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Archives — Grief Posts

I have written much about grief for this blog over the past ten years. Here are my grief posts from oldest to newest, so you can follow my grief journey in sequence without having to search for the posts. Although the first year’s blog posts were published in Grief: The Great Yearning, most of the writing in that book was never published online. Those journal entries and letters to my deceased life mate/soul mate were never intended for publication. In fact, I’d never intended to make my grief public at all except for the brief hints in earliest posts, but when I learned how important it was to talk about grief, I gradually opened up on this blog. If you’d like to read my most private thoughts during those first agonizing months, you can find them in my book Grief: The Great Yearning.

Also available is Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. Written from my perspective as a nine-year grief survivor, Grief: The Inside Story tells the truth about grief without platitudes, and offers hope for the future.

FIRST YEAR:

SECOND YEAR:

THIRD YEAR

FOURTH YEAR:

FIFTH YEAR:

SIXTH YEAR:

SEVENTH YEAR:

EIGHTH YEAR:

NINTH YEAR:

TENTH YEAR:

ELEVENTH YEAR

TWELFTH YEAR

6 Comments »

Thuan Vuong Says:
January 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm

It is 2014 and a time for resolutions and goals, as you have noted in some of your other posts. A time for putting forth a new slate. There is one thing I have always said I would do (for the last three years), and haven’t done. So I am doing it now. Here goes:

I just want to say a big THANK YOU for all your posts on grief. They have been my life-saver. It is as if I saw my journal being written right in front of my eyes by someone else. Every word echoed what I thought. Every feeling you felt was what I felt. It was as if you were here, probing my soul and my brain, and then, as my scribe, wrote it down.

My wife (my soulmate, as you say– which is true of my partner) died in January 2010. In the flailings of my anguish, I looked around the internet for some words to make sense of it all. Then in early April 2010, I came upon the first of your blogs on grief (which you had started in March), and have been following them, albeit in the shadows, ever since.

There was not a word that wasn’t true to my experience. Every opinion, every attitude, every shout of anger, every cry of sadness, every sense of loss, every desire to hang on, every word of grief described me at that moment. Even now your words continue to speak to (and about) me (e.g. I joined an online dating site about a month before you did, and even there, your opinions were what I thought — how hilarious!)

Your words were what brought me this far. In the beginning, I felt alone when all my relationships disappeared, as my friends understandably didn’t know what to do with my grief. But there was one voice out there in the universe that somehow knew my very thoughts. Your words made me feel– not alone. And for those blogs, I want to give you my heartfelt thanks. Truly.

Pat Bertram Says:
January 5, 2014 at 7:36 pm
You made me cry for both of us and the anguish we have endured. I’m glad my words helped you, as your words now help me, making me realize all that pain wasn’t in vain. And oh, how interesting that we joined an online dating site within an month of each other! People say grief is individual, but I have found that in many cases, it follows a pattern, and connects people. Thank you for writing. Best of luck as we both journey into our futures.