Happy Cinco De Mayo!  I hope you have had some quality tortilla chips and fresh guacamole or salsa, if you like that!

Also, Happy Birthday to my amazing Aunt Taylor whom I love and respect immensely.

If I had a magic wand……

In the last week I have wrapped my arms around two different sets of parents who recently lost a child.  This in and of itself is hard.  There is some inherent unspoken rule that kids ought to bury you, not the other way around.  Something just seems unnatural about seeing a young person in a casket.

Having stood where these parents now stand I want to help, to offer some words of advice or council that will in some way ease what they are going through and what’s to come.

I have no magic wand.  I have no magic words.  I have no ‘to-do’ that eases the pain from losing a child.  I truly believe there is great power in simply ‘being’ with someone in joy or pain.  There is strength in seeing others who have walked the path reinforcing that you too can move ahead when you feel like all you wanted is being left behind.

Death is tough.  For something that we all KNOW is a guaranteed event in all our lives it still throws us for mental and emotional loops.

The world is losing incredible grandma’s and grandpa’s.  A generation of people who lived before in-door plumbing, before space travel and certainly before streaming something online!  They are a treasure.  Their stories and the knowledge they possess are priceless.  If you have a grandparent left I invite you to visit them, ask about their youth, what their living conditions were like, how was dating in their time, when did they have their first kiss!!  Listen with all your might and find joy in the telling of their greatest joys and deepest pains.

I have learned a lot in dealing with death.  I am grateful for the lessons and insights that have come in losing my grandma who lived with us, in losing Joey unexpectedly, in losing my bonus dad and this past week losing Talia.  She was a sweet friend of Joey’s who entered our lives when we lost him.  She is a prime example of the beautiful gifts we have been given in loss.

She was dating one of Joey’s best friends.  My heart ached for another loss to someone so close in just over a year and a half.  I watched this last week as these incredible teenagers stood for each other.  They held the space for grief and pain for one another.  They didn’t try to hide or fade or fix the pain.  I know the tools they gained by doing healing work after Joey died helped them in losing Talia.  This is an odd thing to be grateful for, yet I am.  Of course I wish they didn’t have to learn anything about sudden loss.  Yet, seeing them together, their tears and also hearing their laughter bore witness to my heart that they have what it takes to face this storm and emerge on the other side ‘MORE’ for what they had and the memories they shared.

This is a beautiful thing.

I am grateful for all the lessons life holds.  I appreciate the tools I have gained through my grief work.  My husband still tells me I have done the most ‘work’ and am still the most screwed up…. There is some truth to that!  So, I move forward.  I look for light.  I seek peace.  I pray to use the things I have learned to make hard things less hard for others.  I truly believe we are all in this together.  If we can lift one another, hold each other up and be a strength when there is none we will all be better for it.

No magic wand here.  I do have a crystal one!!

With lots of love and honest direct communication I know we can face all things life has in store.

All my best,

Genna