I think about January each year. It was the month when it all started. The silence……….the last time we spoke. 2 months out of your life I will never know what happened or what you were feeling. Not until after you were gone did I learn of choices that were given to you that I know broke you. I can never go back to fix that day. My grandfather wrote this in my Dads graduation from college. Your brother read this at your funeral. I think sudden death will always present us though to live a “what if” tomorrow. I loved you yesterday, today and all of the rest of my tomorrows. That will always remain. Love Mom

A love letter from those who have passed on…

Take the love you have for me and radiate it outwards, allowing it to touch and impact others.

Take the memory you have of me and use it as a source of inspiration to live fully, meaningfully, and intentionally.

Take the image you have of me in your mind and allow it to fuel you to take action.

Seize the day and be reminded of what is most important in life.

Take the care you have for me and let it remind you to care for yourself fully and shower yourself with your own love.

And take the pain and grief you feel following my loss and alchemize it into love, compassion, and beauty.

Build a castle from the wreckage of my passing and allow it to unlock your greatness and potential and empower you to become more than you ever thought you were capable of being.

Know that I can never truly leave you and will always remain beside you, watching over you in spirit.

Know that the love I have for you lives on
through the connections you form, the kindness and compassion you share, and the future relationships and friendships you cultivate.

Until we are one day reunited, I will remain with you through the storms and chaos of life.

I am always beside you, walking with you, laughing with you, crying with you, and smiling with you.

I am proud of you for being strong.

I am proud of you for being brave.

And I am proud of you for being you.

Wonderfully written by Tahlia Hunter

Artwork by Márfy Art, Gabriella Márfy

Thinking about my son how he loved Christmas. Nothing will ever be the same

Written by Donna Ashworth

— HOLIDAY GRIEF —
The festive season,
‘the most wonderful time of the year’,
but if you are missing a face at your table,
it can be the hardest time of all.

How to feel merry, how to feel bright,
when your world has lost its light?
How to carry on, continue the traditions,
when the person who made it all worthwhile is not there?

How to face the music, the dancing,
the cheering and the reflection of a year gone by,
when the pain is already suffocating on an ordinary day?

You just try.

It is all you can do my friend.

You try, very hard, to imagine,
what that person would tell you,
and if you listen really closely
you will hear it in their voice.

What would they want you to do?
Retreat?
Isolate?
Or take their favourite songs
and their funny stories
and their little festive habits
and share it with your loves?

In their honour.

Now that they cannot.

I think we can all agree,
it is what they would wish for you.
I think we can also agree,
that they would want you to feel as loved,
as you once did when they were here.

They would want you to feel their love still.

They are trying very hard to make you feel it.

It hasn’t gone away.

And you need that love now more than ever,
and everyone around you needs it too.

So, feel their love, say their name,
bring them back to your festive table,
even if it takes all of your courage and heart.

It is the only way.

—

Written by John Roedel…thank you for your writings

I have decided to quit believing in death

~ it just doesn’t exist
for me anymore

instead,

I have a new theory
I’m working on:

when our dear ones
depart their bodies and
turn back into air and light

they don’t disappear
behind a brick wall
that separates us

~there are no bricks
there is no wall
~there are no barriers

there is only a grand
window between us
and those whom we
have stitched ourselves
to with the most divine
of angel hair threads

we can see our beloveds in
the heart shape clouds
and they can see us
as we kiss their picture
goodnight ever so softly

death doesn’t exist
it’s a debunked
flat-earth theology

where we are told that
the people we love spill off the
edge of the world and
fall away from us into
the endless unknown

that’s not my experience

what I have seen is that when
a dear one leaves me I don’t
feel the space grow between us

I feel us grow closer together
~ our entanglement becomes tighter

they travel with me to the
store to buy garlic

they brush my hair out of my eyes while
I cry in my car in an empty parking lot

they join me on my daily
walk around a lake

they sit on the board of my conscious
and offer me advice

they float above me while
I write a poem

they laugh when I trip over the same
chair damn every day

they catch my prayers and
courier them to God

they write love notes to me with steam
on my bathroom mirror

they play the right songs on the radio
at just the right time

they have made a cottage
in my heart
they have turned my eyes
into miracle telescopes

they converted my lungs
into a retreat center

they dance in the eyes
of my children

my loved ones haven’t gone anywhere
and neither have yours

they are just on the other side of the window

waiting for you to see them
waving at you
in their sundresses made out of stars
and their tuxedos stitched by time

and someday I will be on the
other side of the glass

acting so obnoxious that you
won’t be able to ignore me

and someday I will be writing
you love notes on the petals
of sunflowers for you to find
just when you need to read them

and someday I will help paint a
sunset in the exact color of the
way I felt whenever I was wrapped
up tightly in your arms

I’m not scientist but
my research tells me that
death doesn’t exist

however, love does
and it has no end

and neither do we ~ john roedel

Living with a Broken Heart
Remember what the Tin Man said in the “Wizard of Oz” after he finally got a heart….
“Now I know I’ve got a heart because it’s breaking.”
If someone you love died, your heart is probably broken. So how do you live with a broken heart? The answer isn’t how you fix it or move beyond it. The skill is learning to live with your grief as an ongoing way of being in the world. It’s the way you honor that which you love.
What I’m proposing is that, with enough healing, living with heartbreak can become natural, and very normal.
From my personal and professional experience, I can tell you that as you embark on your healing journey, you’ll start crying a whole lot more. Not just to clear pain, but for the simplest of everyday reasons, and out of nowhere. You’ll cry when you see a bird, a can of paint, an apple, or even the shape of a cloud.
Random things will make you cry.
The heart is designed to grieve, it wants to grieve…..it has to grieve!
Especially when it’s broken.
This is the price you pay for love. The loss of the life you thought you had, the life you once knew and held so dear. Loss of a dream you believed was true.
But you can also find and feel grief in opening your heart. Opening it to love and to new possibilities. Opening it to what the future holds.
Isn’t that what life is all about? Endings and beginnings, closings and openings? The heart was designed to navigate you through this forever winding adventure called life. But you have to be willing to feel…..and to live with a broken heart.
Here’s the thing…..you can learn to live with your broken heart by befriending your grief.
You can discover the love that still exists around you…..and share that love with others who are also living with a broken heart.

Written by Gary Sturgis – “Surviving Grief”

written by a great writer John Roedel

death is the wildfire
that rips through
the forest of our life

 it scorches the ground 

it chars the rocks
it engulfs the trees

death is the fire
that comes to consume
everything

~ but it can’t

because after the fire is gone
there is always a miracle waiting
under the ashes of what our lives
used to look like

~ and the miracle is called grief

grief is the slow motion
recovery
that follows the insatiable
fire of death

to grieve the
loss of our beloved

means that death
didn’t burn everything

our adoration and memories
of our beloved remain fully
intact underneath the soot
after death rages through

you see,
my love,

death may knock
down every tree
in our forest

but since

grief is the aching itch
of recovery that
we can feel stirring
beneath the scalded ground

it means that death
doesn’t get the last word

~ love does

love is the sapling
that come after the
devastating fire

love is the grass pushing
up through the once barren
fire-licked woodland floor

love is relentless
and there is no element
in existence that can
ever destroy it

love is always working
it’s way back to us
no matter how hot
the wildfire blazed

grief is proof
that we didn’t
let death win

death wants us
to feel numb

~ to feel utter despair

but when we allow
ourselves to grieve

we keep the ashes
from hardening

grief is the fluttering
inside of us that
reminds the world
that although our
world has burned
down to the roots

that there is still
life within us

and if we can hold
on long enough

life will eventually start pouring
out of all of our smoldering wounds

ecologists say that sometimes
when forests burn down
they can explode into thousands
of wildflowers

they call it a “superbloom”

~ that’s what grief is

death may burn our world
but grief allows it to grow back

maybe it will never
look like it used to

~ and maybe that is totally okay

because maybe
just maybe

~ grief is meant to change us

grief is the superbloom
that comes after the inferno

                             ****

I hope heaven has a Sands Point where you can look at nature and fill your heart with love and childhood dreams

And here it approaches again. The month your daughter was born and the month God gave me my best friend and son

Written By John Donahue

Photo by Shawna Burbeck artist

What we had was a bond that can never be broken. I miss our talks and our calls. I never understood how you suddenly became broken. We walk through life and manage our insecurities. If a person comes along and breaks us, we lose our inability to hold on. I know because she tried to break me into a million pieces. They pray on the weak and fragile. Taking what you love the most and holding it from you. You will never break me. Love will always win over evil.