Welcome to my Keyboard Culture blog and to the topic of Healing Stages of Grief!

My name is Ken Matthies, and I’m a father still walking the healing path I discovered in the shadows of my own grief after the sudden death of my youngest daughter in 2002.

In future posts I’ll be talking about the many aspects and experiences of loss, grief and bereavement and how they touch your life.

Most importantly, I’ll also be talking about the ways I’ve discovered to help you find your healing from the painful effects that accompany them.

In fact, these posts will often be actual stories (and occasional poems) taken from my own early or continuing journey of healing, passed on to help you find your way along your personal healing path.

There’s little question in my mind you’ve been told by now that finding your healing from grief is a process – a series of stages we all have to go through to come out recovered on the other end.

Many different interpretations and expressions of these stages exist in the written materials available on the subject (including within my own published Stages of Grief – Healing Your Grief  articles/audios available on my website), but in essence, these entire variations boil down to three key stages:

• Avoidance (Walking the Edge)

• Confrontation (Entering the Depths)

• Integration (Mending the Heart)

I’ll talk in greater detail about these stages in later posts.

As you’ve no doubt discovered by now, grief is the loneliest and most painful individual reality you can have on earth. Once experienced, you’ll know for yourself how true this is.

Because grief is such an intensely personal experience there’s a strong tendency to at first be unaware of these stages - or once aware - to ignore them in the throes of your pain. But you will find as you gain knowledge of them you will find your way through them more quickly to the healing which waits for you within.

Maybe you’re still in denial that these stages exist, let alone that you have to pass through them.

Some of you reading this may still be fighting the inevitability of these stages of grief in your own experience, and still be insisting (as I did for far too long) that you can “deal with it yourself” or “do it on your own”.

In my own experience of denial, I eventually realized how wrong I was to think that way and went looking for expert help to give me knowledge of these stages and my progress through them. Understanding the stages of grief led much more quickly to finding and walking my healing path from loss, grief and bereavement.

So I want you to find reassurance in the truth that these stages do in fact exist – and that gaining a clear understanding of them will help you heal with greater certainty and far better results than “doing it on your own” will ever be able to achieve.

Exploring these stages and talking about your experiences in them will also help you understand that you really aren’t as alone in your grief as you feel, and make you aware that the light of healing really does exist at the end of them.

It’s a light and a healing you will no doubt welcome into your life.

With Love and Understanding

Ken Matthies

HeartSpun Posts from the Crucible of Experience
 

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
 

Today’s post touches on an issue concerning surviving children in a family in which one child has died, and begins with this question…

Has a similar kind of situation depicted in this story happened to you with any of your surviving children?

It’s a fair question to ask, because in the aftermath of the loss of one child parents sometimes have to struggle to remain connected in a loving way to those children still alive within their family.

It’s an aspect of the grief experience for some of us that needs to be talked about openly and with honesty. This post is an example of that openness and honesty taken from my own family, and one which I hope will illuminate the issue in a helpful way for you to come to healing terms with if it exists in your family as well.

A recently visited Walmart store is hardly the place you’d expect to be confronted with the kind of question you see in the title of this post. In my case it’s been asked by a woman who knew both of my girls, and she’s just learned from me that one of them has died, and that the other is presently lost to me through the pain of my own harsh words used against her in the cruel period of loss and bereavement following her sister’s death.

It’s a tough question to be faced with, because I’ve had to learn the hard way in the midst of my grief experience that losing a second daughter in this manner is every bit as painful to me as the sudden death of her sister has been.

But sometimes your continuing path of healing from grief and loss brings you to nexus points of personal confrontation with family issues that require you to deal with them – especially if you’ve been avoiding doing so for whatever reason has justified it in your mind.

In the instant of this kind of confrontation though, how are you supposed to handle the sudden pain this type of question brings to a heart and soul still healing from the death of one of them?

How do you get past the hurtful thoughts pouring helter-skelter into vocal chords frozen with a sudden inability to express themselves?

What happens first at moments like this is that you find yourself breathing deeply to get air back into your lungs, so it’ll give strength back to the voice which deserted you seconds ago. It sure happened to me like that at the time.

I chose to handle the situation by consciously embracing the pain brought about by the question. I did it this way because I’ve learned by this point in my healing experience that doing so will allow the light of love and memories that live in my heart for my dead daughter to restore my balance – which allowed me to then answer the question honestly.
You see, I’ve also learned by now that the honesty of the answer is crucially important to the outcome of the situation at hand (for this question and all the others I’ve faced to be able to find healing) – so I embraced that truth into my heart and mind as well as these thoughts, feelings and events unfolded within their span of seconds.

Then I answered the lady truthfully and succinctly, shared a heartfelt hug of sympathy and caring with her and smiled past the tears glittering in my eyes. Then I thanked her for asking and being willing to hear my answer.

Even though my throat still felt constricted as I walked away, I allowed myself to remember that the tears brought about by my answer were diamond drops of healing for my still wounded soul – pure and sparkling gems of love and memory for both of my daughters which had been graced in those moments to touch the life of another caring human being, and in the process remind me of my loving obligation to the daughter still alive in both heart and reality.

Then I deliberately chose to let the pain of the question go, with an attitude of gratitude for having been asked it, and took the next step of my life and healing path – which was to choose to go to work on finding my healing and peace about my estranged daughter by believing this connection too can be healed.

She still lives. That single truth alone is enough to give me hope for what is yet to come – and faith that it can happen in a good way, despite the unyielding pain within me of the circumstances with which I caused it to happen.

Sometimes you need to ask your wounded child for forgiveness, as I have already done in my situation, and then simply let it go into the hands of a Creator who is able to help both you and your child find healing from the pain of this kind of mutual grief.

If you’ve got a similar situation in your family, consciously choosing to ask forgiveness and then allowing room in your heart for faith and hope in a healing outcome is a good first step in the right direction.

I’ve become a firm believer that unconditional open hearted love can overcome any obstacle we face along the path to find healing from loss, grief and bereavement –whether from the loss of one child, or from the estrangement of one still alive and waiting for a loving reconnection within your family.

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

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.

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 amazin