How often during the course of your grieving days and months has something like this happened to you, and helped you in your healing by its happening?

You’re in a public place somewhere, perhaps bent on work or a mission of some kind to try to stay focused on living life despite your pain, or perhaps just wandering aimlessly because you feel so lost and empty inside and someone – sometimes friend and sometimes a stranger - shows up seemingly out of nowhere to involve you in a conversation.

Depending on where you’re at in the stages of healing from grief you might or might not feel much like having a conversation at that particular moment of time, but something deep inside you urges you to accept the opportunity, so you allow it to happen.

Inevitably the conversation seems to come around to you and how you’re feeling. A friend will ask this question of you because they know the circumstances of your loss and are genuinely concerned about your welfare. A stranger will sometimes ask the question simply out of common decency, or because they sense in their heart of compassion there is a need to ask it and are willing to hear you share the answer.

In either case you found yourself talking fully from your heart, finally able to express a slice of the deep and biting pain of loss, grief and bereavement which is consuming your life in bite sized chunks and leaving you feeling hopelessly mired in a swamp of emotions from which there seems no escape.

And often even the stranger will listen with rapt attention as you pour out a piece of your grief between great gulps of air for your starving lungs, releasing some of those tightly bound emotions running rampant in your heart of endless night. A friend knows of this need within you, and has come to you with a heart already open to helping you release those emotions.

Then you suddenly spot the gleam of moisture in their eyes or the track of a tear gliding down their cheek, as your words of grief and longing reach out to touch their hearts and show how much they care about and are feeling your time of pain with you.

Often their tears are joining the ones already spilling from your own eyes.

Sometimes these kinds of conversations only last for a few minutes and sometimes they can last for hours, depending on time and the circumstances which allowed them to happen during those moments of need for expression in your life.

After whatever duration of time is allotted to it the conversation is finally over, and you’re left to walk away from it on your own again – still alone in the physical sense, but no longer feeling nearly as alone in the senses of your heart, which has found a brief and somehow healing expression of the void left in your life by the loss you’ve suffered.

Have you noticed how much lighter your sodden spirit of grief feels after encounters such as this? Even if only for mere minutes or hours after they occur.

Both your heart and your steps on this earth you walk on is lifted and elevated above its former burden for these seemingly magical and blessed moments following such a conversational time – and a tiny piece of you feels healed by it having happened to you.

I remember those hundreds of spirit-touching conversational occurrences in my own early time of loss, grief and bereavement as I came to healing terms with the death of my daughter. In fact they continue to occur on a near regular basis even now as I walk my healing path – and I am grateful beyond mere human words to know that they do.

I’m utterly convinced in the heart of my beliefs these healing times, moments and opportunities are orchestrated for us in a process by a Power far beyond that of our own – one who knows our hurting needs intimately and cares deeply and lovingly about our welfare and our healing.

So when the boundaries of your grief seem endless and the shape of your tomorrows still feels twisted by the blight of pain, know that someone else will come along, sent to offer you another opportunity to open up your heart of grief and allow you to talk about your feelings.

With each occurrence of these encounters know that your pain is being touched by a divine direction in a process meant to help you – and know that you will walk away from it finding yourself raised up from your grief by the healing touch of friends and strangers.

Welcome those times when they happen. Know and understand they have a purpose and a reason for occurring.

They are a true and meaningful part of the stages of grief healing in your life.

With Love and Understanding

Ken Matthies

HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience
 

How could anyone think it possible to find ‘golden moments’ in a loved one’s long term dying?

There are many among you out there in the world who are grieving from the loss of a family member or close friend who faced a long term dying.

You probably felt like a piece of you was dying right along with them over the many long months or years before their end finally came, and your grief for their loss broke loose to become a living reality within you.

It’s not an easy process to remain a living breathing part of yourself, when you know their breath will one day cease to be and you have to keep on living in the pain of their passing.

You need to know that you’re not alone in your feelings of loss, grief and bereavement since they went away. Uncountable thousands are walking the same path as you, aching for their healing just as much as you are.

It’s also important for you to know that a powerful portion of the healing for your grief already lies within you.

I’m one of you too, because that’s the way it was for me as I watched, lived with, and fought to come to terms with its finality over the long seven years of my adoptive Native mother’s inexorable passage from vibrant vitality, to the final stillness of her death.

It was in the aftermath of her passing, in the midst of the grief of her loss that I discovered and will forever hold on to the golden moments of her long term dying.
Golden moments are those that live on in your memory, in your heart of love and caring, and in the thoughts you’re willing to share with yourself in death’s aftermath of those superbly special and intimate times you shared something either entirely ordinary, or extraordinarily unique with them.

In my mother’s case an example of the ordinary would be the times I accompanied her to her beloved Bingo games in town, where despite her growing pain and discomfort, we would share special looks, smiles, jokes and laughter as she watched eagle-eyed over my Bingo cards as well as her own to make sure I never ever missed a number being called.

In the life of my mother and me an entirely ordinary but now highly treasured event in memory.

As a Native woman born, raised in and intensely traveled throughout the forests, trails and byways of northern British Columbia, Alaska and the Yukon, it seemed there was no place I could take her that she hadn’t been to or seen before in her 71 year travels over the land, or for which she couldn’t tell me their names in her native Tlingit tongue.

And yet it was in this same context of places seen that a short month or so before her dying I was privileged to share the extraordinarily unique with her, and create a truly shining golden moment of both reality and memory.

It was both chosen practice and an honor for me to take my mother on many short drives throughout the incandescent beauty of the mountainous region we live in during the final months of her illness.

Because of her increasing fragility even traveling in my vehicle, we had been waiting for the spring thaw to melt the roughness of ice and snow on a dirt road leading to a local lake. For once mother wasn’t certain she’d ever traveled this particular trail before, and I was excited at the prospect of showing it to her.
Arriving at trail’s end in the soft glow of early evening light, we sat in the vehicle together gazing out over a small lake still covered in ice. The simplicity of the lake was back dropped by a sweeping view of a magnificent seven-peaked mountain range sheathed in brilliant layers of snow, which watched in turn over a valley from which a single huge round mountain rose out of the flat land of its origins.

I remember looking over at mother and asking her if she’d ever been here before. Her shining wonder-filled eyes and simple answer of “No Ken, I’ve never been here or seen this place before; thank you so much for bringing me here!” was the reward of a lifetime to me, especially given her extensive first hand knowledge of the land which surrounded us that evening.

I found myself overwhelmed in the moment (and forever after) with the joy of how much it mattered to her that I had brought her here, to be seeing for the first time the vantage point and stunning beauty of what lay before her slowly dimming eyes of life.

This and countless other experiences large and small have all become the golden moments of memory of her long term dying to me. They can be assessed no price to the heart, and have a value beyond the boundaries of human suffering or pain to the love I still carry in my heart for her.

And therein lays the secret of these golden moments to the grieving which happens to you in the painful vale of their having passed from your life.

These are in fact golden moments of healing for your grief, offered up from within your still living love and vital memories of those priceless moments of sharing your life together in ways that mattered, that counted, and can forever be held in high esteem inside your secret heart of hearts.

Look for your own ‘golden moments’ in the long term dying of the one you loved and lost. Allow them full and free rein of their beauty within you – and you too will find ever greater measures of healing from your loss, grief and bereavement of a long term dying.

With Love and Understanding,

Ken Matthies

HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience

For many people dealing with issues of loss, grief and bereavement there’s also a spiritual aspect which can play a powerful role in their healing and recovery.

 
Within the community of religion and faith in a living afterlife of the spirit to be found in peoples around the world, there is an acceptance of death which transcends beyond the human pain of those left behind to mourn their passing.

 
And within that transcendence there exists a huge reservoir of inner peace to be found about the death of their loved one. Within that peace itself lies the greatest personal healing tool of all – the belief that you will see your loved one once again when your own turn comes to join them in that afterlife.

 
The sheer healing power of this single truth alone cannot be calculated in the personal journey of someone who is healing from loss, grief and bereavement within this reality of spiritual belief.

In the throes of the actual pain which follows their death, and the unleashing of all of our very human feelings of grief and bereavement about their loss, this truth can become temporarily overwhelmed in the rushes of these completely understandable and very normal emotions.

 
Yet it is this single truth of belief which becomes the sustaining factor of the healing process as you learn to deal with the human elements of the grief process. It allows the tempests of your pain to be calmed once again by your knowledge of and faith in that reconnection of your spirit to those that went before you.

I’m reminded of members of my family in this context, and how my own belief in that afterlife of the spirit has sustained me and helped me to recover from the human emotions of loss, grief and bereavement following their deaths.

There’s a lesson of spiritual healing for you in these memories I share.

 
Sometimes that inner peace can even be so strong right at the outset of a loved one’s dying that it carries you beyond their death directly into the final ‘Integration’ cycle of the healing process itself, as it did for me at my grandmother’s dying.

 
My grandmother was a real and vitally formative presence in my early life, and from the age of comprehension I had never been in doubt as to the power of her faith in God, and her unshakeable belief in an afterlife that would reunite us once again.

 
As a 16 year old youth called to her home and bedside her bed in the final hours of her life, my birth mother and I arrived to find her with eyes closed and already unable to speak because of her immense physical pain, able only to lightly squeeze our hands in recognition of whom we were to her.

What struck me immediately on entering the room was the presence of a wonderfully soft and joyful smile on her face – a smile which was to remain in place until her very last breath. Along with my grandfather, mother and other close relatives, we gathered around her bedside and sang hymns together to help her along on the final journey of her life on earth, even as her physical body itself visibly broke down in its final stages of the cancer claiming her life.

 
What remains so clearly etched in memory for me throughout this entire time is that smile of joy which never left her face, despite the ravages occurring to the physical shell housing her spirit. I remember standing in wonder as I witnessed the power of her faith carrying her above all pain, and into the realm of the spiritual grace sustaining these final moments of her existence.When it appeared to us that her final breath had been taken, it was I who stepped to her side and put my ear to her chest to listen for heartbeat, and to her mouth to learn if she still breathed. And when neither was found it was I who kissed her cheek, closed her eyes, and raised the blankets to cover her face as a sign of her death.

 
What was striking to me in the reality of those moments, and their aftermath of a funeral placing her body at final rest was that I never once felt the need or desire to weep my sorrow at her passing. Nor have I ever in the years which have flown by since she left us.

 
As mentioned earlier, it’s become clear over the passage of my years and accumulation of the knowledge surrounding the grieving process that I had immediately moved into the ‘Integration’ stage of the grieving process – completely bypassing the Avoidance and Confrontation stages because I knew without shadow of doubt where my grandmother’s spirit now lived.

 
Complete and utter acceptance of this spiritual truth – undoubtedly because I had witnessed her passing with my own eyes - had in this instance done away with the normal human need to experience those painful earlier stages of grief. It’s true that my humanity missed her physical presence, her immense love and wisdom, and the tastiest baking this side of heaven which regularly came forth from her oven – but I have never been grief stricken by her death. Both my spirit and mind have always known where she is, and look forward with anticipation to greeting her once again in this afterlife of faith and belief.

While this is not the typical situation for most of you currently dealing with issues of grief, there is still a potent lesson within its example – that of the power of your spiritual beliefs to help you overcome grief and find healing from its effects in your heart and life.
It’s a power that should not be overlooked or bypassed on your personal journey of healing from loss, grief and bereavement.

With Love and Understanding

Ken Matthies

HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience

Avoidance (Walking the Edges)

Every single journey of loss, grief and bereavement is individual and different
for each person experiencing it. There can be no hard and fast rules, saying
that it’s the same for everyone or telling anyone going through the experience
how long or short a time period it should last till they break through to their
healing.

What can be said though is that there are ‘marker stones’ along this journey
that can help you identify your own exhausted progress through it, and give you
a sense that you’re at least moving in the right direction.

Each reality of your grief cycle represents a ‘stone’ in the context of what I’m
writing about today. You can either continue to trip over them without knowing
what they are, or you can come to understand them and know that your progress
through grief actually will lead to your healing from it.

You’ll be able to look back later and recognize this about your journey more
clearly. But allow me to explain the first of these marker stones and cycles of
grief in a little more detail now, to help you understand their significance to
the healing awaiting you along your journey.

Confrontation (Entering the Depths)

It’s in this second of the grief cycles that the waters of emotion get deep and run heavy with the hidden currents of your pain – but again there are marker stones within this part of your experience to help you understand your journey and know it will eventually lead you to your healing.

The hard simple truth is that you have to endure the journey – but enduring it is so much less difficult if you understand what it is that you’re enduring.

These are the marker stones of this middle phase of your grief cycles in ‘Confrontation (Entering the Depths):

Integration (Mending the Heart)

The third cycle of grief is where the good news of your healing journey finally begins to outweigh the bad news and feelings of your experience of loss, grief and bereavement prior to this point, during that eternity of time when it felt like it’d take forever for you to arrive here.

Here are the marker stones of this final cycle of grief, ‘Integration (Mending the Heart):

• The decline of your grief

• The waves of their intensity getting farther apart

• The start of social and emotional reentry into your life

Your grief hasn’t gone away, but its edges have begun to soften with the knowledge that it’s become a part of your past experience in life. You’ll still have times of intensely missing your loved one, usually associated with those anniversary dates of death and memory centered on important events of the life you had shared with them.

It’s even likely you’ll feel the odd touch of guilt about the fact that you’re moving forward in your life despite the hellish experience you’ve just endured - but this too will pass as your understanding and healing advances.

This is a good time to sit back and review the marker stones of your loss, grief and bereavement along the huge distance you’ve traveled in your healing journey. It’s in the looking back at this point that you’ll clearly see and appreciate how important it was to understand the marker stones of your journey as you struggled your way along it.

Now is when you’ll begin to find that you’re having a lot more good days than bad ones, and are able to look back and remember things about the one you’ve lost with a sense of comfort in your heart. At this point, finding meaningful ways to include and make your lost loved one an important part of your new life is a vitally important thing for you to do. You’ll want to be able to talk about them naturally and comfortably now, in ways that show you remember and honor them for who they were to you.

Making significantly new and important choices designed to enhance your quality of life is another important aspect of this time of reevaluation and reintegration into your newly healing life. It’s also a time to acknowledge the personal growth that’s evolved inside you as a result of having survived – and continuing to survive – the loss you’ve suffered.

At this third and final step of the grief cycles which have led you on your healing journey, the most important and valuable accomplishment you can and should achieve is to reinvest your new energy of life back into those relationships and pursuits of life that have value and meaning to you.

This site, these posts, and the book available on my website are examples of such a reintegration into life after the loss of my daughter, and of the marker stones of the healing journey I traveled to arrive here.

I’m grateful I came to understand their significance – as you will be too on your own journey to find healing from loss, grief and bereavement.

With Love and Understanding

Ken Matthies

HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience
 

Every single death that occurs brings loss, grief and bereavement to someone who loved or cared for that individual, and its significance never can or should be discounted in its impact and meaning to those suffering and finding healing from its effects.

Yet the death of a child – grown or otherwise – carries a burden of grieving for a parent which exceeds all human boundaries of comprehension or understanding at the time of its happening, and involves enduring a grieving and healing path unique among the losses to be experienced by mankind.

In this and the following four posts to this site I’ll be sharing a story of grieving the death of a grown child – in poetic form – and allow you the readers to experience its journey through grief to find healing. It’s a prayer of my heart that you will be touched and encouraged by its ever growing message of hope.

Her name was Leila Gray (Brennan), a 26 year old helicopter pilot at the time of her death, and she was my own beloved daughter.

This was the poem written for her funeral day, and in its topic involves a gift of grace (a ‘found’ feather) given to help us as parents endure the day – and find hope for its aftermath.

The Feather

We picked up a feather the other day
That lay on the floor at our feet;
And in it we saw the wings of flight
Of Leila, our daughter Sweet.

A feather, you know, is an amazing thing;
It lifts each bird to the sky;
To soar the heavens and sail the winds
That raise their wings on high.