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Posts tagged with “death”

My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

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“It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” ~Pema Chodron

Many people like to think of grief as an emotional experience. It’s something that dominates your internal, emotional space, and that’s it.

But it doesn’t take long when you’re in the thick of grief to experience grief that isn’t emotional at all.

You feel heavy. Like there’s a giant weight on your shoulders.

You feel like your legs are weak and shaking from …

How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

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“In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change lies our happiness and freedom.” ~Buddha

The universe was conspiring against me, I was sure of it. By the time I was thirty-six, I had lost everything in life that I had set out to accomplish—my marriage, my pregnancies, my two dogs, and eventually my house. The perfect family model I was so desperate to create was completely lost.

Living alone and in fear of the future, I worried about what may or may not come, because everything I had tried …

When Someone You Love Is Grieving: How to Really Help

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“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ~Henri Nouwen

It’s hard to stand at the edge of someone else’s grief.

There’s the awkwardness. You always feel a little like an uninvited guest who arrived late and missed the first half of the conversation—a conversation that turns out to be a wrestle between another person …

Why My Grandfather Was Happy Even When He Was Dying

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“It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.” ~Tony Robbins

Is there anyone in your past that inspired you to become the person you are today? For me, that was my grandfather, Charlie.

Charlie grew up a poor farm boy in a small South Carolina town and ended up an executive in a Fortune 250 company. He was a poster child for the American dream, and I respected him for it.

But what I admired most was his character. Charlie was always content with life, regardless of his circumstances. …

Love Them Today, Before Their Tomorrow’s Taken Away

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“Before someone’s tomorrow has been taken away, cherish those you love, appreciate them today.” ~Michelle C. Ustaszeski

Last year, my grandfather passed away.

He had gone to the hospital many times before. Sometimes he went for a minor sickness, sometimes for a severe condition. Unfortunately, the last time he went, we found out that he didn’t have much time left. He was diagnosed with last stage bladder cancer.

It was a shock to our family. My grandfather had always been a survivor. He’d survived the war, the darkest moment of the country. We couldn’t imagine he would lose his life …

What Expecting to Die Young Taught Me About Living a Happy Life

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“I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way. The challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul’s growth.” ~ Marianne Williamson

At the age of nine, I was sitting in a doctor’s office at Baylor University with both of my parents when we were all told I wouldn’t live to see twenty-three. The doctor casually told us my dad would probably never get to walk me down the aisle and I’d likely never make my mom a grandmother, but there was great …

Why Remembering You’re Going to Die Is the Best Motivator

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“Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babitt

Once a month, I visit the local cemetery and walk around. I’m not there to visit anyone in particular. I’m there to remind myself of my own mortality.

And it always wakes me up.

I soak in the energy: I read the simple legacies on the tombstones, from young children to those who made it to 100 years old. I’m not morose. I’m not negative. I’ve simply found the greatest motivational tool in the world, and …

3 Things the Dying Taught Me About Living Well

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“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

I am a hospice chaplain.

I provide spiritual care to the dying and their families.

I do this by being present with them. I listen to their fears, worries, joys, concerns, and regrets. I listen carefully to what is said, and attend thoughtfully to what is not said.

When people find out what I do for a living, the reaction is almost universal: “Wow, that must be hard. I could never do it.”

I totally get it. In fact, years before doing …

How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

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“Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” ~Thomas Horn

We had just landed in Chicago. I had spent the last three hours on a flight from New Jersey sitting next to grown-ups who didn’t ask me fifty questions every two minutes, while my kids watched a movie with their dad, two rows behind.

I was looking forward to spending one whole week in Chicago, despite the freezing temps. This was my first real break in eight months, and boy, I had plans! Sleeping in, long baths, reading, and no laptop!

I …

8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

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“Pain changes your life forever. But so does healing from it.” ~Kayil York

In 2012 my mum got diagnosed with cancer. After an operation, she was cancer-free for some time when in March 2017 it was discovered that the cancer had returned and had spread everywhere, notably to her lungs.

She was adamant that she did not want further treatment, which would have been palliative at best anyway and would have had significant side effects. Nobody was able to make a prognosis regarding how much longer she had left. Being seventy, there was a chance that it would develop slowly.…

The Little Things in Life Are the Ones That Matter Most

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“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” ~Muhammad Ali

I followed a little boy in Walmart today. He didn’t look like my son and yet I trailed him and his mother all over the store. I curled my fingers around the shopping cart so I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him.

He didn’t walk with Brendan’s bounce or jerk his head back, trying to slide his glasses back onto his nose. He didn’t have his sarcastic smile or those tiny freckles scattered across his cheeks.

But he …

How I’ve Learned to Fully Appreciate the Little Time I Have on Earth

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

Recently, my grandfather passed away. His departure was difficult for me but it has also left me with something I’ll keep for the rest of my life—an unlikely lesson about life and gratitude.

I hadn’t seen my grandfather often before he died because I’ve been living abroad for the last couple of years. But I was still fond of him and I warmly remembered the days we had spent together when I was young. So his passing was a …

3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss

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“Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness; but it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.” ~Unknown

Life has not been kind lately.

My aunt passed away in October. She had been suffering from cancer, but her family kept the extent of her illness to themselves, and hence I did not have a chance to see her before she passed away. I felt bad about that.

My father followed her a month later, just after Thanksgiving. He had been ailing from Parkinson’s Disease, but his death as well …

No Matter What Life Takes Away, You Still Have Everything You Need

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“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

On February 21, 2009, I received a phone call that would alter the course of my life. It was my sister, and I could barely make out what she was saying. My mom was in the hospital and had received a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer.

My body absorbed the news before my brain did. Since I had lost my ability to reason, from someplace beyond me I found a way to keep functioning. I asked my sister to put my mom on the phone.

What could I …

Life Is Fragile: Make Time for What Matters and Let Go of What Doesn’t

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“Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I lost one of my very best friends when we were both just twenty-nine years old. In the time since, I’ve thought about him on most days.

Thinking about him sometimes makes me well up and feel sad. Sometimes it makes me think about the hole him not being here has left. Selfishly, perhaps, I think about how much I miss him.

Sometimes I laugh aloud at the thought of …

4 Things a Wise Man Taught Me About Making the Most of This Short Life

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“The goal is to die with memories, not dreams.” ~Unknown

As we stood holding hands under that great oak tree, I had never felt more surrounded by love. It was simultaneously the most wonderful and haziest moment of my whole life as we said, “I do.”

It had really happened. I had married my best friend.

We made the decision to bring our wedding forward a year after my husband’s dad, Ian, had been diagnosed with cancer. In nine months we had planned and executed our perfect wedding day. And he was there.

We drank and sang and danced the …

The Betrayal of Expectations: Coping When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

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“What will mess you up most in life is the picture in your head of how it is supposed to be.” ~Unknown

I expected to get into college. I expected to have a career after a lot of hard work, and that one day I’d meet a nice man and we would get married. We would buy our first house together and start a family, picking out a crib and the baby’s “going home” outfit and organizing a drawer full of diapers. We’d have more babies and go on vacations and grow old together.

I expected that one day I’d …

What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving

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“Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza

My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.

Her struggle and her suffering in the last …

How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

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This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan.

It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our lives—she was pregnant with our first child.

On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetrician’s office. Nancy, not due to deliver for three months, had been awakened the night before by a strange physical sensation.

She had wanted to get checked out, just to be safe. But after the examination …

How a 10-Day Silent Retreat Helped Heal My Grieving Heart

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“In a retreat situation, you are forced to come face to face with yourself, to see yourself in depth, to meet yourself.” ~Lama Zopa Rinpoche

When I was at university, doing a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat was considered a hardcore rite of passage only the toughest among us attempted. Those who lasted the distance referred to it as a “mind-blowing” and “life-changing” experience.

“Think of how you feel after an orgasm,” a friend said when I considered finally doing a Vipassana meditation retreat to reconnect with myself after a decade in full time employment. “Imagine feeling for two months …