The manifestations of grief...

The manifestations of grief...  Years ago I took a management course, one segment of which dealt with handling the grief of employees who had had some tragic experience.  Probably the most important thing they taught us was this: that everyone has their own way of dealing with grief, and that you might find some of those ways surprising, odd, out-of-character, or even inappropriate.

I had a small experience of this myself earlier today, of the out of character kind.

This morning I visited our favorite grocery store to pick up a few items we needed.  As I was loading fruity sparkling water into my cart, a woman I didn't know came up to me and asked, very gently, “Are you ok?”

I had no idea why she was asking me this, so I asked her.  She said “Because you’re crying, and you look so sad.”  Only then did it dawn on me that I was crying; tears were streaming down my cheeks and into my beard.  Until that moment, I had had no idea at all.

So I told this kind woman about my mom's death yesterday, which was why I was crying.  She gave me a big hug, talked with my a bit about her own experience losing a brother (to a drunk driver), and left me feeling better.

The world has lost a character, and a cherished mom...

The world has lost a character, and a cherished mom...  My mom – Elinor Bernice Dilatush – died early Wednesday morning.  She was free of pain and fear, comfortably in bed.  Up until just the past few days she was active, happy (oh, so happy!), and excited about her new situation here in Northern Utah.  My brothers and sister and I are thankful that her last days were as good as they were, and that she didn't have a long, miserable time at the end.  We're also thankful that she was able to see my brother Scott and Debbie (my wife) once again; these were high on her bucket list.  If we could ask her what regrets she had, I suspect her answer would have been something like “That the 2016 election has Trump and Clinton as candidates!”  As regrets go, that's not so bad...

I will be writing more about her when some time has passed and the emotions aren't so raw.  I'm expecting that writing about her will be much more challenging than writing about my dad was, as my memories about her are less about stories and more about feelings...