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A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon – Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks The murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and the subsequent acquittal of his murderers and public viewings of Till’s mutilated body, stirred the American consciousness and provoked outrage across the country. In 1960, Gwendolyn Brooks published her own […]
Continue ReadingA Grief Observed From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the power and pain of Black mourning. BY MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH June 22, 2017 Mamie Till-Mobley wrote her memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, in 2003, the same year she died of heart failure, and 47 years after the lynching of her son, […]
Continue ReadingWhat Martin Luther King’s Daughter Has to Say About Grief by Lynda Cheldelin Fell She was just 5-years-old when her famous daddy, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Thanks in part to the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the young Bernice King on her mother’s lap, most are familiar with that story. Yet a recent New York Times article about […]
Continue ReadingWhen Great Souls Die [Editor: this is an excerpt from a poem entitled “When Great Trees Fall”] When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great […]
Continue ReadingPhoto courtesy Jessicapetersonart.com Please Don’t Tell me To Move On by Anne Peterson I have a Master’s Degree in grief. Not a real one, but believe me, I should have an honorary one. And one thing I know for sure. Grieving stinks. All of a sudden you’re invited to a party you never wanted […]
Continue ReadingOne Step at a Time: Dealing with Stuff After a Loved One Dies Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash When the funeral is past, the estate settled, and the mourners gone home to their families, there’s one daunting task that remains: dealing with your loved one’s things. Once a source of clutter and frustration, knick-knacks, unwashed laundry, and […]
Continue ReadingEditor’s Note: New York comedian Michael Cruz Kayne decided to write on Twitter about his infant’s death, on the 10th anniversary of losing his son, who was just 34 days old. Twitter responded in full force with more than 140,000 people reacting, many sharing their gutting stories of loss and grief, and offering support for […]
Continue ReadingIt is so amazing as I look around to see, everything glittering but yet I feel empty. Today was the day we said I do. .Who would have thought? Who would have knew. That you would leave me with a empty space in my heart, being when I first laid eyes on you. It was […]
Continue ReadingThere are several suggested New Year’s resolutions for the grieving. This one is from Hospice of the Red River Valley: I resolve to not place time limits on my grief; it will take as long as it takes. I resolve to acknowledge my grief as my own—that it is as individual as I am—and will take […]
Continue ReadingMy Love Didn’t End Anne Peterson My love didn’t end when you took your last breath, my love didn’t die when your eyes closed in death. If anything happened, I’m sure my love grew, from the tears that I’ve cried, and I still cry for you. When people are tired of the grief that […]
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