Journal entry by Al Negstad — 31 minutes ago
Joanne did a brief stint as a hospice volunteer visiting patients in hospice care. With her affinity for the telephone she was also recruited to call family members a year after their hospice patient died to see how they were doing. Among her hospice volunteer materials was a little booklet Healing Grief, Amy Hillyard Jensen.
The title struck me with it's double meaning. Is the book about the way to get over grief, i.e., healing from grief? Or is it saying that grief is an agent of healing? Perhaps she means both.
In a personal note at the beginning she recounts her losses; a young son drowned, 8 years later another son died in a car accident, a brother died of cancer, her daughter a mother of 3 young children died, then her baby sister died as did her husband and her mother. I say, Biblical Job, "Are you listening?"
Then she writes:
"How does one cope with so much loss? Not, easily, of course. You will find, however, as I did, that you have the strength to do what needs to be done, to rebuild your life. Don't try to get around grief. Instead, have the courage to go into it and through it. Let your heart break. That will bring healing."
She is correct that denial is not helpful. Grief is something to be lived as life in the land of grief. This implies that there is life while grieving but that there is a new milieu in which that life is lived. It is both a sadder and a more lonely place but, nevertheless, a place of life with it's joy's and satisfactions.
Blessings,
Al
Joanne pictured sitting outside the church in the rock, Helsinki, Finland.
The title struck me with it's double meaning. Is the book about the way to get over grief, i.e., healing from grief? Or is it saying that grief is an agent of healing? Perhaps she means both.
In a personal note at the beginning she recounts her losses; a young son drowned, 8 years later another son died in a car accident, a brother died of cancer, her daughter a mother of 3 young children died, then her baby sister died as did her husband and her mother. I say, Biblical Job, "Are you listening?"
Then she writes:
"How does one cope with so much loss? Not, easily, of course. You will find, however, as I did, that you have the strength to do what needs to be done, to rebuild your life. Don't try to get around grief. Instead, have the courage to go into it and through it. Let your heart break. That will bring healing."
She is correct that denial is not helpful. Grief is something to be lived as life in the land of grief. This implies that there is life while grieving but that there is a new milieu in which that life is lived. It is both a sadder and a more lonely place but, nevertheless, a place of life with it's joy's and satisfactions.
Blessings,
Al
Joanne pictured sitting outside the church in the rock, Helsinki, Finland.
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