NOVEMBER 13
It is important, when dealing with all aspects of grief, to keep
the process moving. The temptation is to freeze, to stay per-
petually recoiled against so terrible a blow.
—MARTHA WHITMORE
HICKMANIt is almost a physical sensation, especially if death has come
suddenly and unexpectedly—almost a sense of having the
wind knocked out of you. And even if death has been a long
time in coming, there is an impulse to dig in one’s feet at
the moment of death. It is our last experience of our loved
one and we want to hold on, keep the immediacy of that
memory from growing dim.
That’s all right for a while. But the danger is that we will
get stuck there. All of us have known or heard of people
who keep a room just as it was while the loved one was
alive—even to the point of slippers resting beside a favorite
chair and clothes hanging in the closet. This does not honor
the truth—either of our own lives or that of our loved one.
Wherever he or she is, it is certainly not “back there.” Bit by
bit, we need to loosen our hold on a past we cannot keep
and get on with the life we have.
As I move on into my new life, can I think of my loved one as doing
the same?