The Healing Journey

July 23, 2024

“Grieving is as natural as breathing, for if we have lived and loved, surely we will grieve…”
— Nancy Howard Cobb

The following is an excerpt from the book “In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living” by Nancy Howard Cobb, who shares her personal experiences of death, particularly that of her mother from Alzheimer’s.

“When circumstances permit, speaking from the heart, listening and remembering, acknowledging and forgiving, will provide more long-lasting comfort than a roomful of roses. After experiencing the death of someone you love, you join a rank-and-file whose number multiplies hourly. Soon you learn, as others have before you, that perspective shifts erratically. Weeks pass slowly. You wonder why the world goes on as if nothing has happened. You wonder if that bone-deep physical ache in the center of your chest will ever go away, or if you’ll ever finish a paragraph, laugh with abandon, or look at family photographs without falling apart.

“If your loved one died suddenly, you will search your memory obsessively, going over and over the last exchange of words and the predominant feelings between you that day. If you had plenty of time to say goodbye, you’ll still wonder if you got it right. Regret is grief’s handmaiden. Learning to focus on the life, rather than the death, of a person you have loved and lost requires an enormous emotional effort. You distract easily. You teeter constantly. … The grief ambush can happen anywhere—the supermarket, the street corner, opening the mail, listening to the radio, watching one plump drum majorette in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The bagpipes, of course, are a real killer.

“A year goes by. Some people say the second is worse. Reality sinks in. Few people ask how you’re doing. Grief fills the interstices. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries; when the dog dies, when a divorce occurs, when a child leaves for college, when death dominates the headlines—a plane crash, a terrorist, a tornado. Loss has no boundaries. Grief is ongoing for all of us. How we each deal with it, though, is another matter entirely.”

©Nancy Howard Cobb

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