Running for Dad (and Mom)

This morning I ran a virtual 5K for the Esophageal Cancer Action Network (ECAN) in honor of my dad, who died from esophageal cancer on October 13, 2018.

My dad used to come to all of my races — there was a period when I did a race a month, ranging from 5Ks to half marathons, for 21 straight months — and cheer me on at the finish line. I haven’t done a lot of running in the past few years. Several events converged in a short span of time: my daughter’s birth, my dad’s death, the advancement of new limitations on my postpartum body, learning to raise a child while grieving a parent, and now navigating a pandemic. Everything tumbled into each other. I rarely found the time, much less the motivation, to run.

Today I had plenty of motivation as I thought of my dad during my run. It was on this day, October 21st, that my parents met at a recreational volleyball game on the CU Boulder campus 49 years ago. I know this date because my dad quoted it to me often. It was the day, he said, his whole world changed. He loved my mom the first time he saw her and he never stopped.

I guess this is the day that changed my whole world, too. I thought about my parents, those two college kids, as I ran through my tree-lined Portland neighborhood 1,233 miles from Boulder. I thought about my childhood and all that came before my childhood, before my sister’s childhood, when my parents were just Martin and Carolyn.

I’ve thought a lot, in the two years since my dad died, about endings. Closed chapters, shut doors.

But today I thought about beginnings. And what a lovely beginning it was.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Mike Daems, Unknown.

The Penultimate Goodbye

Tomorrow, October 13th, marks the two-year anniversary of my dad’s death. October 13th is the day I said my final goodbye to him. It is the day he slipped from this world and left an insatiable hole in his wake. But it’s not the day I started saying goodbye.

Two years ago today, October 12th, is the last time I saw my dad awake. The last time he spoke to me. The last time he squeezed my hand. The last time he waved to me with his index finger. October 12th is the last night I ever went to bed knowing my dad was still alive.

October 12th ended the life I’ve always known and October 13th started a new one. Both days mangled me, but each in their own ways. I’m still learning how to live in the world without my dad, how to be a person without my dad. I’ve lived 13,357 days on this planet with him and 729 without him. I’m still a baby in terms of figuring any of this out.

I can’t fit my dad in’t a summary the size of an Instagram caption. I can’t tell you how much his life meant to my own, or how much losing him destroyed me. There aren’t enough words. I can only say that I miss him every day, that his death changed everything for me, and that I’m still learning how to operate without him.

What TO DO and What NOT TO DO for a Grieving Friend

Today I’m sharing a few tips from my personal experience about what was and was not helpful to hear after my dad died. Expecially in the first year of my grief, I experienced A LOT of the “do not do this” conversations and very few of the “please do this instead.” It makes me realize that in general, people just don’t know what to say or do when a friend is grieving. There’s no one right or perfect thing to say, but I would have loved to hear less of the first and more of the second.

What NOT to do for a grieving friend:

Bring up your own losses. Now is not the time to talk about your grandparents, pets, aunt, or friend who died. It’s not that these losses weren’t meaningful or sad for you. It’s that none of them have anything to do with this particular loss for this particular person. 

I noticed that after my dad died, a lot of people who were around my dad’s age tried to relate to me by talking about losing their own parents. Often, they themselves had lost a parent recently. This unsettled me. It is ALWAYS hard to lose a parent, but there is absolutely a difference in the experiences of losing a parent in your sixties versus losing a parent in your thirties. (Mainly, you got THIRTY MORE YEARS with your person.) By that same token, me losing a parent in my thirties is different than what my friends who lost parents in their twenties, teens or childhood experienced. Attempting to compare two experiences is not helpful to anyone.

Likewise, friends who haven’t lost parents sometimes tried to relate to me by talking about their grandparents or pets or other relatives and I did not find this helpful either. Again, it’s not that these losses were not sad and meaningful. They just didn’t need to be brought up in the context of my own parental loss. Knowing that you lost your grandparents (or even knowing that I lost my own grandparents) does not help me process the loss of my dad. 

What TO DO for a grieving friend:

Share a story about their person. There is nothing more valuable to me than hearing the rest of any sentence that starts with “I remember when your dad …” This helps to show that you respect the fact that I lost THIS PARTICULAR PERSON. Yes, we all lose people throughout our lifetimes. Yes, we all grieve. But right now, while your friend is mourning THIS person, they don’t need to hear about your history of loss or your perspective on grief. They need to talk about their person. Their heart is broken because THIS person is gone. Talking to your friend about their person takes nothing away from your own experience of losing your aunt Sally or your parakeet BoBo. Those losses are still valid. Those losses are also not relevant to the current moment. Bringing them up invites comparison.  No good comes from grief comparison because guess what? The worst loss is always the one YOU experience. 

If you didn’t know their person, ask. Try saying, “What was your dad like?” “What’s something about you that you got from your mom?” “What’s a favorite memory from childhood?”

INSTEAD OF: “I know just how you feel, when my aunt Sally died …” 

TRY: “I’ll never forget the time your dad …”

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credit: Kristen Forbes

Normalize Not Talking About Other People

I am a former gossip junkie who previously spent too much time whispering about other people’s issues over too many glasses of wine.

A lot changed for me during my dad’s illness, including the way I share and take in stories. When my dad was sick, I learned how easy it was to identify which inquiries about him came from a place of genuine compassion and which were digging for a story to share later. I also started paying more attention to the stories that were being told to me. I started listening to second-hand accounts of someone else’s hospital stay or fight with a spouse with new ears. And I started to ask myself this question: If the person being spoken about is not the person sharing the information with me, how is this any of my damn business?

Anyone who’s been through/ is in the lifetime process of going through a big grief can tell you how much things change. You don’t just lose a person. The way you carry yourself in the world changes. The way you identify yourself changes. The way you socialize with other people changes.

I became very careful when my dad was sick. I made sure not to reveal certain details to certain people and I felt very protective of my dad’s story. Something I repeated to myself often during his sickness was this Brene Brown quote:

“Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves this before we share: ‘Who has earned the right to hear my story?’” 

—Brene Brown

I kept a mental list of people who had not earned a right to this story. This included those who told me about other people’s health issues in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Those who revealed way too much about other people’s private moments of pain. I learned too much about not just people that I knew, but strangers as well: friends of friends, so-and-so’s cousin’s girlfriend, the relative of a family member unrelated to me. Which just kept bringing me back to that same question: How is this any of my damn business?

I have never once shared a piece of private information about myself with the hopes that some day, that same information would be whispered about at a dinner party attended by one person I know and a whole bunch of people I don’t. But that’s exactly what happens.

Did you guys hear about Doug’s brother? He has not been well for some time. I heard that when he went to the doctor …

Oh, what illness are we talking about? Yes, I know someone who had that. This is what happened to them …

Infertility, you say. Boy, do I have a story about that! My nephew’s babysitter’s sister-in-law …

I used to think gossip was fun, but now I think it’s gross. What’s a story to someone is a life to someone else. I have no interest, and I mean none, in hearing about your uncle’s hospital stay, your cousin’s weight loss, your friend’s gambling addiction, or your colleague’s divorce. I have no interest in hearing what you know about our mutual friend’s mental health.

It is none of my damn business.

What is my business is when someone reaches out to me personally to share a part of their story. And when that happens, I feel like it’s my responsibility to do everything I can to a.) listen, b.) make myself available as a source of support, and then c.) tuck the story away, knowing it’s not mine to share.

Normalize not talking about other people’s shit. If you need a story to share, tell one from your own life.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credit: Kristen Forbes

My Least Favorite Grief Phrases

I operate under the belief that no matter how clumsy, misguided, unsolicited or unhelpful grief support appears, any grief support is better than no grief support — that is, I’d rather have someone say the wrong thing than say nothing at all. A gross platitude or inconsiderate piece of advice is, to me, better than silence. That said, there are certain grief phrases that really get under my skin. These are a few of my least favorite.

1.) May you be comforted knowing he’s at peace.

I find no comfort in this phrase whatsoever. Firstly, it is a religious phrase and I’m not a religious person. Secondly, even the most devoutly religious person in the world may not find comfort from this phrase because their person just died and there is no comfort in that. (Side note: Being neither religious nor atheist is a tricky place to be after someone dies. People on both ends of the spectrum love to share their beliefs with you in the guise of “comfort” regardless of how you yourself may believe, hope, fear, wish, or think about the afterlife.) Society as a whole often tells us that we’re allowed to be sad for a little bit of time after someone dies — but not too much. It feels like the people who give platitudes like this are saying: Actually, it would be great if you wouldn’t spend any time being sad at all and if instead you’d shift immediately into finding all the things about your person’s death that are beautiful and shiny and wonderful, regardless of how this may or may not fit with your personal belief system. To me this one always feels like it’s in the vane of “He’s in a better place now” or “At least he’s no longer suffering,” which thank goodness I never received personally but I know far too many people in grief do.

2.) He would want you to be happy.

Oof. It’s amazing how many people suddenly become experts in knowing exactly what your dead person would want for you. I spent 36 years in a very close father-daughter relationship with him, but somehow it’s the people who saw him once a year that know exactly what he would say to me. Would my dad want me to be happy? Yes, of course. (Please file under: Duh. Also: Unhelpful.) Would he want me to be immediately happy after his death if it meant suppressing all my feelings of sadness and anger and loneliness and rage? Absolutely not. “They would want you to be happy” always feels so trite to me. My dad would want me to feel however I need to feel to get through the unbearable pain of losing him. And even if he didn’t, I would want to feel that way. I would not want to force happiness on myself, and I would also want to allow myself to feel happy when that is how I feel — In my own way and on my own schedule, not because I’m being asked to. I like to take a page from my three-year-old on this one, who absolutely refuses to perform — and why should she? — when people try to request that of her. No, she does not want to sing you a song on the spot. No, I do not want to force myself to spontaneously be happy for your comfort. And because I’m the one going through the grief, I’m the one who gets to actually choose. 

3.) Sorry for your loss.

This one bugs because it feels too generic and it feels too small. Like, I feel like someone should say “Sorry for your loss” to me after I lose a literal object, like a phone or a sweatshirt. Losing someone to death is so much bigger than just “loss.” Also, SAY THE PERSON’S NAME. If you don’t know the person’s name, say their relationship to that person. The one sympathy card I received that said “Sorry for your loss” sat with me so wrong. The ones that said “I’m sorry your dad died” or “I’m sorry to hear about Martin” sat with me much better. (I think I may be in the minority in choosing this particular one as a pet peeve, but that’s okay because grief in an individualized experience for everyone.)

4.) Be grateful for the memories you shared.

Aghhhhh! People, I really hate this one. It’s another one that’s telling you how to feel. It’s another one that’s telling you to be positive in the face of one of the most negative things that’s ever happened to you. It’s so prescriptive in how you should be handling your grief — why be sad that your favorite person on earth just died when you could feel grateful for all the years you did share together? This one always feel like it has an element of putting me in check somehow — like how would the people whose dad died in childhood or their teens or twenties feel if they had all the years that you did with your dad — why can’t you just be grateful for what you did get? (It’s another one of those Well, Duh ones where it’s like: Okay yes, people who lost their dad earlier than mine had it even worse AND I still lost my dad too soon AND I still feel bad about it.) I also feel like it’s a really simplistic view of both grief and gratitude to suggest that one can’t exist without the other. Actually, I can be extremely sad that my dad is gone AND grateful for all the time we had together. Being grateful doesn’t make me any less sad, angry, lonely, or lost — so stop telling me that it’s the solution to all my problems. 

5.) You should …

Any sentence that starts with these words in the context of grief support is not going to end well. Unless I hired you to be my licensed grief therapist or I directly asked you for your guidance, I don’t want to hear what you think I “should” do in grief. Bottom line: I should do what I need to do for me and YOU should figure out a way to say what you want to say without being so prescriptive or instructive. Oddly enough, most grieving people are not looking for a lecture on top of everything else. 

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photos Credits, All: Kristen Forbes

Isn't She Lucky?

lately I’ve noticed a juxtaposition between the people who are struggling and those who are sailing through this pandemic. On one hand it seems like my social media timelines are filled with death announcements: another person posting about another loved one who just died. Or they’re watching someone who is sick. Or they themselves are sick. Or they’re out of work. Or they’re home with a house full of children while trying to keep working. Or they’re home alone, maybe widowed, and painfully lonely. There is so much going on right now for so many people.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are not directly impacted by this virus in a way that makes their lives significantly worse (I’m one of these people). Maybe they were easily able to transition from commuting to working from home. Maybe they have access to online educational tools that make helping their kids learn from home relatively easy. Maybe they have a house full of groceries and everyone is healthy and their biggest concern is that this whole situation is really quite boring. 

I think that what makes me so uncomfortable is noticing people from this latter group either offer cringey platitudes or silver linings, or offer nothing at all beyond oblivion. There, nestled amongst the fat-phobic oh-my-God-I’m-eating-so-much-in-quarantine memes, the jokes about hoarding toilet paper, and the pictures of another lockdown Happy Hour, are the messages that concern me the most: the ones where people say that in the scheme of things, all of this isn’t really that bad. That, in fact, there is so much good coming out of all this (And of course there are good things – less pollution, virtual communities rallying around each other, and generous sprinklings of human decency are all good things!) that what we should really do, at this moment, is look around and be grateful. Look around and notice all the beauty.   

Everyone has a hill they’re willing to die on and what I’ve discovered over the past few years is that my hill is this: STOP TELLING GRIEVERS TO BE GRATEFUL. Stop telling people in the midst of watching a loved one die to take some deep breaths and notice the sunset. Stop telling them that even when things are bad, there is so much good. Stop telling someone who just lost her job that things will get better soon when there is no evidence to support this assertion. Stop telling someone in the thick of a shit storm that at least he’s not [whatever situation you deem worse than the one he’s actually in].

Part Two of my hill: GRIEF AND GRATITUDE DO NOT CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT. A person can be grateful AND grieving. Gratitude is not the antidote to grief. We do not need to remind grieving people to be grateful. A grieving person already IS grateful for their person and all they shared together – that’s why it hurts so much to grieve them. A grieving person may be grateful for many other things too, including those lovely sunsets and the kindness of others. This does not take away their grief.

After my dad’s death, the word “lucky” was suggested to me more times than I can count. People really, really, really wanted me to know that I was lucky I shared time on this earth with my dad for 36 years. I was lucky he attended all my graduations; I was lucky he danced the father-daughter dance with me at my wedding. I was lucky he was around when my daughter was born. I was lucky he spent almost two years with her. After my dad died, I was one lucky person.

And I was! I am! I’m lucky that I had two parents for 3.5 decades. I’m lucky that I witnessed my parents’ happy and functional forty-five-year marriage. I’m lucky that my sister and I were adults when he died. I’m lucky for all the years of phone calls, vacations, texts, cards, holidays, meals, hugs, laughs, celebrations and hard times we shared together. 

I’m lucky I’ve always lived a privileged life, the type of life that can come easily to someone who is white, middle-class, heterosexual and cisgender.

I’m lucky (and extremely privileged) that with the help of scholarships and grants, I was able to attend two private liberal arts colleges, spend a semester studying abroad in London, and go on to get my master’s degree. I’m lucky for all the years I’ve worked as a freelance writer as well as all the time I’ve spent at home with my daughter while my husband works full-time. 

I’m lucky I spent even one day with my dad. I’m lucky he didn’t die when I was a child, teenager, or in my twenties. I’m lucky I had the kind of dad who was always there for me, who always sensed when something was wrong, who gave me bear hugs and made me laugh and was always the one I wanted to go cry to after a breakup or other mishap. I’m lucky I had a devoted dad who was invested in everything I did. I’m lucky for all his home-cooked meals and all his gentle advice. I’m lucky for all I inherited from him: my love of writing as well as my love of ramekins. I’m lucky for the joy he exuded and the compassion he taught. I’m lucky for every moment I spent with him.

And yet. And yet. And yet. Why are we so adamant about telling grievers how lucky they are? I don’t know what the true intention is in each particular scenario, but it’s one of those things that always, for me, feels like grief suppression. As in: Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Look around and be grateful. But gratitude and grief do not cancel each other out. And telling a griever to focus on their gratitude or their luck feels an awful lot like telling them not to grieve.

Is there any way to all get on the same page and agree that when someone you love dies, this is a real and true worst-case scenario? Is there any way that, when this happens to someone we love, we could just let them be sad and angry and heartbroken about it? Without telling them how lucky they are? Without telling them how grateful they should be? Without telling them everything will be okay or get better? Without looking for every possible positive thing and just letting the experience be as difficult and painful as it really is? 

Maybe this is an ungrateful response, but for me: Nothing feels more minimizing than being told, right after losing my favorite person on this earth, how lucky I am. I know I am lucky and also: That’s not the point right now. Right now my person is dead and there’s nothing lucky about that. 

I’m glad that spending all this time at home is not a hardship for everyone. It’s not a hardship for me, and for that I am — wait for it — grateful. But the idea that EVERYONE should be grateful right now? That my friend who watched his dad’s funeral via Zoom or my friend who lost her job of 25 years or my friend who is now both a virtual teacher to a classroom of students AND a homeschool teacher to three kids of her own should feel grateful? I don’t think so.

I remember those days and weeks after my dad died when it hurt to log onto social media, when it hurt to see people not just living but thriving. When it hurt to see all their silly day-to-day nonsense: the meals they consumed, the views from their walks, their Life-Is-Still-Going-On-For-Me vibes. I wonder what it’s like when someone who just lost a family member logs on and sees another post about all the good that’s coming out of all this. Another post about beauty and grace composed by another person who didn’t just lose everything.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Jason Quigley, Kristen Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Tracy Stepp, Tracy Stepp, Unknown.

COVID-19 Resources

This week I compiled a list of not-nearly-enough-but-here’s-a-start resources for the COVID-19 pandemic. I can keep adding to this list if anyone has more suggestions. I’m sending love and support to everyone.

For Grievers

Supporting Children & Teens When a Family Member is Dying in a Hospital or Care Facility (The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families)

How to Cope with Bereavement During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Psychology Today) 

How “Anticipatory Grief” May Show Up During the COVID-19 Outbreak (Healthline)

What the Newly Bereaved Should Know (What’s Your Grief)

10 Ideas for Funerals and Memorials When You Can’t Be Together (What’s Your Grief) 

8 Simple Acts: How to Survive Early Grief (Refuge in Grief)

Helpful Grief Resources for You (Claire Bidwell Smith)

COVID-19 (National Alliance for Grieving Children) 

For Helpers

How You Can Help During the Coronavirus Outbreak (The Washington Post)

TIME for Giving: Support Frontline Organizations Helping in Fight Against Coronavirus (Time)

How to Say “Thank You” to Your Favorite Essential Worker During Coronavirus (New York Post) 

Starter List: How You Can Support Frontline Staff During the COVID-19 Crisis (Advisory Board)

For Mental Health Help 

7 Tips for Reducing Feelings of Isolation (Modern Loss)  

The COVID-19 Crisis Too Few Are Talking About: Health Care Workers’ Mental Health (Stat News) 

Resources and Tips for Supporting Your Mental Health During COVID-19 (Vanderbilt)

APA COVID-19 Information and Resources (American Psychological Association)

For Cancer Patients

 Free Professional Support for Anyone Affected by Cancer (Cancer Care) 

Coronavirus, COVID-19, and Cancer (American Cancer Society) 

For Unemployment and Small Businesses

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Small Business Guidance & Loan Resources (US Small Business Administration)

Save Indie Bookstores (American Booksellers Association)

What To Do If You’re Laid Off During COVID-19: Start with These Unemployment Resources (Fast Company)

Finding the Right Help During the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Outbreak (Benefits)

For Immediate Crises

 National Domestic Violence Hotline

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

This Crisis Text Line is an Emotional Lifeline For Frontline Workers During COVID-19 (Global Citizen)

For Caregivers 

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources and Articles for Family Caregivers (Family Caregiver Alliance)

For Homelessness

Coronavirus and Housing/ Homelessness (National Low Income Housing Coalition): 

COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Information (National Center for Homeless Education)

For Families

Supporting Families During COVID-19 (Child Mind Institute)

COVID-19 Resources: School Closures and Food Access (Action for Healthy Kids)

For Preparedness/ General Resources

Checklist to Get Ready (Centers for Disease Control) 

Coronavirus Resource Center (John Hopkins)

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credit: Kristen Forbes

This Is Grief

Sorry for the massive delay in posting anything on this site during the COVID-19 crisis. It turns out that a.) the months worth of grief posts I had ready to go do not feel tonally right in this era of a pandemic, b.) I was way more dependent on the five hours a week my daughter attends preschool for getting my own work done than I realized, and c.) I’m still figuring out how best to express myself and serve my community during this time. 

Here’s what I know: I am safe and healthy. My daughter is receiving a wonderful online preschool education. My husband is able to work from home during this time. I am not able to see my mom in person and that is very difficult; other than that there is very little about my personal life that has changed either significantly or detrimentally. I’m an introvert who has worked from home or stayed at home with my daughter for years upon years. I am a person who rarely gets out of my house in normal circumstances. And I am a person who is incredibly accustomed to spending long bouts of time alone or with my small family. 

Here’s what I also know: I am lucky. I am privileged. I have so many friends who are now out of work. Others with fragile health conditions who are terrified. I know people who think they may currently have the virus but are unable to get tested and I know people whose family members likely died from it but were also unable to get tested. I know nurses pleading for medical supplies and I know extroverts who feel like they’re losing a sense of sanity, security, or identity in quarantine. I know people are struggling. I know people are dying. 

I know that this is grief, what we’re all experiencing right now. I know that fresh grief brings up past grief. I know that many people are feeling triggered right now while thinking about their dead people, perhaps especially if they lost someone in either a medical setting or suddenly (or both). 

And I know that for those who are grieving a new death, one that occurred in the past month or so, all the rules of grief have changed. Unable to say goodbye to a loved one because of isolation, forced to say goodbye via technology, unable to attend — or in some cases even have — a memorial service: This is the new normal for many grieving people right now. 

Grief is a response to change and every aspect of our society and world is changing right now. If you feel like you’re dealing with loss upon loss right now, you are not alone. 

And one last thing I know is this. During times of crisis, people will manage and cope in myriad ways. There will always be those who respond to a crisis with unshakable positivity. People will say that now is the time for gratitude, perspective, humor and optimism. And while I think that these are all lovely attributes in manageable doses, I also think it’s easy to get burnt out with the super-positivity, which can seem downright tone-deaf, during times of turmoil.

Do you know what I hated more than anything when my dad was sick with cancer? Being told to stay positive. I was watching the person I love most fade away from this world and over and over again, I was told that it was important — hell, it was my responsibility, my obligation — to stay positive, to find the humor, to keep smiling. Do you know what I also hated? Hearing other people tell HIM to stay positive, as if this were his duty on top of fighting a deadly disease. In fact, it was not his duty. It was not mine, either. 

So let me just say right now, because maybe somebody needs to hear it right now: You do not have to be positive if that is not how you feel. You do not have to seek out the sunsets and rainbows just to prove there is still beauty in this world. There IS still beauty in this world, but you are also allowed to feel scared and overwhelmed and depressed and disheartened. When going through something sad or hard or scary, you are not required to smile through it in order to make your experience more palatable for others.

It’s okay if you’re able to look at your personal situation and see that you are safe and healthy and employed and contextualize that to mean that you have nothing to fear or grieve. But it is also okay if you are safe and healthy and employed and you still feel sad and scared as hell for all those who aren’t, because this moment is so much bigger than just our own little families right now. And it is okay if you are NOT safe or healthy or employed and you need to grieve that without someone telling you to look for the good in all of this. 

This is something that often happens in grief: We’re told to look for the good. The silver linings. The lessons. The reasons to be grateful in spite of what’s happening or what’s happened. I think it’s lovely and sweet and well-intentioned and I also think it can be extremely unhelpful and often minimizing at a time when a little empathy would go a long way. 

However you’re feeling in all of this — paralyzed, jumping up and down to look at rainbows, or anything in between — is okay.

This is grief.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, All: Kristen Forbes

March 12, 2020

1st birthday during a pandemic. 2nd birthday without my dad. 4th birthday since becoming a mom. 20th birthday since becoming an “adult.” This is 38. The camera angle makes it look like the numbers are reversed: I hope against hope I make it to 83. My dad didn’t make it to 67. My uncle didn’t make it to 34.

It’s a strange and eerie time to have a birthday. I was planning on going to grief group tonight but it was canceled. So many things are canceled or disrupted. And yet other things keep moving right along. I keep thinking about those first few months after my dad died when it just seemed unfathomable that everyone was still going on with their lives and how different (better or worse, I don’t know) it would feel to be in such fresh grief now, when it feels like the world is truly stopped in some ways. 

I’ve been thinking a lot, too, about how scared I would be for my dad right now if he was still alive with cancer. How scared I’d be for my residents if I still worked at a retirement center. How scared I am for all the vulnerable populations who are more likely to have a harder time with this virus. 

Mostly I’m just thinking a lot of disjointed thoughts, which I’m allowing because it’s my birthday. I miss my dad. I’m concerned about everything that’s happening. And here I am, putting one more candle on the same cake I’ve been requesting every year since I was old enough to say “a simple white cake with white frosting.” 

Sending love to everyone.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credit: Megan Carnahan

Instagram Accounts That Help With My Grief

This is just a small sampling because there are so many Instagram accounts that have inspired and comforted me in my grief — or, on those days when I feel incapable of inspiration or comfort, they simply keep me company in my grief and remind me that I’m never alone. 

@glitterandgrief

Four years ago she lost her dad to sepsis. She was 23 at the time. Now she creates beautiful illustrations and pairs them with her thoughts on grief. She shares the hardest parts of her loss, the happiest parts of her life (she was recently married and the photos from that day are gorgeous!), and everything in between. On hard days, this is an account I always go to.

@griefandgrits

She lost her dad to leukemia in 1966 when she was ten years old and has been grieving ever since. She wrote a children’s book about grief that I can’t wait to get my hands on. On her page, she shares a lot of really helpful advice about how to talk to someone who is grieving. She explains why certain phrases are hurtful and what to say instead in a way that is both understanding and compassionate.

@refugeingrief

Recently, my favorite thing on this page is her new “Did you know that XXX Is #perfectlynormal in grief?” series, which helps to shed a light on all those #perfectlynormal things we do in grief that may feel like anything but at the time. She also shares compassionate advice for grievers as well as helpful tips for the people in a griever’s life.

@thethingaboutgrief

She lost her mom to cancer while she was in her late twenties. Now she pairs illustrations with her thoughts on grief in a way that is vulnerable, touching, and another great reminder that we are never alone in our grief.

@whatsyourgrief

This grief community often hosts photo challenges and shares posts about grief, self-care and community.

@deathdialgouesproject

She lost her brother and mother and made it her mission to openly talk about death instead of hiding from it. She hosts a podcast and helps to share other people’s death stories, which are of course also life stories — death is a part of life and this page helps to confront it.

@veronicadearly

A lot of people share positive illustrations on Instagram that are intended to make you feel sparkly and bubbly. Fewer people share illustrations that actually feel like real life and that don’t make you feel like you just swallowed a huge gulp of forced positivity. These illustrations are the real deal and never fail to make me feel a little better.

@thejoyscout

She lost her dad to colon cancer in 2012 when she was 22. After going through years where it felt like grief stripped her of her joy, she started asking people around her “What comes to to mind when you think of the word joy?” and began scouting joy all around her. This page is as much about grief as it is about joy and I turn to it on days when I need to be reminded of the joy that exists alongside grief.

@littlearthlings

The “gentle reminders” on this page are so sweet and perfect and impossible not to love.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: @glitterandgrief, @griefandgrits, @refugeingrief, @thethingaboutgrief, @whatsyourgrief, @deathdialoguesproject, @veronicadearly, @thejoyscout, @littlearthlings

This Isn't the Pretty Side of Grief

Over the past sixteen months, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people whose grieving situations are similar to my own —people in their thirties (give or take), people who are new(ish) parents, people who have lost their own parent(s). Most of the conversations I’ve had took place in confidence in the context of grief groups, online support groups, or similar communities. Because of their confidential nature I will never share any detail from a specific talk I had unless it was a detail from my own life. What I can share, though, after being a part of so many of these talks, is a general pattern that I’ve seen emerge for people whose grieving situations are similar to my own, including me.

That pattern is this: There are a lot of us out there who are experiencing anger, jealousy, bitterness, resentment, and other similar emotions as a result of our grief. We resent our peers when we hear them complaining about their living parents. We feel unexpected jolts of bitterness when we see old couples holding hands. The jealousy we feel when watching our in-laws play with our grandchildren in the absence of our own parents is almost unbearable. Social media is a minefield for many of us — it’s bad on any given Thursday but Code Holy Shit Get Me Outta Here on holidays when the happy family pictures and posts are relentless. And if asked to describe the most consistent emotion that defines our grief, many of us would opt not for the expected Sadness or Longing but for the just-the-facts-Jack-flaming-hot ANGER.

Maybe you think: Well, yes of course you’re angry that your parent died. That seems understandable. But that’s not the kind of anger I’m referring to. I’m referring to the type of anger where many of us who were previously compassionate, patient, calm people now feel balls of absolute rage in our chest when our spouse doesn’t empty the dishwasher, when our kid doesn’t follow directions, or when the stranger in front of us in line can’t decide what to order. The amount of tolerance we have for small-talk party conversations may be zero. Hearing someone complain about trivial issues produces a response in us that most of polite society would refer to as “unkind.” We are so angry.

This isn’t the pretty side of grief. The pretty side, if there is one, is the sad, lonely, fragile part: the part where you cannot help but feel compassion for this person who lost so much. This is the grittier, grosser, grimier side of grief. It’s a side that’s rarely talked about in public but let me assure you, it is the side that is coming up over and over again when in the safety of our own people. It’s not “nice” to say aloud some of the things that absolutely need to be said, so many of us don’t, or we do only in whispered tones, and only to people we trust won’t crucify us. 

Personally, I think we should talk about it more and we should talk about it louder and we should talk about it so much that the next time someone who is grieving finds herself experiencing these intense emotions, instead of feeling completely caught off guard and as if she’s the first and only person to ever experience such complicated, misunderstood emotions and feels icky as a result, she instead says, Oh yeah, I read about this. I heard about this. So-And-So told me about this. It is a fact of grief for many, many people and it is OKAY and normal and does not make me a terrible person.

It is not bad, terrible or wrong to feel anger, jealousy, bitterness, resentment or other similar emotions as a result of your grief. It is so, so, so normal and in fact, I’m trying to rack my brain to think of a grieving person I know who hasn’t experienced it in some form. 

My name is Kristen and since my dad died, I have felt very angry, jealous, bitter and resentful. And so have so many of the people I’ve talked to in similar situations. And maybe you have too. And that’s okay.  

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, All: Kristen Forbes

Help a Grieving Friend: Acknowledge the Holidays

My family friend Katie sent my mom, sister and me cards for every holiday we faced after my dad died. From our birthdays to Father’s Day to Valentine’s Day to Christmas and everything in between, we received a card from Katie letting us know that she was thinking of us and she was thinking of my dad. These cards were my lifeline during my first year of grief. 

I felt the void of my dad so much on holidays. He was always a big fan of celebrations, sending cards, and letting everyone around him know how much he loved them. Until he died, I’d never experienced a holiday without receiving a card from him. He always mailed valentines to me, even when I was young enough to live with him, just so I could enjoy the experience of pulling a stamped envelope from the mailbox. The cards from Katie helped to soften the blow of the loss of Dad cards on special days.

Katie seemed to know right away the three things I needed to hear most: 1.) People beyond my family think about, miss, and love my dad. 2.) People beyond my family think about, care about, and love me. 3.) It sucks that my dad is not here. 

Her cards always acknowledged my loss, paid tribute to my dad, and sent love my way. Beyond the cards, we (my mom, sister, and I) received texts on all the holidays from her too — thinking of you, sending love, missing him. It was exactly what I always needed to hear and I really cannot overstate how much this meant to me. 

Grief is lonely no matter what — even when enveloped in a supportive, loving community, I still carry my own loss in a way that no other person can touch or feel, even those who carry their own similar losses. I still have nights when I lie awake alone in my grief while my husband sleeps next to me. I still think about my dad and feel an ache that words could never properly describe.

But the support helps. The cards and texts help. To know that others are thinking of him and thinking of me — it helps. There is a difference between being lonely and alone. Though I always have lonely moments, I am never alone in my grief.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Martin Forbes, Martin Forbes, Katie Ardt, Katie Ardt, Katie Ardt

Help a Grieving Friend: Share Your Stories

Once a month, our family friend Glen would send an email to my mom, sister, and me that contained thoughts, memories, and recollections about my dad. He recalled both specific conversations and general aspects of his character. He asked questions — what would Martin think of this, how would Martin have handled that? He explored their decades-long friendship in the physical world and described the ways the friendship continues after my dad’s death. He talked about the lessons he learned from my dad as well as the things left unanswered. He included photos, stories, questions and quiet, gentle reflections.

I have never responded directly to any of these emails, though I was sure to let Glen know how much they meant to me. I don’t believe that receiving a response back was ever the point of sending them to me. Of all the things all the people said after my dad died, these emails were what touched me the most. These emails were what I read when I needed to truly spend a moment with my dad, which is such a hard thing to do now that he’s gone. These emails made me think and they made me cry and they were sometimes hard to take in but they were so incredibly important to me, so meaningful, and I will never forget them.

Grief is so damn lonely and the thing that makes it ten thousand times lonelier is that everyone in your life just stops talking about your person. They’re afraid to make you upset or they’re afraid to make themselves upset or — I don’t even know. I don’t know why people think the best thing to do is to not talk about him at all. I’ve been in situations where I met up with dear, longtime friends of his and was so excited to get the chance to hear stories and memories and bring him back to life over a half-hour long lunch, only to have these friends change the subject every time I brought up his name. Only to sit through a meal or a visit and hear them ask about my life as if I just have a regular ol’ life and my dad is not dead and these are the trips we have planned and these are the milestones my daughter has reached and the past is the past and did he ever even exist?

Sometimes reading these emails from Glen was the only time I felt less lonely in my grief, the only time I had proof that this loss is not just hard on my mom and my sister and me but to other people who knew and loved him. The world keeps revolving after your favorite person dies and it hurts beyond belief to see everyone living their lives, seemingly unaffected. You’ll have friends who post pictures on social media the day after his death: beaming smiles, fun times, life is #blessed. Not destroyed or stilled like you are, but fine and happy and moving right along. And in the weeks and months that pass, the divide between your insurmountable grief and their #blessed lives with grow more and more. It will get to the point where nobody talks about your dead person at all and it is simply a thing that you carry silently every day.

But then you receive an email from Glen and for that one moment, you’re not alone in your grief anymore. And everyone isn’t just out there doing cartwheels in the sunshine while you process your pain. Some people are actually thinking about him, and about you, and will take the time to let you know.

In those desperately lonely moments of grief, this is everything.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top To Bottom: Photo Booth, Carolyn Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Glen Ardt, Kristen Forbes

How's Your Mom Doing?

By far and large, the most common question I received during the first year after my dad died was, “How’s your mom doing?” I had mentally prepared myself for the onslaught of “How are you?” questions that would come my way, but I ultimately received very few of these. I can recall a handful of interactions when someone inquired about how I was doing after my dad’s death. Everyone instead skipped immediately to asking about my mom. There seemed to be this implication that as the daughter of a dead dad, I must be a.) fine and b.) able to direct people on how best to assist my mom, who as the wife of a dead husband was clearly a.) not fine and  b.) needed me to act as her spokesperson.

I wasn’t really in the position to act as anyone’s spokesperson and was always incredibly caught off guard by this question, no matter how many times I received it. I found myself having a very bitter reaction to it and secretly wanting to snap, “How do you think she’s doing?” to everyone who asked. I became particularly triggered by the predictability of the script we all used to navigate this particular conversation over and over again. Inevitably I would respond, “She is hanging in there. She is a very strong person,” to anyone who asked and the person would immediately respond with, “Is she keeping busy?” because as we all know, the only possible way to navigate grief is to stay endlessly distracted. “Yup, she’s staying busy,” I’d say, and then recite some of her weekly activities as if to prove that obviously anyone who volunteers at a food pantry every Tuesday is fine despite losing her partner of 47 years, just as obviously I am fine after losing my dad and don’t even need to be asked about it.

The real answer to the “How are you?” question in grief is Not Okay But As Okay As Possible or Not Fine But Okay or maybe Not Okay But Fine or Kinda Managing or Barely Hanging On or Sorta Surviving or What Even Is Okay or A Little Different With Each Passing Moment or sometimes it’s actually just Hard and None of Your Business.

But of course these aren’t the responses we offer when someone asks. We talk instead about staying busy. I became so sick of the predictability that I would fend off anyone asking “How’s your mom doing?” by skipping right to the next part and saying “She’s keeping busy,” which truly seemed to be all that anyone wanted to hear.

It was this strange, repetitive cycle: Me being asked about my mom without first being asked about myself, me listing her schedule as proof of her okay-ness in the face of grief, and the conversation concluding with me feeling uncomfortable about a.) being asked to push aside my own grief, b.) being asked to speak for someone else, and c.) already knowing the answer the person wanted to hear and supplying it accordingly. Oh, she’s keeping busy? Wonderful. Good for her. Conversation over. This happened over and over again during my first year of grief — and then it promptly stopped because, as we all know, grief ends after Year One. 

I don’t know if I have any great takeaways here, other than that if you’re going to ask a griever how another griever is doing, it might be nice to inquire about the griever standing in front of you as well, rather than assuming she’s in a stable enough position to put her own emotions and feelings to the side and speak for someone else. And if you do inquire how someone is doing, know that the whole “Staying busy?” response is  a tired one. A person can be fine without being busy and a person can be busy without being fine and I don’t know why we insist on equating the two. If you’re gong to ask how a griever is doing just to ask if they’re staying busy, you’re not going to find out anything about the griever at all. And if you’re not going to find anything out, what was the point of asking the question?

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Kristen Forbes, Jason Quigley, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Jane Mellow, Jessica Mueller

Grief Resources I've Used

Grieving is hard work. Here are some of the resources that have helped me since my dad died.

The Dougy Center. I attend a grief group for young adults (26-40) every other week at the Dougy Center. I meet with a group of people around my age and a facilitator and we talk about what we’re dealing with that week. I’ve found it incredibly helpful to share my story and hear from others who understand what I’m going through. I’m often reminded of a quote I heard on the Dougy Center’s Grief Out Loud podcast (more on that below) by up-and-coming comedian Harry Jensen, (I may not remember the quote exactly so I am paraphrasing here): “I don’t attend grief group because my dad died. I attend grief group because your dad didn’t.” It can be so hard to speak truthfully about the experience of grief with people who are unable to completely relate; grief group is a refuge where it’s okay to say anything — anything — about our love, our loss, and our very complicated feelings and thoughts while grieving.

The Dinner Party. I attend this group of young adults (20s-30s) approximately once a month. It is hosted at someone’s house and we all bring dishes to put together a potluck meal. This is another refuge for me, another chance to say out loud the things you simply can’t say in polite society while also hearing from others whose experiences either mirror my own or show me a new aspect of grief I never considered. (Both of these grief groups are a bit like AA in the sense that everything said within those walls is completely confidential and will never be shared. I am allowed to share my own story, but whatever anyone else says stays in those rooms.)

Terrible, Thanks For Asking is a podcast hosted by Nora McInerny, author of It’s Okay To Laugh (Crying is Cool Too), No Happy Endings, and The Hot Young Widows Club. This podcast provides space for guests to give honest answers to the question “How are you?” after going through some of the most difficult and worst experiences a human can go through: losing a loved one, abuse, disease, etc. It is funny and moving and relatable and real. Nothing is sugar-coated and everyone is allowed to say and feel exactly what they say and feel without being met with platitudes or advice.

Grief Out Loud is a podcast hosted by Jana DeCristofaro of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon. It focuses entirely on the experience of grief as told through personal stories and expert advice. There is an emphasis on helping children and teens but adults can benefit from all the conversations as well.

Modern Loss is a web site and community founded by Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner. It brings together essays on grief (I wrote this one for them last spring), advice, book recommendations, and more. Modern Loss also hosts several gift exchanges throughout the year — I swapped presents with another fatherless daughter last Father’s Day, which ended up being one of the real bright spots of an otherwise sad day. Modern Loss also hosts retreats, courses, and other events (usually on the east coast).

What’s Your Grief? is a web site and community run by Litsa Williams and Eleanor Haley with an extensive blog, training and events, courses, and more. What’s Your Grief? has a heavy Instagram presence and I’ve found their posts often say just the thing I need to hear, just when I need to hear them.

Claire Bidwell Smith is the author of three grief-focused books (Rules of Inheritance, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?, and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief). She also hosts webinars, free phone calls, and grief courses. Her phone calls are something that I recommend especially — you can either call in live or hear a recording later of her speaking and answering questions about specific types of losses. I did her free Father’s Day call last year and learned a lot about the specificity of father loss. I’ve also taken several courses with her, including one about father loss and a course I did with my husband for partner support in grief.

Refuge in Grief is a web site and community hosted by It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand. author Megan Devine. She hosts grief writing sessions (I participated in one last year) and has a heavy online presence where she posts helpful tips and advice for those whose are grieving themselves and those who want to support someone who is grieving.

For those keeping score: My dad died almost sixteen months ago. I attend approximately three grief groups a month. I listen to two grief podcasts a week. I’ve done two free grief calls and three paid grief e-courses in the last year. I have no idea how many articles and essays about grief I’ve read, but it’s no  small amount. I haven’t yet touched upon the people I follow on Instragram for grief support or the grief books I’ve read — I will get more into both of those topics in a future post. I also haven’t mentioned the grief therapy I did, which is also a topic for another day, nor have I discussed the individual things I do on my own, like journaling or a one-off art therapy class.

What I’m trying to say is this: It takes a lot of work to grieve. Not everyone spends as much time and effort and money and mental space on grieving as I do, but it’s hard work for everyone nonetheless. I am a stay-at-home mom and a freelance writer who also has another full-time job: grieving. Maybe this all sounds crazy to you, but what’s crazier to me is thinking about how completely unhinged I would be if I didn’t do all this work.

What I’m also trying to say is this: I believe in kindness, even though there are times when I find it difficult to be kind. We all have so much on our plates, grieving or not. This business of being a human is such hard work.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: The Dougy Center, The Dinner Party, Terrible, Thanks For Asking, The Dougy Center, Modern Loss, What’s Your Grief?, Claire Bidwell Smith, Refuge in Grief

Let Me Know If You Need Anything

I don’t like to universalize the experience of grief too much because I think it’s such a personal and specific thing for everyone. However, I do believe that for the majority of people dealing with grief, seven of the most cringe-worthy words they’ll ever hear are all wrapped into one incredibly well-intentioned phrase: “Let me know if you need anything.”

Maybe you’re wondering how on earth an offering for help could possibly be construed as anything but wonderful. But that’s just the thing: The person who says this line isn’t actually offering to help. This person may be offering to be on-call if you, the griever, ever think of a task to assign them. And chances are very good that you, the griever, are way too overwhelmed to be able to think of who can do what for you. And you, the griever, are likely uncomfortable asking something specific of someone who’s made a very general statement about being there if you need “anything.”

Also, “Let me know if you need anything” is one of those things people automatically say in times of crisis. “Sorry for your loss. Let me know if you need anything.” It can be difficult for the person grieving to decipher who, out of the many-many-many people offering this phrase, might actually be in a position/ have a desire to help. Because so many people are saying it and so few people are following through with it, it comes off as an empty promise. Just a polite thing to say. A throw-away phrase.

A person in deep grief, especially a person in deep fresh grief, is not operating at the same mental capacity as a person who is not grieving. A person in deep grief does not have the ability (I am super generalizing here, I know, but man, I’ve seen so many examples of this as truth) to look at all that lies ahead and think: Ah, yes, I need help with all this paperwork; I’ll ask Jenny. I’m falling behind on groceries; I’ll ask Tom for help. You know who would be the perfect person to ask to watch my kid on Tuesday while I go to the funeral home and pick up my person’s ashes? Shannon. Oh, and Henry can help me pick up my cousin who’s flying in from out of town for the service. 

A person in deep grief is more likely to think: AGHHLSDGHODSGHLSDANGSJKADSLK;JGOEAN, WTF, I don’t even KNOW what needs to be done or HOW it can be done or WHO I can ask or ASJGLJDGOPWEAJOGNEAOPIH!!! 

So what can you say that’s more helpful? 

•I made some soup and/or a casserole and I’m going to knock on your door at 5:00 p.m. No need to answer if you don’t feel up to it — I will leave everything on your porch.

•I know you have a lot of people coming in for the service and I just wanted to let you know we have an extra guest bedroom since Natalie went to college. I’d be happy to pick your aunt up from the airport and host her at my house for a few days.

•I am available in the afternoons after 12 and I can watch your kids then if you have any appointments this week.

Or: Don’t say anything. Do something! Bring some food over. Bring some biodegradable paper plates and cups. Bring a veggie tray. Bring cookies. Bring coffee or tea. Maybe skip the flowers — I know I didn’t want another dying thing in my house when I was freshly grieving.

If you’re close to the person, show up and look around. Is there anything that needs obvious tending? Take out the trash. Mow the lawn. Wash the dishes in the sink. One caveat about this: As Megan Devine points out in her book IT’S OK THAT YOU’RE NOT OK: MEETING GRIEF AND LOSS IN A CULTURE THAT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND, a freshly grieving person may have an attachment or connection to an object that you don’t understand. That half-empty soft drink may be the last thing their person ever drank and they may need to keep it on the coffee table for now. This is where the Just Do Something part of this can get a little tricky.

Then again, no one ever said this would be easy. Easy is offering an empty phrase. The real work of being there for someone is figuring out what needs to be done to back it up.  

What CAN you offer to a person who is grieving? Are you particularly good at cooking, sorting through paperwork, sitting through difficult meetings with lawyers and funeral homes, or making phone calls? Whatever you can do, offer that. Be specific. 

It’s okay if the thing you CAN do is to just a send a card to let the person know you’re thinking of them, or something equally simple.

And for goodness sake, if you do say, “Let me know if you need anything” and the person then asks you for help with something, do not flake out. Do not let it be a hollow promise. If you don’t really want to do ANYTHING, don’t offer it. Offer exactly what you can do instead. Or just show up and do it.

Before you automatically offer up the phrase, “Let me know if you need anything,” Stop. Take a few breaths. Think about what you CAN do. Offer that instead.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top To Bottom: Carolyn Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Mike Daems, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Unknown, Kristen Forbes

Grief TV: What I Watched the Year After My Dad Died

For such a long time, we’ve seen grief depicted as the same tired equation of sadness + desperation + deep soul searching + letting go = happiness onscreen. Finally, grief on the small screen is starting to show more facets of real grief. Here are some of the shows that I watched the year after my dad died.

Fleabag (2016-2019, Amazon Prime) is a show about grief, specifically from mother loss and friend loss. Titular character Fleabag shows us all of it: her guilt, lust, rage, regret, and dysfunction. It is a show about the way families fall apart and come together in the face of grief. It is a show about where we seek and find support, and what happens when our sources for support break us even more. It is a show about confronting past mistakes, letting go of things that can’t be changed, and carving a new life from the destruction of loss. Most importantly (to me), it is a very funny show that shows all the ways (light, dark, silly, grossly inappropriate or otherwise) humor can help propel us (and sometimes hold us back) in our grief.

Sorry For Your Loss (2018—, Facebook Watch) is a show about grief, specifically from spouse/ sibling/ in-law loss. We see grief through so many lenses: from widow Leigh, who is navigating a world in which she’s no longer in the lifelong partnership she’d imagined; brother Danny, who devotes a lot of energy to piecing together the mystery of Why Did This Happen?; mother-in-law Amy, whose own grief for her son-in-law often juts against her efforts to keep her daughters afloat in their grief; and sister-in-law Jules, who is grappling with new sobriety on top of her grief. This is a show about barely hanging on but also doing the best possible. It is a show about pushing against the people you love most and loving people both fiercely and imperfectly. It is another show that goes beyond the typical sad-sad-sad trope to also show humor, anger, jealousy, immaturity, denial and hope. 

Dead To Me (2019—, Netflix) is a show about grief, specifically from spouse loss and pregnancy loss. It is also a murder mystery and a story of friendship and betrayal. What I love about this show is that it focuses a lot on anger, sometimes uncontrolled. It also shows the challenges of parenting while grieving as well as being a child while grieving. There are twists and turns in this show that can sometimes make it feel melodramatic and even silly, but at its core it does a good job of  showing some of the messier, uglier sides of grief  — the ones that don’t always receive as much air time.

After Life (2019—, Netflix) is a show about grief, specifically from spouse loss. It’s one of those shows that I gravitated to early on —Anger! Yay! I love to see anger because I don’t think it’s shown nearly enough — but it turned me off when everything was oh-so-neatly wrapped up and main character Tony decided that, you know what? I think I’ll just stop being angry and start being kind and everything will be great. Kind of like most of the shows and movies that have ever been done about grief, ever. No thank you from me.

Maniac (2018, Netflix) is a miniseries about grief, specifically from sibling loss and loss of self-identity in the face of mental illness. It a show about an experimental pharmaceutical trial that draws in participants who feel lost, broken, and helpless. One of the participants, Owen, is struggling with a disputed schizophrenia diagnosis. Another participant, Annie, is broken in the aftermath of her sister’s death. Both come to the drug trial hoping for a solution to their problems and instead encounter a lot of other problems along the way. Maniac is a kooky, darkly funny show with a heavy sci-fi bent. It really captures the persistent pervasiveness of grief and although sci-fi isn’t normally my genre of choice, I happily followed the show through all its crazy adventures and revelations. 

Orange is the New Black (2013-2019, Netflix) is a show about incarceration and it also a show about grief, specifically loss of life, loss of freedom, loss of identity, and loss of justice. Over the seasons there have been several inmate deaths that bring grief directly to the surface, but there have also been so many other losses along the way. Dignity, independence, the ability to make choices for oneself: so many of these have been stripped away for those imprisoned. The show also does as excellent job of showing the grief that’s still carried in life after prison — things don’t magically become better for those who get out. Often, those same losses they experienced in jail stick with them as they tackle life on the outside. The final season also shows the loss and grief that accompanies families during the traumatic process of deportation. 

Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation special (2018, Netflix) is about grief, specifically spouse loss. It is a comedy show about politics and parenting, and it is also a show about life after the sudden and unexpected death of his wife. Patton shows his humor, rage, hope, joy, and resilience in a show that is funny, moving, and real.

Russian Doll (2019—, Netflix) is a show about grief, specifically mother loss and the loss of one’s own life cut off too soon. Nadia dies at the end of the evening of her 36th birthday — and then wakes up alive the next day, attends the same party again, and dies again, this time in a new way. This cycle repeats over and over as Nadia tries to gather information to explain what’s going on. It is a show about buried trauma, forgiveness, guilt, and finding meaning in life. 

The Good Place (2016—2020, NBC) is a show that is less about grief and more about life after death and the meaning of life. What does it mean to be a good person? What does it look like? What is the point of kindness? What is the value in doing things not to be rewarded for them, but simply because they are the right things to do? The Good Place is a funny show that takes a light tone to explore deeper issues. It explores life, death, life after death, and the ultimate questions: What does it all mean, and what is the point?

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, All: imdb.com

Helping a Grieving Friend: Do This, Not That

One evening when my dad was sick but not yet dying-sick, we hosted a small dinner party. Two of our guests knew other people in their lives who were suffering from the same cancer as my dad. Throughout the evening, these two guests took turns telling horror stories about their people with this same cancer: Surgeries gone wrong. Recurrences after remission. Tumors that grew too large to contain.

To this day I’m not sure what either of them was hoping to achieve by sharing any of this information. In my most generous interpretation, I wonder if they thought they were bonding with me. Like: Hey, isn’t it terrible that we all know how awful this disease is and we all know someone going through it? But it didn’t feel like bonding at all. I had to leave the room multiple times throughout the night. I tried to force myself to think of other things instead of listening to their words. Everything they were saying was horrible, but the worst part was their casual tone. They weren’t talking about people they loved. They were talking about people they were vaguely related to. They were gossiping. 

They were gossiping to the wrong person. It would be like going up to a pregnant woman in her third trimester and telling her that your cousin’s teacher’s friend’s sister died while giving birth and the baby didn’t make it either, and isn’t that so very interesting? Meanwhile the pregnant woman doesn’t find it interesting at all. In fact, she is so horrified by the whole evening that after everyone goes home, and after she puts her daughter to bed, and after she tells her husband to not even think about touching her right now, she curls up into the fetal position on the faded brown couch in her living room and proceeds to scream-wail for the next four hours. The kind of desperate yell-crying that leaves a person breathless, the kind that goes on so powerfully loud for so ridiculously long that it seems like it truly might never end. 

It was the kind of night that, looking back, I would classify as one of the worst of my life.

And yet, it got worse! Because months later, when my dad was no longer just sick but now dying-sick, one of these same guests was back at our house the same evening my dad was here. And this time her person with the same cancer was no longer living with the cancer, but dead. And this time she told my dad, in every breathless detail, all about his death. And my dad sat on that same faded brown couch as she sat in a chair across from him, and he quietly took all her words in. And I watched from another chair in the room, raging.

I’m still raging. We think that grief is sadness and loneliness but my grief often presents itself as  a flaming ball of anger that lives inside my chest. There have been times over the past year when I’ve been unsure what to do with this fireball in my chest. The punching bag in our garage helps. Running sometimes works. Journaling. Reading. But you know what’s helped the most? Sharing my story. Not to vilify the people involved in moments like this — I know neither of our guests had malicious intentions when tossing around their careless words. But just to hear someone else say: What happened back there is terrible and I am so sorry.

Because the thing is, a lot of what happens when someone is grieving is terrible — not just because of the grief itself, but because of the things people do and say without thinking or knowing better. I can nearly guarantee you that for every grieving person you know, there are someone-said-something-that-made-me-feel-even-worse-than-I-already-do-after-losing-my-favorite-person stories that person is carrying. Comments like, “Now you can get back to your own life” from a dear family friend at the memorial service. Comments like, “I wish I lived closer — I’d come give you a hug” from a friend who lives 15 minutes away. Comments like, “Did he smoke? Did he drink a lot? Did he do [anything that might explain why HE died so I can go on feeling immortal?]”

It can be a minefield. And more often than not, the best support a grieving person receives does not come from her inner circle of friends but rather from complete strangers who have been through similar experiences. That has certainly been the case for me, with a few notable exceptions.

My dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer when my daughter was six months old. He had a major surgery to remove his esophagus about a week after her first birthday. The combined stress of worrying about a sick parent while caring for an infant is something to be addressed in a separate post someday, but suffice it to say it’s one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve ever gone through. My dad was in the hospital for over a week after his surgery and my basic plan was to just go every day with my baby and spend most of the time out in the hall with her, then swap with my mom and have her sit with my baby while I went in to see my dad. Hours on end, days on end, this was the plan. My husband was working, I was breastfeeding, I didn’t want to be anywhere but the hospital, and so this was the plan. 

And then, on the second day there, after he came out of surgery and went to the ICU, after he was transferred from the ICU to a not-quite regular ward but not-quite as intense as the ICU ward that my dad lovingly referred to as ICU Lite, after my mom and I had done the swapping-one-form-of-caregiving-for-another switch over and over and over, my friend Kalene showed up at the hospital. She announced that she had taken some time off from work, took my baby from my arms, and told me to go be with my dad. I handed over my diaper bag, which I later realized contained ZERO wet wipes, and at some point my baby pooped and Kalene had no wet wipes and she JUST HANDLED IT. And while she was handling it, I was sitting with my dad and my mom was also sitting with my dad, or maybe my mom was eating lunch or taking a small walk, and we we were all doing things that had seemed impossible a day earlier but were suddenly manageable thanks to the generosity of my friend Kalene.

She showed up the next day and the next one, too. 

You know what happened when I typed out the whole dinner party horror show? I felt the rage ball rise again in my chest. And you know what happened when I typed out the part about Kalene showing up for me, for us? I started crying. And I will probably always cry when I think about what she did for me, for us. It was so much more than I ever could have expected. It was kind and generous and helpful and NECESSARY in a way I didn’t understand until it happened — although I was making things work with the whole sick dad in the hospital + breastfeeding a baby in the hospital hallway thing, I was barely hanging on. My mom and I were exhausted. Everything felt maxed out. I didn’t even realize how dark everything was until Kalene showed up and some sunlight reappeared.

Maybe these stories aren’t helpful to you. Maybe the wrongness of the first one seems obvious and maybe the second one seems saintly, unattainable, and unrealistic. How many people could really do what she did?

Most people can not show up in such a major way. They don’t have a strong enough relationship with the grieving person to justify it. They don’t have the time in their schedule. They don’t have the inclination or the abilities to pull it off. And that’s okay.

But most people can do something. Something that meant a lot to me? Texts from a friend that said, “I’m just checking in and sending you love.” She didn’t need to offer me great words of guidance or inquire how I was doing or make a big deal of out anything. She just needed to say: I’m thinking about you. 

And you know what? That little way of showing up was actually a lot more than what a lot of people did. I received a surprising amount of “I was going to come over but I know you must be overwhelmed with people stopping by” or “I wanted to cook something but I know you probably have so many people taking care of you right now” type comments, which always threw me off. Where were they gathering their information? Who were their sources? Because whatever endless stream of support coming through my house they were envisioning — it wasn’t happening quite like that. 

Don’t assume everything is taken care of. Don’t ask if there’s anything you can do. Think of something you can do and do it. Maybe it’s showing up at the hospital to watch someone’s kid for a few hours. Maybe it’s sending a text to say “I’m thinking of you.” Maybe it’s offering to run an errand or do something helpful around the house. Maybe it’s writing a card. Anything is better than nothing, usually. (Granted, I would have preferred nothing to the cancer horror stories, but in general, anything is better than nothing.) 

Do one little thing. To the person you’re helping, it might actually be a really big thing.

In grief and with love, 

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Linda Lucas, Kristen Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Jessica Mueller, Carolyn Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Mike Daems, Kristen Forbes, Mike Daems, Carolyn Forbes, Carolyn Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes

Year Two of Grief Still Sucks

I just made it through my second round of winter holidays without my dad and let me tell you: It wasn’t easy. And: I did it.

Leading up to the winter holidays, I wrote myself a list of reasons why this year’s holidays may seem harder than the first. I wrote this list because as someone who lived through grief, read book after book about grief, listened to podcasts about grief, went to therapy for grief, attended support groups for grief, and in general did so much “grief work” during my first year, I know that a lot of people are caught off guard when they find the second year of grieving harder than the first.

I didn’t want to feel caught off guard, so I made this list to prepare myself for the holidays.

REASONS WHY THE SECOND YEAR OF GRIEF MAY BE HARDER THAN THE FIRST

1.) No longer numb

2.) Fewer people checking in

3.) No longer dealing with “firsts” — now dealing with “forevers”
 
4.) Societal expectations to be better/ moving on after a year

5.) Dwindling support

6.) Reality of the perpetuity of loss setting in

7.) Bigger distance between memories + fear of forgetting stories and details

8.) Loved one’s name brought up much less frequently

9.) People dealing with new losses and crises unable to continue devoting attention to your loss

10.) Assumptions that first year is always the hardest

Armed with my little list and a year’s worth of experience and knowledge, I headed into the holidays and … was still caught off guard and blown away by how much harder the second year felt. (And man, did I think the first year felt hard.)

The thing is: I still really miss my dad. I miss his Santa-like personality: his jolliness and sparkle. I miss how much I laughed when I was with him. I miss the specific cadence of his laugh, which I can hear in my head but cannot mimic out loud. The embarrassing yet endearing way he started conversations with nearly every stranger he encountered, from the grocery cashier to someone out on the same walking path. The telepathic way he always knew when something was wrong, the specific weight of his hugs, and the family stories that received a few more embellishments every time he told them: These are the things that I still think about every day. When you’ve known someone for 36 years, a year of grieving is nothing.

There were a few concrete ways the differences between the first and second years crept in. For example, I celebrated my first Christmas two months after my dad died. Nearly every holiday card we received in 2018 mentioned his death and acknowledged our loss. There were many handwritten notes addressing the difficulty of grieving during holidays while sharing condolences. There were even a few typed yearly updates that included his death as a main talking point of the year.

This year I celebrated Christmas fourteen months after my dad’s death. I received many holiday cards* — family photos, messages of joy, updates about the comings and goings of friends and family near and far. There were sweet sentiments and thoughtful updates that I’m grateful people took the time to send our way.

I received ONE card** that addressed my dad’s death and acknowledged my loss.

Now, there are of course so many reasons for this. People are dealing with their own shit. A million deaths and other catastrophes have occurred since my dad died. People who don’t know me well maybe forgot. And those whose who do know me well: Maybe they’re understandably preoccupied with their own difficult situations. Maybe they don’t think the holidays are the time to say something. Maybe they think the best thing to do is say nothing and just be cheerful and joyous in their wishes. Or maybe they think it’s been a year and it’s time to move on.

No matter the reasoning, though, the contrast between the two years felt sharp. This year I received an awful lot of “Enjoy the holidays!” and “Have fun with your family!” messages. And then there was one note that said, in essence: I miss your dad, I’m thinking of you, and I know the holidays may not be easy without him.

That one note meant a lot to me.

I know the time will come — maybe even next year — when I’m no longer receiving any notes, when everyone I know has moved on in such a way that his death and my loss are no longer mentioned at all. Maybe those years will feel even harder and lonelier than this one.

But for now: This year felt … complicated. I think I was craving certain acknowledgements from certain people — mainly, the people closest to him. I received a lot of cheer instead.

I have a friend who always says something like, “Hope you’re doing fantastic!” And while that in itself is a nice sentiment, it allows me very little room to respond in a way that verges from what she’s suggesting. It’s difficult to respond to her chirpy tone with anything other than “Yup, doing amazing!” Maybe this year’s holiday cards felt a bit like that — like there was an expectation that I should feel joyful and celebratory. Last year I felt more freedom to express not just joy and celebration but also my sorrow and grief. The reactions I received from others aligned with the way I felt internally. This year I felt like I needed to carry my emotions more quietly, which made the entire experience a little more lonely.

So here’s my advice for the holidays if you know someone who’s experienced deep loss: Acknowledge it. Acknowledge it even if it’s been a year. Acknowledge it even if it’s been ten years. And for all those people in our lives who suffer quiet losses we never know anything about but that deeply impact their lives all the same: Maybe we could all do each other a favor by rejecting this persistent cultural narrative that insists the holidays are only allowed to be 100% happy. 

We pretend that the holidays are a time of JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY! But for most of us, they’re really a time of JOY, stress, grief, JOY, overwhelm, JOY, loneliness, grief, JOY, confusion, JOY, sadness, JOY, grief, grief, JOY. 

It’s not that you’re unable to experience moments of beauty and happiness during the holidays (or any time of year) after someone you love died, or after experiencing another big blow like divorce, job loss, infertility or major illness. It’s that it’s not the ONLY emotion you’ll experience — and for that matter, it’s not the only emotion that ANYONE will experience. Just look at a child, one untainted by loss or major stresses yet. They’ll often experience the holidays through a lens of absolute joy and giddiness. And yet: There will be moments of exhaustion. Sugar overload. Tantrums. Disappointment at not receiving this gift or that. Boredom at long holiday meals. All the human emotions that all the humans of the world experience.

Add a major loss to the big range of normal human emotions and it’s easy to see that this idea of holidays being nothing but JOY is unattainable. Instead, what if we let people feel the way they really feel? And what if we acknowledged, for those who have lost someone central or experienced other painful events, how difficult some moments during the holidays will be? 

Wouldn’t that feel so much less lonely for everyone?

*Confession: We don’t send out holiday cards this time of year at all (we send out Valentine’s Day cards instead), so we potentially left a lot of people feeling unacknowledged and lonely. The point of this blog is never to point out all the things that other people are doing wrong and say how great I’m doing. It is never wrong to send someone a card wishing happy holidays, so I hope nobody took this as the takeaway (and thank you for the cards, truly!). Everyone is doing a great job. And: Maybe acknowledging difficulties and grief beyond the first round of holidays is something we could all think about a little more, myself included.

**On the first day of the new year, I received an email that specifically addressed my dad and my loss. This email also meant the world to me. In a future post I’ll go into bigger detail about the way some people have really come through for me during my losses. Let it never be lost, even when I’m feeling lonely in my grief, that I am so very grateful for the support I have received.

In grief and with love,

KrissyMick

Photo Credits, Top to Bottom: Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Self-Timer, Kristen Forbes, Unknown, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes, Unknown, Kristen Forbes, Unknown, Crazyhead Comics (@crazyheadcomics), Kristen Forbes, Jessica Mueller, Kristen Forbes, Jessica Mueller, Self-Timer, Kristen Forbes, Kristen Forbes