Reflections & Musings

The mission of Lisa’s Legacy is to support someone who is grieving. The bags help to reach out to someone who is suffering from a loss. People respond to someone offering them a grief bag and often are open to meeting with the giver of the bag. That’s where the compassionate conversation can take place. Our minister came to call on us at home the day that Lisa died. Lisa’s minister from Michigan called us on the phone a day or two after she died. While they both offered comf

Why Didn’t We Think of This Sooner? Recently, Lisa’s Legacy was applying for a grant from an organization that has a focus on young children. My sister said, ”why don’t you make a grief bag for young children?” That was an epiphany! Since the inception of Lisa’s Legacy, we have used items for the bag that were geared towards an adult---adult coloring pages, journal, notecards, tea etc. But quite often, when a death occurs, the adults may be consumed with the busyness of th

"It will be all right" My family and close friends recognize that we are coming up on five years since Lisa died. For me, the grief is still painful. The memories are still pretty raw when I allow them to creep into my consciousness (and even times when I’m not expecting them). Recently, I had a “grief burst”---a time when grief burst into my everyday life when I wasn’t expecting it. The nurse at the doctor’s office said to my husband and me “It’ll be all right”. Those wor

A definition for numbness, according to Merriam-Webster is “unable to think, feel, or react normally because of something that shocks or upsets you”. That definition fit my husband, our older daughter and me, to a “T” after Lisa’s death. In a way, the numbness is a form of grace when grief is so overwhelming. I think that we would have been bombarded with too much stimuli from everyday life---phone calls, appointments, household chores and meals if we weren’t numbed. The gri

During these most unusual times, my husband and I have experienced deaths in each of our families and with friends. My aunt, my husband’s cousin and a good friend’s mother all passed away during April or May of 2020. Funerals were very limited or postponed for a later celebration of life. My friend’s mother resided in a nursing home until her passing. As with pandemic regulations, no visitors were allowed in to the home. He was unable to go in to her apartment to retrieve her

During this time, many people are told to “shelter in place”, but there are others who are considered “essential employees” and need to go to work. What happens when a loved one is an essential employee? In some cases, the essential employee is living in the same house as you are or the front-line worker may be an adult living on their own. Regardless, the concern, worry and trepidation are there. You wake up in the morning, thinking about them as they dress and prepare for

I am a “high-risk” person. Over age 65 with underlying health issues. Therefore I am pretty much staying in and avoiding exposure to others during this COVID-19 siege. I am also an extrovert and I’m sorely missing socialization! In a sense, I am grieving for the life as I knew it before the Virus. One of the things that I miss the most is going out to eat. Almost always, Steve and I go out to eat with another couple or a small group. One couple likes to try new resta

Someone said to me the other day (when talking about a ten year old boy), "He seems fine. You can't tell that his mother died two months ago." I thought to myself that there is no way that that young boy is just fine! Dr. Alan Wolfeldt always said that "mourning is the outward sign of a loss and grieving is the inner sign of loss." A person may not show their experience with death, but they are still grieving just the same. And sometimes a dramatic, radical change in a pe

We had a Lisa's Legacy board meeting this week. What a dynamic group of people! Lots of ideas, plans and suggestions flowed during the entire meeting. The board came to a consensus that, after four years, it is time to revise the current rack card (thank you for the first one Jen). A rack card is a 4 X 81/2 cardstock with pictures, text and graphics that gives information about a business or organization. It is designed to fit in a rack that holds numerous cards, br

I've been thinking about caregivers ever since Steve and I had lunch with two other couples. Out of the six of us, four people had need of a spouse as a caregiver. As far as I can tell, there are two categories of caregivers. There are those who care for someone who has a life-long disability that is not life-threatening. These are people who are charged with meeting the needs of someone with severe autism, cerebral palsy, blindness etc. The second group that I'll focus o

When reading a grief quote last week, the phrase ended with "we will hold your memory in our hearts forever". When I thought about it, actually we won't hold you in our hearts forever, but in our minds forever. Our brains. Who came up with the commonly accepted phrase of "keeping a loved one in our hearts"? And since I've heard that phrase all of my life, I assume that "in our hearts" has been around for a long time. I suppose that it has to do with a heart often depicts l

i'm writing today about the time period when both parents are gone and the last surviving parent's funeral is past. Now it's time to start dividing up their personal property. The money was easy---split evenly three ways between my two sisters and I. But the property was another matter. We gathered all items that we thought had monetary value. Mom and Dad had 11 nicely framed pictures, some more costly than others. They had a lladro nativity set. They had a treadmill.

I've come across two new ways to commemorate a loved one that do not appear on the insert page in the Lisa's Legacy bag. Both of them have to do with food, which is kind of ironic since Lisa herself tried to avoid food for the last years. Anyway, the first idea is to take one of the loved one's favorite food dish and tweak it, name it after the loved one, and post the recipe on social media. Let's say the loved one really enjoyed pizza. Take their favorite meats, veggies,

By Susan Judd He comes to me in my dreams. He is as I remember him from years past, a lanky teen on the threshold of young manhood, with a mop of brown wavy hair and glasses. “Help me,” he cries. I can only see the top of his head. His mouth forms a perfect “O.” His head bobs above the water one more time. Then he is gone. I wake up, shaking. More than 400 miles separated us but I would see him every summer when my family returned to what we fondly called our Pennsylvania h

By Susan Judd She silently enters the restaurant, abiding by the sign that says, “Please Seat Yourself” and makes her way slowly to a booth on the side away from the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. She nervously glances around, smiling at the toddler who is moving at a break-neck pace around the tables, happily waving his sippy cup in the air. I notice this woman, first for her smile and then I look again. She reminds me a lot of my mother with her cautious, un

By Michelle Grim The passing of a loved one, whether expected or not, alters our path for the days directly afterwards and for many years that follow. In 2015, our family experienced the loss of my aunt at the age of 67. Our children ranged from the ages of 3 - 13 years old. Each child experienced the loss differently. Some expressed their sadness through tears, others through art, and others through writing. A few days following the service for my Aunt, a person from ou

By January Simpson When I agreed to write a blog post for Lisa’s Legacy of Hope, it didn’t even occur to me that I might have trouble doing it. Not only have I experienced loss, I’ve completed a nine-month pastoral care residency at a local hospital—how hard can writing a blog about grief be? I’m a grief pro! It has been maybe two months now since I agreed to this, and yet here is the blank document on my computer staring back at me. There are lots of reasons to fall back o

Besides being a fun word to say, juxtaposition is defined as “the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect”. I feel like the lives of my family and friends are juxtaposed. On the one hand, I have family and friends who have gone on the trip of a lifetime to Europe. One family couple has just returned, one couple is on a river cruise right now and one couple is anticipating their trip in two weeks. How exciting! Our good friends have just

By Susan Judd After waiting a few minutes, you are next in line at a bookstore. You become acutely aware of a small presence standing patiently behind you. You turn, and you see the boy. He is about 6 or 7 years old. He is wearing athletic shorts, a T-shirt and sandals, the unofficial uniform of boys his age. He is clutching a book with the reverence many of us reserve for priceless heirlooms. You smile at him, and then at his mother. She is young, you note. You were once the

I enjoy using social media and especially like to keep up with what friends and family are doing. My social media “friends” range from my family, my church members, our neighbors, my co-workers as well as some of both of our daughters’ friends. Recently I’ve noticed that doing this social media thing can also bring pangs of grief when reading about Lisa’s friends. I saw last week that one of her best friends from high school just got engaged. Great pictures of her friend and