The title of this Blog post is the second question in my series of six questions. The answer: You can know what healthy grief is by knowing what it is not! Healthy grief is not prolonged, chronic, nor inhibited, and does not include: severe guilt, persistent thoughts of suicide nor a preoccupation with dying, a […]

In my last Blog post I asked six questions about grief. The first question was, “What exactly is bereavement?” Bereavement is a reaction to loss and can include feelings of numbness, shock, denial, disbelief, anguish, waves of distress, sadness, loneliness, emptiness, anxiety, agitation, weakness, guilt, depression, anger and more…experienced by those having close emotional bonds […]

For several years I’ve been writing about grief and bereavement and sharing observations, stories, poems…and more! And I know a lot of you read my posts on a regular basis. So below are some questions about grief. Test yourself and see if you know the answers. (Over the next several Blog posts I’ll share the […]

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything good in the world.     ~Helen Keller Melanie Hack Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend Read an excerpt now TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Around The Corner Around the corner I have a friend, In this great city that has no end, Yet the days go by and weeks rush on, And before I know it, a year is gone. And I never see my old friends face, For life is swift and terrible race, He knows I like […]

A 2005 Gallup poll indicates that 32% of adults believe that “ghosts/spirits of dead people can come back,” 48% do not believe, and 19% are undecided. When asked if houses can be haunted, 37% said yes, 46% said no, and 16% are unsure. Interestingly, those who identify themselves as politically liberal are more likely (42%) […]

Here’s one response to my Blog post of last Saturday that asked, “What blessings have you found among the sadness during your grief journey this past year?” I have found that I am sustained by my memories of my daughter – her laughter, her funny faces, the way she sat, the way she clasped her […]

The other night I was watching CSI Miami, supposedly the world’s most popular TV show, with my family…and one of the characters, a plastic surgeon, died after being pushed into a wood chipper (pretty gross). Although watching a crime drama like that about forensic investigators collecting and analyzing evidence and solving traumatic and unusual deaths […]

On July 26th, 2007, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Dr. David Dosa…a true story about Oscar, the 2-year-old cat that was providing companionship to dying people in Providence, Rhode Island dementia ward. But more than that, Oscar has an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to […]

Marlene, thanks for passing this along: In a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, patients always died in the same bed, on Sunday morning, at about 11:00 am, regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to […]