6 Months of Grief Project: Day 67

The Afterlife/The Unknown

This is Day 67 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Is there an afterlife? What happens when we die? Is there some aspect of our soul or spirit that helps us? Even though my husband was no angel when he was alive, is he one now? These are questions I don't think anyone can answer. Sometimes I feel my husband's energy very strongly with me. Other times I can barely feel him. When I do feel his presence, is that him visiting me? When I find myself in a desperate situation and I beg for help, does he hear me? I've had several moments in the past months where I really needed his help, and I feel like I got sent the help I needed. Did he make that happen? I don't think anyone really has the answers to these questions. I think different answers my be true for different people.

I'm setting up my new cubicle at my new job - a job that my late husband seems to have played a strong role in helping me find. I want to make a little corner of my office that's dedicated to him. Is it weird to have a shrine to your dead husband at your new job? I've already "introduced" him to several people at the office. He is such a huge part of me, and I still feel married to him. I want him to have a presence in a space that I spend so much time in. But a 5 foot poster of him wearing a leather corset and breathing fire is probably too much, right? I guess I need a "How to Make an Work-Appropriate Shrine to Your Dead Husband in Your New Cubicle" how-to guide. Perhaps I'll write it.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Widowed Village
• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing

• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief

• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine

• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times

• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.