The fact that this was also one of the songs I’d chosen to be played at my own funeral someday only served at the time to drive home the truth of the bond – now forever broken, it seemed – which had existed between my daughter and I.

I’ve thought often about those moments of time when these two universes collided – and over the course of my healing time in the years since, have come to see a higher meaning for myself in the music and words of that song and the events which shattered me on that day.

Today, ‘Go Rest High on that Mountain’ speaks to me of two wonderful truths about both of us.

The process of healing from grief is designed to be a gradual one for us as human beings because we’re not physically, mentally or emotionally equipped to be able to deal with all of it at once – suffering a grievous loss one day and magically cured from its effects the very next day, month, or even year.

The process of healing from grief is designed to be a gradual one for us as human beings because we’re not physically, mentally or emotionally equipped to be able to deal with all of it at once – suffering a grievous loss one day and magically cured from its effects the very next day, month, or even year.

Whatever way you choose to help you do this, know that its constant presence around you will serve to keep that connection vital and glowing in your heart, and offer a healing reassurance to your wounded soul.

For example, sitting on the phone table behind me in my office is the portrait taken of my daughter and I shortly after she arrived back in my life at the age of 19. Even though she’s gone I feel as though she remains, always watching my back (there for me) and encouraging the writing I do in her memory.

I truly appreciate all of you who have been coming to this site to read them, and thank you for doing so. I understand how intensely private your personal journey to find healing is, yet it’s also important for me to know if the articles I’m posting are helping you to find your healing – so today I have a very simple request to make to all of you reading these posts.

“It seems on further examination that I’ve been living a double, or maybe it’s been a triple life during this past endless pain-scape of months.

In the first one of them – the deeply hidden, darkly private and personal one you never ever under any circumstances of life or death show anyone – I’m going through all the great stuff I’ve just described on the preceding pages! You know, rough twisty trails, cute snakes and leaking life fluids. Not the prettiest of pictures, or places.

In the second one, I’m a real regular guy by the name of Ken that everyone knows and loves (yeah, sure!), just plugging along in what appears to be a normal everyday life pattern, otherwise known as Living the Façade or Hiding Behind the Mask!

“Somewhere along the line after writing her obituary I eventually get to sliding into disbelief again that this is all real. That’s probably what starts me jumping off the deep end inside again too; and world once more spirals into a rotten kind of personal madness you can’t talk about with human sounding words just yet.

It’s no wonder relationships and families fracture and get scattered into billions of useless shards when something like this happens.

Here you are, living amongst the shattered pieces of your own endless puzzle palace, vainly looking for the pieces that will throw a temporary patch on the most extreme pain of the moment; and of course none of them fit or lock together, so the patch doesn’t work and that particular wound keeps oozing away more of the fluids of your life.

“I think it’s probably about this time too (October - three months after her death) that I finally work up enough guts to start pulling the boxes of Leila’s personal effects that she’d left behind out of their storage places around the house and out in the shed. I carry them all into our office downstairs and stack them close to my desk.

I can’t even open them yet. It’s just too hard to think about what I’ll find inside that I know will rip me wide open and leave me bleeding all over the floor. They stay that way all winter. And for the next summer I’m gone too. I still can’t bear facing it, so all I do is look at them all the time.

Returning home yesterday from a visit to a nearby community I passed through a section of road being rebuilt and widened. The signs in advance of this area from either direction warn you of it saying “Road Construction Next ___ Kilometers”, with the empty blank of the number of kilometers to be traveled filled in by hand with a black felt marker pen.

It struck me how well these signs equate to the individual journey of grief itself.

It seems to take forever for light to show up again in your life after the death of a child – or after the death of anyone else in your life that you loved with all your heart. The loss is just so huge and the darkness of death so complete at the time that the concept of light becomes an alien subject for your mind to comprehend.

Yet the truth is that the light of your existence remains, forever shining bright beyond the darkness of your grief, and eventually revealing itself to you again as you begin the journey of healing that allows you to once again see and value its brilliance – and its vital importance to the completeness of healing that awaits your open and aching heart.

It’s good for your eventual healing that you experience this drive, and even better when you allow it to guide you into creating memorial symbols which are uniquely representative of your loved one – something you’ll treasure always and keep in the forefront of the changed life you live in the aftermath of your loss.

The form your memorial takes is important only to you and can consist of anything your aching heart chooses it to be – from a simple framed picture all the way up to an organization begun in their memory, or beyond. Only eternity can or should limit your options, or the actions you take to create a memorial symbol of healing value to you.

Anyone who has experienced the pain of a loved one’s loss can identify with the concept of a whole lifetime having passed since that death occurred. It’s for certain that my granddaughter can.

In the first place, who’s to say what “normal” really is after a death that’s taken away everything you ever considered to be normal before it happened?

The simple truth is that no hard and fast rule for such a thing exists, although some cultures have “supportive grieving structures” which seek to help define and guide the length of the grieving process for those suffering the pain of loss, grief and bereavement.

Yet as excellent and helpful as these structures are, even they cannot govern the private levels or length of grief experienced within the individual human heart – a heart that must find its own way to a grieving and healing length of time that’s right for that person.

The healing aspects of the grief process are cyclical in nature, often returning you to those places and times in memory where the pain of your loss becomes overwhelming yet again. At times like those you can’t help but question if the pain of it will ever change or end for you.

I refer to this encounter as a privilege because it validated – above all other reasons for my being there – the true importance of being at this spot on the earth at that moment, willing to listen to and share another person’s story of loss, grief and bereavement with an understanding and non-judgmental heart.

Too often in our busy world and our even busier lives we push aside those in grief – let alone grant them the time to sit down and listen to their stories of heartbreaking pain. Because we find it ‘uncomfortable’ to have to deal with the subject of death, we expect them to just “get over it and get on with your life” as though it had never happened.

Nothing could be further from the truth for someone in grief.

For instance, last week was the fifth anniversary of my daughter’s death, followed immediately by her birthday. I fully expected to be rocked down to the ground again emotionally on those back to back anniversary days just like in previous years, but that wasn’t the way it happened this time around.

Instead what I discovered was that the pains of anticipation of the anniversary days in the two weeks prior to them were far outweighed by the quietness of heart I actually felt on the days themselves!

I was both blessed and amazed to discover this time around that I was able to use those two days as days of quiet and heartfelt reflection, with long walks and loving talks to my daughter, during which the flow of rich and wonderful memories about her and our life together brought peace to both heart and mind.