A Formal Grievance of Grief Equals Love
We hear it, see it, and read it all the time in the grief space. The notion that grief equals love. The articles. The quotes. The Instagram posts. Sometimes, I resonate with the sentiment. Sometimes, it really misses the mark. The distillation of grief-equals-love excludes a multitude of lived grief experiences. Ones where love was not a cornerstone. Ones where there was no love lost. Ones where love was not only absent, but where abuse and trauma were centered. What then, is grief, when you didn’t love the person tied to said grief?
Vitals On A Dead Guy?
My brother Robert died at the age of fifty-one in June 2018 at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital during an attempt to replace an old, failing, plastic heart valve he’d had put in when he was thirteen. I would have referred to it as an open-heart surgery, but really, they never even got into his chest in the first place, thanks (or no thanks) to his aorta having calcified to his sternum.
Tears Don’t Need Justifying
My every-few-mornings routine for years was to pour a little bit of H20 from my night stand water glass into my tarantula’s water bowl. She’d been a part of our family for sixteen years. Half my life. One morning, about to get dressed for work…
Halloween Fright
I used to love horror flicks and haunted houses in my teens and twenties. I often find myself this time of year, in my thirties, reflecting on a younger me's affinity for fright and gore. Nowadays, if I watch horror, I gravitate more towards...
Where Ceremony, Precaution, and Technology Meet
In this time of Covid-19 there seems to be an air of “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” around remembrance ceremonies. We're living in a day and age where we hear more and more people saying, “I don’t want a funeral,” and/or, “I hate...
Go in Peace – A Film
Image ID: A tattered armed forces of the United States ID Card showing a tealish-green border, eagle graphic, and Marine Corps text. A black and white picture of a young white male with dark hair is in the middle of the ID with the printed name...
Ageism Much?
The search for the fountain of youth is an age-old tale. This recent bio-tech article makes it clear just how off-putting the idea of aging is for some, and how desperately we want a “cure.” "David Sinclair, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School,...
Play A Song For Me
Music links us humans, heart to heart. Across time and space, and life and death.” –Nancy Werlin One of my favorite questions to ask in order to start a conversation about funeral wishes is, “What song(s) would you like played at your funeral?” I’m...
Piss & Vinegar
Once after one of his many brushes with death, my father filled out a Five Wishes packet. Under “If anyone asks how I want to be remembered, please say the following about me:” he wrote, “He worked hard at being a good person. It was really a...
Mi Rosa
When I told Chelsie my “Mi Rosa” story after returning from my honeymoon in Cancun, we laughed a very good, good laugh. I am emotional and sentimental at heart. We all know this. Upon landing in Mexico, I was given a beautiful, light pink, almost...
“I Didn’t Want A Celebration…” -Duane “Dog” Chapman
“I didn’t want a celebration-of-life because I’m sad, and I want to be sad.” - Duane “Dog” The Bounty Hunter eulogizing his wife. Last weekend I attended Beth Chapman’s funeral. I needed a funeral to observe and report on for a class I am in, so I...
When Things Aren’t Alright
“I don’t like Nana be sick” my little niece said, her voice cracking, lip quivering, tears welling up in her eyes. My mother had just been moved to recovery after an uneventful surgery, but she was experiencing some nausea, so she was retching. The...
Stop All The Clocks
We were provided thirty pages of poems and readings in my funeral celebrant training. The deathling in me sat down with my highlighter, ready to add some new gems to my repertoire. I have lots of go-to quotes and poems as-is, and was eager for...
Are You Afraid To Fly?
“Are you afraid to fly?” the man next to me asked. I watched as the ground, the land, the red-dirt, pulled away from us, never turning my gaze away from the window, head bowed, shaking it.