Compost

YES. I am very excited for new burial alternatives. This is fabulous news.

In case you haven't read it:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/us/washington-human-composting-legal-trnd/index.html

We cannot continue to handle our deceased in the same way we have for years. Innovation needs to meet us everywhere, even in death. 

This is good news. Now I just have to hold out until it becomes available in Canada. 

Legacy- in life and death

For me, nothing is more inspiring that a human's altruistic desire to help future generations.

When we don't believe we will benefit from an act in itself, yet we do it anyway.
That is philanthropy. That is what truly creates a legacy. That is what ensures we will never be forgotten, even after death.

Today, a beautiful legacy gift has been announced to a powerful health partnership between 3 organizations in Hamilton, Ontario.

Thank you to this generous couple for making such a deep impact.

Read about a very exciting legacy here: https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/a-letter-to-the-community-from-charles-and-margaret-juravinski/

Levity

An old colleague sent me a text the other day. His quick message made me laugh and it was so appreciated. 

His message was "Why did I think of you right away when I saw this?". Along with the message was a link to a tweet. 

I guess I have a reputation. Thank you, Joel! 

Here is that link... enjoy. :) 

https://twitter.com/brandonco4/status/1133019560448282624

Ottawa Race Weekend

On Saturday I ran a 10k. Well, more accurately I did run/walk intervals.

But, I did it (under 1 hour and 30 mins... which for me is an accomplishment!)

And the great thing about Ottawa Race Weekend is that it provides crowds of spectators and throngs of people everywhere along the route providing you with encouragement, even for slow stragglers like me! 

And the love and support that you feel from complete strangers is so helpful. You feel loved, you feel seen. It's amazing. 

Flipside: When people are in pain, why don't we do the same? We don't often rally behind the aggrieved. We rarely let them feel seen. 

Note - I'm not talking about mass casualty events like the Humboldt Broncos crash, 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina. In those heavily media-covered events, the best of humankind does come out of the woodwork. 

I'm talking about the stragglers. Those who are grieving in our everyday lives, limping along somewhat unnoticed, and perhaps embarrassed that they are having such a rough time. Can we start to see them as being just as in need of support as those in the more grief-acknowledgeable spaces?  

Today I am issuing a challenge to all of us to start showing up like the crowds in Ottawa... 

Colleagues

A co-worker is a strangely intimate relationship... not friendship, in that a colleague is not likely to be your most trusted confidante. And certainly not tied to each other by a bond of wedding vow or blood relation.

And yet, in some regards I think our colleagues know us better than those closest to us. When I come into my office, I often share details about my evening. What filled my hours between leaving the day prior until the moment I stepped foot back into the building.

My best friends don't get that level of detail (in fact, we only really catch up once a month - if we're lucky!), and my parents and siblings certainly don't hear about trips to the mall, or funny incidents when picking up my daughter from school.

So it is a closeness of obligation, but an authentic bond nonetheless.

I have had two colleagues die during my tenure at McMaster. I didn't know either one too well, but interacted with both frequently. And at very odd times, I still find myself thinking about them. Not in depth, not in a way that changes my day, but thinking about either one out of the blue is a very odd situation to encounter. And with each moment that gives me pause, a very strange emotion also comes with it. Guilt. Who am I to have these weird pangs of grief? I barely knew him/her!

Bizarre right?

A mother's wisdom

My mom was a registered nurse for about 40 years. During her career she worked in pediatrics, rehabilitation, long-term care and palliative care. I asked her to tell me a bit about her interactions with death during her career.

When she became a nurse in 1967 there wasn't any kind of formal training on how to attend to professional grief, the grief of patient's families, or the grief of patients themselves. It was on the job training at its core.

One memory mom shared with me was about when she did a few shifts as a private care nurse. A patient who was in horrible pain asked my mother to help him die. This has stuck with her. She knows he was in excruciating pain and no one had done anything about it. Mom told me she had always been an advocate to give as many meds as they could. She hated to see the suffering, hated when pain of one of her patients was visible. her pet peeve - when pain was visible. hated to see the suffering

Mom tells me that she thinks that death was always much harder on the people watching - the family. For her and other staff, that had to set personal barriers, had to remove themselves.

The care for the dying patient became mechanical, devoid of emotion. When a patient needs to be flipped on to the other side, it is about the logistics of doing that. When you need to ensure the patient takes meds, you administer the meds. There is "not a heck of a lot of time for emotional reaction", so you compartmentalize and deal with the task at hand.

I asked mom if there were ever any emotional supports, and there were't any that she could recall. A nurse was simply expected to be a jack of all trades, expected to be able to deal with death, and "you step in".

Now, it's not great that RNs in mom's day had to deal with so much without specialized training, but society today has sterilized everything about our interactions - to a point that we simply cannot recall that death is a natural part of life. Messy - yes - but natural.

I'm wondering what it says about us today that we have such a difficult time simply 'stepping in' for our fellow humans?

Milo & Button

We just adopted a dog. A 9 year old, overweight cockapoo named Milo.

He probably doesn't have many years left in him, but he seemed like the perfect fit to our family. Our daughter, an only-child, is absolutely smitten. Which means, she will also be absolutely heart-broken when Milo dies. 

The death of a pet is the first death that many children face. For me, the death of my cat Button was something I didn't have to face until I was well into my teens, but it taught me a few great lessons about death. Some of them were:

1) it's ok if you don't cry and it doesn't mean that you didn't love your pet.

Life translation - grief likely isn't going to hit us how we expect. I would argue that in terms of professional relationships, this is even more true.

2) sometimes a death is not about the death itself. (sidebar: my dad actually accidentally ran Button over with the family vehicle. At the time, I rearranged my cat's death to be more about my poor father - the trauma of running over the family pet mustn't have been easy on him! - than about me grieving my cat's death)

Life translation - it is ok- 'normal even' - to think about other people and their trauma or pain, when grieving a death in your own life. It doesn't have to diminish how you look at you own grief, but it may. And both are completely fine. 

3) laughter is fine. (sidebar: one day not long after Button's death, my friend was singing in class and our teacher jokingly asked someone to 'kill that dying cat'. I let out some sort of dramatic noise and then my peers and I started laughing... it was cathartic and quite hilarious to see my poor high school math teacher try to make amends for the comment!)

Life translation - death is a normal human occurrence. Laughter is a natural human reaction. Just because the two may interact at some point, doesn't make either one "wrong".

"Outsourcing death"

Like most things in today's world, we've gotten used to using vendors or outsourcing various duties to service-providers. Many of us hire people to clean our home, people to walk our dogs, and rely pretty consistently on pre-determined meal/grocery deliveries. It's just the way of the world now.

And in this mentality, many people would say that we also relegate the decisions we make to other professionals as well. Makeup artists, fashion designers, and hair stylists come to mind - who am I to say what looks better when they've done this their entire career? I defer completely.

Death is no exception.

The creator of the Death Café movement (Jon Underwood) has been quoted as saying that he initiated the movement because in his viewpoint, western society has become used to outsourcing our death discussions to those 'more qualified': medical professionals like doctors and nurses, or those involved in the funeral process like religious clergy and undertakers. According to Underwood, we've completely lost any remaining idea of involvement in the gravest of life discussions (pun intended).

I completely agree with Underwood. I think we figure that we don't have the expertise, so why bother talking about it? Why even bother considering it? But, the whole idea of the death café movement is that death is an individual experience. The talk isn't meant for the others in the room. It is talking, to encourage introspection and consideration of our own path, preferences, beliefs, and wishes.

And no one else will be an expert in our death narrative. It is for you and you alone. And for this reason, we really should start to consider what that narrative will look like.

GOT

 - Caution: spoilers ahead! - 

Well, unless you've lived under a rock for the past few days, you know that the HBO series Game of Thrones has now finished. And although the finale season seems to be very contentious, I think that it stayed fairly true to its beginnings, complete with plenty of death scenes and representations of mourning. 

Whether you watched the show or not, and whether you agreed with how your favourite character completed his/her journey, I'm guessing you are aware that death plays a pretty prominent role in the series. Some of it is very much a fantasy, containing unhelpful death imagery of zombie "wights", but other portions of the show genuinely did a great job at portraying the complexity of grief. 

In my mind, no other character demonstrated the tortured path of grief like Peter Dinklage's character Tyrion. Tyrion grieved for family his whole life as his family viewed him as a monster, so when he shoots and kills his own father with a crossbow, he is caught in between guilt and satisfaction, sadness and relief. All very plausible emotions given the story arc of that character. 

But in this last season, the final goodbye between Tyrion and his brother Jaime, and then Tyrion's reaction to seeing his siblings dead under the ruble of the Red Keep... well, let's just say that in my mind this was one of the best grief portrayals I have ever seen. 

If you're personally uncomfortable with witnessing other people's pain, does fictional character portrayal of the same type of pain also make you uneasy? If so, I encourage practice... and though GOT may not be everyone's cup of tea, I suggest you start here.

Mortality

Yesterday was World IBD Day. IBD stands for Inflammatory Bowel Disease - Crohn's and/or Ulcerative Colitis - and is basically a group of diseases where your digestive tract is chronically swollen, bleeding, and painful.

I have IBD. And when it hit and upturned my life completely, IBD made me face my own mortality in ways I didn't want, or expect.

Here's the thing about chronic disease. When you are going through the worst of it, you just don't think about it. And people all around you are telling you how strong you are. And if you're like me, you nod and say thanks... but it doesn't really sink in.

In fact, it didn't sink in for me through three very serious surgeries, the rapid loss of over 80 lbs, the time away from my family in isolation, the multiple hospitals stays, the severe pain, severe dehydration, or the shame, loneliness, desperation or tears. I just went with it. I never once thought about the severity in and of itself, or the fact that I quite literally was at risk of death.

But a few years past my worst stages, I look back, and I find shock. Every. Single. Time. I look at pictures of my emaciated body and all I see is a gaunt girl who didn't quite grasp what was happening. Maybe that was a coping mechanism. Maybe it was denial...

No matter what it was, when I look back today I am encountering my own mortality. I came close to death. I can't afford not to think about it. My disease is chronic. It means that although I have a fix in place now, I could very easily find myself back there again. So I need to think about death and what it means. Life is too short to just journey on through the toughest times without open eyes.

Denial may have seen me through my last bout with IBD, but I plan on living through the rest of my life - serious encounters included - with my eyes wide open.

I think we all should. Life is all around us. And the ostriches are simply missing out.

Netflix & chill out

Confession: I love a good binge-watch. When "Netflix & Chill" became a thing, naive and idiotic me didn't understand there was double-entendre... I honestly just thought 'yeah, of course Netflix and chill, because chilling out while binge-watching is awesome!'

Well, double-entendre or not, I have your next binging assignment. I heartily recommend watching The Casketeers. It is a show based in New Zealand, about Māori funeral directors. It is much more about the behind-the-scenes family/friend dynamics, but the little glimpses of death education it provides make me happy.

Communication, empathy, professionalism, humour, witty banter. This show has it all.

Talk is not cheap

When it comes to the topic of death, talk is like a powerful antidote. If we don't talk about death, it tends to take on this mystic power, and we enable it with avoidance. Fear is a powerful motivator. And we give that fear extra power by lying to ourselves. Our society has mastered this actually. "It's morbid to talk about death" - sound familiar?

But a death renaissance is happening. And I'm all for it. Death still scares the living daylight out of me (see what I did there?), but the more I write, talk, and present on this topic, the more I realize that I am taking a bit of its power away.

This is an article from 2017, but still so relevant: https://undark.org/article/death-dying-america-anthropologist/

No matter what your profession, no matter what your stockholders, death has a 100% certainty to affect you in your workplace. Talking about it won't even the odds, but do it anyway.

Death to social media (on social media)

Related to yesterday's post... READ THIS:

https://hyperallergic.com/497552/the-dead-may-outnumber-the-living-on-facebook-in-50-years/

"...the number of dead users could grow as high as 4.9 BILLION before the end of the century"?! Whoa, Facebook... I think it is time to figure out how we can get a handle on this.

Sidebar - does your workplace use a database of any kind? Are there parameters with what to do with a person's digital record once they die? I work in fundraising. For us it is pretty straightforward (at most charitable organizations anyway). Donor in lifetime becomes "Estate of donor" in death if the organization has been confirmed to be making an estate gift. If not, a donor's record is often 'closed' to one extent or another, being marked 'deceased/dissolved' alongside Foundations or Companies that have folded.

On social media, I'd rather be "deceased/dissolved" when I die as opposed to 'In memory of" to live on in perpetuity.

I'll leave my legacy how I see fit, thanks. I don't need an old high school acquaintance posting pictures of me at 17 to remind everyone how awkward I was.

Digitally dying

I'm a bit of a social media whore. There... I've said it. And each platform has a very different purpose for me.

Facebook is for personal: pictures of my daughter, reminiscing, and interacting with family members (which until recently included my 93 year old grandmother.)

Twitter is for professional: I interact with many fundraisers, post about McMaster University (where I work), and explore death education posts. I see this as my professional social media... (although truth-be-told I didn't always use it this way)

LinkedIn: Networking and CV capture.

Instagram is my gratitude practice: I try to take photos throughout my day of things that catch my eye. It remind me that beauty is all around, and reminds me to take a second glance about me.

Vivino is for my wine ratings: For no one in particular, and mainly just me.

Pinterest is for my crafty endeavours: hair and nail aspirations, home reno dream projects, and parenting hacks or humblebrags.

So yes, you could say that I am addicted to my phone, and to these apps.

But what happens when I die? My husband and I have complete and up-to-date wills, powers of attorney, and have had multiple conversations, but I don't think we have ever discussed whether I need him to go through all these platforms in order to close my accounts. For the record, I don't want people visiting my posthumous pages, and definitely don't want anyone assuming any of these handles to post on my behalf when I am gone. But these preferences aren't currently captured anywhere but here. Guess I should tell someone.

Proximity warning

One of my closest friends sent me a brilliant BBC article. It was entitled "Death of a close friend 'can impact health for years' (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48238600)

I have to admit, that upon reading the title, I kind of went 'well, yeah...duh'. After all, grief of any type can negatively impact our health and wellbeing. 

But then I read on. The article speaks about research out of Stirling University and Australian National University and the main research is specific to the special associated disenfranchised grief that can be experienced with the death of a close friend, specifically because it isn't recognized by society at large or our constructs. 

I have long had an issue with bereavement leave. Think about it - most workplace policies detail the exact relationship you should have with the deceased in order to qualify for a standard amount of time. Three days is the norm. (sidebar - who the hell made this the 'norm'? Is there anything more inane? Three days is barely enough to even deal with funeral arrangements and planning. But I digress...)

In the case of the type of death detailed in the study by these two institutions, the death of a friend would not even be a blip for most workplaces. And sure, there are likely flexible arrangements or caring bosses that would simply make it work. But the policy in itself is already telling the bereft employee that their grief doesn't matter. It doesn't qualify. 

As a manger, I sincerely hope that in the moments when it matters most for my employees, that I am able to remove the jargon, the policy, and the process, and be there for those who are grieving. I hope that I can recognize grief, even when society may not. Most of all, I hope that I can be empathetic, even when my own very flawed human nature does not personally recognize the pain. I hope that we can all someday understand that defined proximity does not dictate our grief. 

“Grief is a multitasking emotion”

Picture your typical day at work. now imagine a colleague/stakeholder has recently experienced a death in their family. They come into your workspace and crack a joke. Or ask you whether you caught the Raptors game, or the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones... 

What is your gut reaction? Do you think nothing of it and continue along with the path of conversation, or is there a small part of you that pauses and wonders how this individual is speaking so nonchalantly? Do you automatically think that the individual is covering up their grief, or is there even a millisecond that you question whether they are grieving 'properly'?

It's human to have any of the above reactions. But it's something we need to work on. The truth is that those who are grieving even the most personal loss can have moments of joy, laughter, silliness... you name it. And our society is still stuck in the death-denying realm of believing that 'normal grief' looks like the bereft wearing black and walking around crying constantly. 

Spoiler - there is no normal grief. Especially in the workplace. 

Here is a starting point to learning more about the duplicity of a grieving state: 

 https://www.ted.com/talks/nora_mcinerny_we_don_t_move_on_from_grief_we_move_forward_with_it/up-next?language=en&utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=talk&utm_term=

Ball in a box

I recently saw a post on Twitter that detailed an analogy that apparently went viral. I had never heard of the analogy and when I read it my mind was blown. It works perfectly. Apparently the original post was inspired by advice the Twitter user (@LaurenHerschel) received from her doctor. 

The theory goes a little like this - when someone close to you dies, the grief is like a ball within a box. Inside the box there is also a pain button. So with nowhere to go inside the box and the grief ball being very large at the onset, it bounces against the pain button almost constantly. The grief ball hits the pain button and you are sad, bereft, overcome with grief. 

But, as time passes, the grief ball shrinks slightly in size. As the ball shrinks, it bounces more freely in the box. The grief ball may bounce dangerously close to the pain button, but doesn't hit it as regularly as when the grief ball was full-sized. 

The catch is that when the grief ball is small, (because it will never be non-existent), it can hit the pain button without warning. No amount of planning or preparation can warn you for when the pain button gets hit... and when it does get pushed, it can feel the same. As if the full-sized grief ball has hit it. The only difference is that it catches the griever off guard. 

In our everyday lives, it is entirely possible that we are interacting with people whose grief ball is bouncing dangerously close to the pain button. How do we ensure we're ready to support when the griever themselves may not be ready for when the pain hits? 

Truth & Reconciliation; Grief & Empathy

On Friday I had the honour of attending a cultural sensitivity training activity - a field trip to the Woodland Cultural Centre, site of the Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School. This was one of the most impactful experiences of my adult life and I am still processing.

A survivor shared her brave story with our group. The building itself is under renovation so we were not able to enter, but we also received a video tour of the facility. During the tour, more personal survivor stories were also shared.

Throughout the afternoon, I was struck with deep empathy and sadness. To hear what humans have done to fellow humans, in our own backyard... its simply unfathomable. The survivor who shared her story today spoke about the importance of listening. Just LISTENING as people speak their truths.

No further action required. In grief, in life. it is really just that simple.

Open our ears, shut our mouths. Listen.


See http://woodlandculturalcentre.ca/the-campaign/ to find out how you can help this important initiative to #savetheevidence

Human connection

A few days ago I posted in my full nerdiness. And here I go again:

"I am one with the Force; the Force is with me" 

- Donnie Yen's character Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One. 

In Star Wars, the Jedi believe that when someone dies, their spirit adds to the Force. And then the Force is what guides the living Jedi to victory, correct decision-making, etc. 

I think that true empathy is our non sci-fi version of the Force. If we are truly able to put ourselves into the mindset of a friend, family member, client, or even perfect stranger, AND if we can sit with them in their grief, i honestly think that the end product is strength for the grieving person. I think this simple act connects us at the very deepest of levels. I think it binds us together as humans, and supports us long term.

My goal is to be one with my fellow humans, in my job, and in my life.

Funeral Duty

I couldn't attend my uncle-in-law's (is that an actual term? sounds ridiculous) funeral. But my husband has gone. Begrudgingly, but attending all the same. He asked me my thoughts, and I pushed him out the door. Out of duty or a feeling that it was what is expected... perhaps. But more than that, to be there for his mom. With a complicated grief and complicated family dynamic, comes a battle ground for grief wars. Clashes in what some people view is right/wrong, important/trivial... you name it. Grief will bring it all forward. 

My MIL will need her son there to support her. And she'll need to ensure she's 'dumping out'. That is why my husband is attending. He needs to go and assume the role of the most outer-ring. And if he needs someone to dump to, he'll have to be careful that it doesn't come out to his mom. He'll need to ensure he calls me up. 

"Comfort in, dump out" - the ring theory created by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman - first presented in an Op-Ed in the LA Times. A fascinating and I think enormously helpful tool to help us manage through especially sticky times. 

The complicated battleground of strained family politics is one that will be present for the next few days for my family. I hope that those at the centre of our rings will feel supported, and that my hubby and I can do our best to keep the spotlight where it needs to be. 

Wish us luck!

Personal remote loss

Saturday was my daughter's first communion. Although we're not intensely "big R" religious, we had a small family gathering at our house after the Mass. While my mother-in-law was at our home, and after the cake, etc was finished, we got a message from my husband's cousin.

This wouldn't be odd except for the fact that we never hear from this cousin. Long story short, we eventually touched base with this cousin and my mother-in-law got some bad news. Her brother had died earlier that day.

A day that started as a happy occasion was now clouded by a very complicated relationship and a death. My mother-in-law wasn't close with her brother, and it was not altogether a surprise that he died. But, it was a death just the same.

A personal loss for my MIL, but a remote one. A complicated loss.

Those of us around her readied ourselves to be there for her in her grief.
And it didn't really come. But it may.

And like the relationship, I expect that the grief may be messy: personal, yet distant or remote.

Grief work

I wish I could give everyone I interact with some very simple homework. Go home, look in the mirror, and talk to yourself about death. Your own mortality; the sadness, anger, or confusion you may feel; your belief structure around what happens after death.

For the record, I need to complete this homework as well. And its not the type of homework that you complete once, hand in, and get an A...

Instead it is the type of homework that needs to be re-tested every week. The type of work that changes depending on your personal circumstance. The type of work that sometimes may seem perfectly simple, laughable really. On other days, it is the type of work that will be excruciating. 

But we need to do it. It's important. 

Cemetaries

My husband, daughter and I were driving somewhere the other day and we passed a cemetery. Every time we pass a graveyard, I recall with a smile the very first time we explained one's purpose to my daughter...

I think Caton would have been about 3 and a half or 4 at the time. Her pépé (grandfather) had died when she was almost 2, but she clearly didn't recall anything about that. So we were driving past one and she asked what the big space was as we passed by. I responded by saying it was a cemetery and that it was where dead bodies are buried. I remember vividly that her eyes got wide and that she repeated me. And then we didn't speak about it further. 

A few days later, we passed another cemetery and all of a sudden, she got very excited and squealed with excitement something to the effect of 'look mama, there's dead bodies there". 

I remember bursting out laughing. I think i was mortified at the time, thinking that this was somehow gong to scar her... 

Fast forward to this past week. We passed a beautiful cemetery, and I said something about it. My husband actually teased me and said I was being morbid. But then, my daughter commented that she also thought it looked beautiful. We then continued on with a conversation about how sad it was that the brick wall around part of the graveyard seemed to have been vandalized and Caton indicated she was going to fix it someday. 

Lesson: Monkey see, monkey do. In order to change society's issues with death, we need to attack in very practical ways. And the best way to do this is by modelling the behaviour. 

Say the words death around children. Speak about different people's beliefs structures when you pass by a funeral procession. Discuss your own funeral or celebration wishes. 

Have. the. conversations. 

RIP Chewbacca

A few years ago I wrote an article for a fundraising publication. In the article, I explored the feelings that can arise when a celebrity dies. Robin Williams had just died at the time, and I found that profoundly sad.

Yesterday the world found out about another sad celeb death: Peter Mayhew. 

And today, on May the 4th (if you don't know why this is relevant, please don't tell me - I'm not a deranged fan, but definitely enjoy and respect the Star Wars universe - I may have to sit you down and force you to watch them in succession), I'm thinking about the impact his character Chewbacca had on millions of people. 

What a legacy to leave behind: A much-beloved character and the ultimate in best-friend characters. 

Chewbacca didn't say much... ok, he didn't say anything that wasn't a wookie growl/howl, but he had an impact all the same. Is that the definition of a life well-lived? The general public never knew Peter as Peter, and likely had never even heard his voice. But he was loved for what he did, for what he created. 

Many people think that grief is a byproduct of love. Is sadness then about the love for the person who has died, or for the legacy of what the person made us feel? 

No matter the reason, I'm sad the the actor who played Chewie is no longer living. RIP to a great actor, who did it all in a giant hairy costume. 

Taboo

In my role as a fundraiser, I tend to have a lot of conversations over meals or coffee. 

This past week was no exception. I had a lovely lunch with a donor, an internal faculty member and champion, and two students. I always feel incredibly lucky to step away from the office, from email, from daily tasks, in order to facilitate these conversations. 

At the end of this week's lunch my academic colleague was asking about my trip a few weeks ago. I mentioned that I had been at a conference, and she then asked a few more questions and I ended up describing my presentation to her. 

Her response was very encouraging to me. She was incredibly inquisitive, and genuinely interested in what I had to say. She asked many questions about how I 'got into' death and grief, and listened intently as I described my side-passion. The two young students were noticeably silent. 

I tried to engage them both in the conversation, mentioning that I was likely around their age when I first took a thanatology course. To no avail. 

But I really can't blame them. 

1) I always remind myself that we never know what others are experiencing. One or both students may be grieving in one way or another and it may have felt like a topic they were not ready to engage in. I think it is important to always give the benefit of the doubt here - we will never know what other people are going through. Go gentle. 

And/or 2) like many young people (they were in the third year of undergraduate studies, or roughly 20 or 21 years of age) they may just not have the capacity or willingness to engage in death conversation. 

And if it was #2... this just makes me sad. I mean it's great that many young adults have never had to encounter death personally, but so very sad that we don't better equip people. 

Grief allies

Yesterday I was moved by three words that Jason Rosenthal used in his TED talk. This lead me to think about what we can do to become an ally for those who grieve, within the professional roles we play.

What would it look like to become a grief ally? How can I inject this into my work, and then bring it forward as something I can encourage in my team, my peers, my profession? 

As a fundraiser, I'm already a natural listener and observer. I feel these skillsets are innate for me. But, as my husband will tell you, I am also very opinionated, and I try to help or solve OFTEN. Also, I play devil's advocate to help people see different points of view. 

I think that for me being a grief ally is suppressing some of myself. I'm sure I have gotten it wrong more than a few times. I think being a grief ally is also about continuing to remind myself that my opinions, thoughts, statements, and (most certainly) judgements are not helpful. 

I'll have to continue in my journey if I really want to hone this skillset. Grief ally-dom is not likely something we can ever perfect. Pain is very hard to sit with, and not fix. I think being a grief ally is about knowing that.

"Intentional empty space"

I just watched a TED talk by a man who was the subject of his dying wife's NYT Modern Love article "You May Want to Marry My Husband" (as an aside, if you haven't read this piece, please do yourself a favour and google it!). Amy Krouse Rosenthal was certainly a brilliant writer and her husband Jason Rosenthal has done a beautiful job at highlighting what he felt was an impactful gift his wife provided to him. A 'blank sheet of paper" as he calls it, a fresh start. For some who are grieving, they may resent this point of view. Because in order to have that fresh start, they've had to experience unspeakable pain... so Jason's presentation may not be for everyone. However, one term that Jason uses is incredibly relatable. 

Creating intentional empty space. 

This space can definitely be lonely in grief, but I think that for those of us around a grieving person, this is the only gift we can actually provide. Let the griever fill the space, let the griever dictate what comes next. Allow that empty space. Be deliberate about that. Focus energy there. 

As professionals in any capacity, if we are seeking to be helpful to the individuals we serve (donors, students, customers), we need to become grief allies. We can achieve this by creating this intentional empty space.