on… Death is just a thing that happens in the wind. Hold the memories of love’s last words, A silent moment or a ruckus laugh. A giant hug or kiss on the cheek. Whatever it was, that moment shared, tuck it deep within your heart. For time will pass and take its toll, but love will last beyond death’s sting and shine within the memories we sing. 4.21.17 mw lambeth