5 Powerful Lessons for Coping with Grief, Loss, and the Journey Ahead

In this guest post, Carol B. shares lessons learned in the immediate aftermath of losing her mother earlier this year. Her journey led her to places in her head and heart to begin to shape her new normal. In her words, Carol is sharing these lessons with you, including a list of insightful books that went beyond platitudes to spark healing and catalyze moments of joy.

Between April 22 and May 30, my mother celebrated her 90th birthday. She was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and passed away in home hospice surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

Lesson One: Make the cake, have the party, and heed the birthday speech.

At her 90th birthday celebration, before the homemade lemon cake and raspberry sorbet, my mother gave a short speech to family about why she reached 90. Kindness was the reason. ?The kindness of family, co-workers, and even “cantankerous” youngsters in her third-grade classes decades ago who she’d meet years later as pleasant young adults in grocery stores, encouraged her to go on in the face of obstacles.

If you want to make it to 90, she said, be kind and surround yourself with people with the same tendency. After the party, my mother and I had planned to travel by car to visit her 81-year-old baby sister in Indiana, followed by a visit to her Ohio birthplace. My brothers and I noticed that my mother had a serious symptom; we asked her about canceling the road trip.

My mother reported no discomfort; she wanted to make the journey.

Lesson Two: Make the road trip, visit the family, create one more memory, have one more ice cream.

On the second evening of our road trip, I took my mother to an emergency room 45 minutes from the town where she was born exactly 90 years earlier. By 9:00 pm that night, the news was in - a mass on the tail of her pancreas and a second mass on the liver, around the portal vein. Serious and likely inoperable.

My mother’s response was stoic and witty: “No one gets out of here alive,” she told me and the ER nurse. After a somber night in a nearby hotel, we made it to her birth home the next morning. We stopped by her childhood home in Troy, Ohio, and then said farewell to her grandfather at his gravesite one last time. On the way home to Evanston, IL, we sang together, had ice cream, reminisced about our trips together over the years, and planned her funeral service and burial.

Lesson Three: Handle what’s in front of you. Remember: lighter as you go.

The next thirty days were blurry, teary, and sleepless. The main thing we did each day was to handle the one thing in front of us with my mother’s wishes and immediate needs uppermost in our minds and hearts. ?We kept Janet Abrahm’s Comprehensive Guide to Supportive and Palliative Care in Cancer Patients?on hand at all times. That guide, together with the help of home hospice aides, friends, and extended family, made it possible for our family to spend an extraordinary amount of time with my mother. ?

We laughed and cried each day, mostly because of my mother’s gentle humor and our collective state of exhaustion. With practicality and compassion, we found a way to bring lightness to each day.

Lesson Four: Lean on friends and neighbors. Freeze the soup. Take walks, Be ready to forgive, and let go.

The week before my mother died, she told me to take a vacation after she was gone so I could rest and care for myself. People brought soup, homemade snacks, and even desserts. We?accepted them all, even though none of us felt like eating. Off to the freezer, most of it went. Family and friends began recommending books on grief and loss. ?I decided on my?holiday and then ordered all the books. ?I started walking at least 30 minutes every morning. On the evening of her death, our minister encouraged us all to let go of any guilt, regret, or disagreement we might be holding.

Now was the time to forgive and let go.

Lesson Five: Jot in a?journal, take time to rest, read books that help you heal. Repeat.

I found a journal and wrote notes about my mother’s parting words. I found a watercolor paint kit and restarted an old habit of painting a simple scene from the day to accompany my journal notes. Time in nature each morning motivated me to select and contemplate the scene I’d paint later that day.?I took the vacation and will forever remember it as a loving and wise gift from my mother.?

The following books were a tremendous help, mostly because they offered very different ways of thinking about grief and loss:

• Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Poems to Better Weather the Many Waves of Grief by Donna Ashworth
• Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others by Kimberly Brown
• A Short Course in Happiness After Loss by Maria Sirois
• Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path to Grief by Joanne Cacciatore
• The Cure for Grief: A Novel by Nellie Hermann

While each path of grief and loss is different, my wish is that these five lessons learned will lighten your days and free you from being overtired, overwrought, and overwhelmed all at once.