Featured Articles
Where Love Never Dies
by Leah Dobkins
Liv Fun: Vol 4 – Issue 4
My 19-year-old daughter Hannah Rose suddenly died on March 6, 2012. After about a week, the wilted flowers that were scattered throughout my home bent their heads, mimicking my sorrow.
I had trouble throwing them away, letting go of what they were. I triaged the flowers every day. For some, I cut the bottom of their stems under warm water to try to revive them. The rest I reluctantly tossed in the kitchen garbage.
Eventually, there were no more flowers in my home. There was no more Hannah Rose.
As a gerontologist, I was well aware of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Still, I knew in my heart that I would never let go of my daughter. I did not progress neatly through those five sequential stages of grief. In fact, there were times when I felt all these stages at the same time, quite a common experience when we lose a loved one.
After a year of bereavement, I felt subtle pressure from well-meaning family and friends to “get on” with my life. I started to judge myself and question my sorrow. Do I have overly-complicated grief? Why do I continue to have no energy, no concentration, no sex drive? My husband never cried in my presence, and I saw my son cry only once, but I still wept, often.
My husband told me it was okay to cry, but could I please do it more quietly. I felt like my tears annoyed the men in my household, and I realized just how alone one can feel when your loved ones stop grieving with you.
In reality, grief is like a fingerprint; it’s unique to each person. But people don’t always understand this. So like a snake growing new skin, I grew the necessary armor to show what a highly functioning person I was. I was moving on. The façade was exhausting.
Liv Fun
by Leisure Care
Winter 2015
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Where Love Never Dies
by Leah DobkinsMy 19-year-old daughter Hannah Rose suddenly died on March 6, 2012. After about a week, the wilted flowers that were scattered throughout my home bent their heads, mimicking my sorrow. I had trouble throwing them away, letting go of what they were. Eventually, there were no more flowers in my home. There was no more Hannah Rose.
Open Passports, Open Minds
by Sally Macdonald
You have to stand on the khaki-colored beaches of France’s northern coast to fully appreciate what happened there a lifetime ago. Decades after the D-Day battle that marked the beginning of the end of World War II, my heart fluttered a little and I experienced a glimmer of the fear and dread that permeates the Normandy sand to this day.
The Power of Positivity
by Elana Zaiman
In the summer of 1998, my mother-in-law invited her friends to their rented West Seattle home for a brunch to welcome me, her new daughter-in-law, to Seattle. The dining table was full of green salads, fruits, hummus, and other delicacies, and the dining room was full of people I imagined I would see again over the years.