Think I’ve mentioned someplace on this site that sharing meals and cooking was always very important to my husband...it was also a big part of my mother’s life and one of the ways she showed affection and concern for those in her life, they were similar in many ways, including that one.  My husband used to tell people that he’d always “had trouble distinguishing food, love, and sex” — he’d say it in a joking way, but he really believed that in some way, at the deepest level, they were all…

A Stoic Response to Grief

“It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey…

Moriturus

Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I could have

Two things in one:

The peace of the grave,

And the light of the sun;



My hands across

My thin breast-bone,

But aware of the moss

Invading the stone,



Aware of the flight

Of the golden flicker

With his wing to the light;

To hear him nicker



And drum with his bill

On the rotted…

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

— C. S. LEWIS

Recent postings on “I miss my mom” brought back memories of moments with my mom when I would get very anxious and frustrated, when I would raise my voice and so on.  My mom was very forgiving of me, and very understanding — she got how worried I was about her, especially but not exclusively during latter years of complex health issues, and she appreciated that I was trying my best to help.  She was grateful to me, and expressed gratitude, which was sometimes uncomfortable, but I was also so…

There are many mentions of guilt on this site, and it often seems to be assumed that all bereaved people suffer from guilt.  As far as I can tell that isn’t true for me, unless I am in very deep denial.  On the other hand, I feel a lot of shame about being bereaved, being alone, being tearful, distraught, unproductive, etc.  At the same time it seems ridiculous to be ashamed because someone beloved has died, and I haven’t seen other people reflect this feeling, so thought it was just my…

In the midst of what feels like unsurvivable loss, how do we moor ourselves to the fact that even the most beautiful, most singularly gratifying things in life are merely on loan from the universe, granted us for the time being?  Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss…

"Blessed is he, who has learned to bear what he cannot change, and to give up with dignity, what he cannot save." Friedrich Schiller

The moon should appear at its reddest at about 9:12 p.m., with the event lasting until about 10:40 p.m.

Kelly encourages people to take a look.  "You know, stop and look up and really think about [how] we are on this huge planet, moving around in space and there's very few times that we can actually be reminded and feel the effects of that," she said.

[These recommendations from psychiatrist/tv personality Dr Amen came via this morning's e-mail -- despite the 'celebrity doctor' context and the rather directional tone, they seem worth consideration, at least I basically agree with them, and am trying to implement them -- will paste below in case they are of potential interest to others on this site.]

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There is a saying that goes: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go…

In Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, Captain Harville and Anne Elliot, surprised by a bereaved friend's intention to remarry, debate who loves longer, men or women, and how they weather loss of love.

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... with a quivering lip [Captain Harville] wound up

the whole by adding, "Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!"

"No," replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice. "That I can easily believe."

"It was not in her nature. She doted…

Today I had to respond to several emails and repeatedly write down that my mother is dead. Finding it very hard to keep writing the words, so hard that it took several days of tearful effort to complete the three most pressing responses.  Finally got them done.  I just miss my mother so much.  I hate picking up the phone now because some part of me still expects her voice at the other end of the line. I feel wounded by family and friends who are grieving so differently from me, who are keen…

“I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.”

― Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

For a long time after my husband died, I couldn't read.  Before the ability to focus that way came back, I found that certain phrases and passages that I'd encountered long ago were appearing in my mind and sticking there, and that continues to happen, though I am able to do a certain amount of reading now.  Many of the phrases…

Came across this quotation, attributed to Kafka:

     "The meaning of life is that it stops."

  Just noticed it by chance, and not sure if the attribution is accurate.  For some reason it has really grabbed my attention -- many hours have passed, but I keep turning it over in my mind.  

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is…