Writing for sanity, for sanctity, for survival. DeSalvo showed me that this is not a new concept, for the Greats– Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf along with Alice Walker–have all done it. Miller was about to take his own life after his wife ran off with a female lover. Woolf was molested by her step-brother. How did they heal from their heartaches? They wrote, furiously. Have you had a tragedy in your life that will not let you go? Writing through it can be redemptive and healing. DeSalvo states that in order to allow writing to be therapeutic we must honor our pain, loss and grief.

But chances are, you already know this. Your tragedy has caused you to look it straight in the face and you have picked up your pen and poured out your pain. You are standing today, perhaps even thriving because the ability to write has saved you. It has caused you to look at your heartache and be able to tolerate it.

But how do we successfully use this creativeness of pen and paper to work through the pain of a parent who has died, a spouse who has betrayed us or even a God we feel has let us down? Can we write to help others and in turn, reach those like us who can learn and grow from our experiences? Can we use our pain and as DeSalvo writes, “…establish our connection with others and with the world?” Is there a market out there, willing to buy what we have to say?  Yes, but like so much of life, there are rules to follow.

First, don’t expect you can write a full-length book about your tragedy and have a publishing house immediately snatch it and buy it. There are so many books out there written by individuals, many of them famous before the tragedy, who have had deep pain. Unless you are the parents of Jon Benet or sister of John F. Kennedy, Jr., your book is going to be extremely hard to sell. However, if you work your writings into how-to articles and essays—pieces that will reach others and help them—then the chances of being published are far better.

For example, if you were an unwed pregnant teen, recall the things people said and did that helped you and the things which cut and hurt. Write an article with the slant of helping young mothers and submit it to a parenting or women’s magazine. If you were a victim of domestic abuse, inform readers of steps of action to take in order to get away from the situation. Do some brainstorming. How can you tailor your heartache into articles that sell?

Sarah, a writer friend of mine, has sold an article on Ten Helpful Ways In Overcoming Anxiety and Stress to five different publications. Her mother died of breast cancer when Sarah was only ten and there was a time Sarah felt burdened with guilt. This brought her an overwhelming amount of anxiety and worry throughout her adolescence until she took measures to face her situation in her writing. What had caused the guilt? It was the lie she had told herself over the years that her mother’s death was her fault. Because she learned how to successfully change her thinking, through her writing Sarah is now able to guide others with similar circumstances to lead calmer lives.

When you write, don’t bleed on the paper. Perhaps there is deep anger because of the mistreatment you received from someone close to you. What do you with that which keeps you awake at night? Buy a journal and pour it out within those pages. No one wants to hear self-pity or extensive anger. In fact the bereavement magazines I write for stress hope and healing. That’s because if the focus is solely on the agony of losing a loved one, no one would be able to write to show how to live with grief.

In order to be able to produce any comfort or advice to others in your same boat, you most likely need to vent first. Venting is a process of healing. Freely allowing the wound to be exposed can lead towards an understanding of emotions and with understanding comes the capacity to, in time, constructively share with an audience. From some of your journal themes you may be able to reconstruct the anger and design a helpful piece to submit to the markets on how to effectively deal with this emotion.

Show by using creative imagery instead of clichés. Be original as you convey your feelings. Find another way to show your father was as mean as a snake. As with other types of writing, write vividly. Show and don’t tell. What kind of childhood did author Frank McCourt have in Ireland? He could write detailed pages about how miserable he was during it but instead he lets us fill in our own emotions as we visualize his cold and poor life in Angela’s Ashes.

Find something unique that sets your story apart from others who have had a similar situation as yours. McCourt tells of his brother Eugene’s burial and how he was upset when his father and the coffin carriage driver placed pints of beer on top of the casket. At the graveside the drunk driver left McCourt’s family stranded. The fascinating reading here is the unique details McCourt selects to portray this sorrowful event. We are smiling and crying at the same time because of the manner in which McCourt shares his story.

From Cara De Silva’s In Memory’s Kitchen we get a unique perspective on life in the World War II concentration camps. The hungry Jewish women of the Terezin camp kept their sanity by writing down recipes from memory, hoping they would one day be able to return to their kitchens to make these dishes. The compiled recipes, salvaged over the years, appear in this book, showing us that even in devastation, the human spirit does survive.

Dig deep and find a different slant to use in sharing your sorrows.

Be real and don’t pretend. I don’t want to read about a mother whose child has just died and hear her say that everything is okay since she knows her child is safe in Heaven. My four- year-old died and although I believe he is in Heaven, I still must live here without him on earth and I daily yearn for his smile. I will be teaching society nothing if I stress that losing a loved one is a grief that eventually fades. Much of society already believes that myth. What I want to convey is reality from what I have experienced. My longing for my son Daniel will last a lifetime. How do I cope with it? How can society effectively help the bereaved? This is where I want to reach across the chasm and in a how-to article offer realistic ways the community, family and friends can soothe the bereaved’s wounded heart.

If you expect to gain a realistic perspective of your trauma and write towards healing, you must allow your narrative to be honest, filled with both negative and positive aspects. Even after Rick Bragg wins the Pulitzer, in All Over But The Shoutin’, he never lets us forget how his dismal roots with a drunken father who abandons the family is always a part of his soul’s core.

Heartache as a way of life is what so many of we writers are about. The urgency to write may increase the more you allow yourself to acknowledge your heartache and deal with its many facets. Freely cultivate this. As your writing evolves and matures, you will help others, bring healing to yourself and even get paid.

~ By Alice J. Wisler

Copyright 2001

Bio:  Alice is the author of two novels, Rain Song and How Sweet It Is. Both deal with loss and grief.

Visit her website to learn more about her articles and the writing course she offers. http://www.alicewisler.com

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I was pregnant when Daniel died and three months later, I gave birth to a baby girl. Wasn’t that getting on with my life? I nurtured my three children, took them to school, the park and birthday parties. Now wasn’t that going on with my life? I even cooked dinner four times a week!

At first after Daniel’s death, I would have liked to have had my life literally stopped and been buried next to my son, but I kept existing. Like the plastic bag tossed about by the wind, I was fluttering, being carried by the events of life. Seasons came and went. In the spring, I planted marigolds and tomato vines. In the autumn I jumped in fallen leaves with my children. I continued and I am still continuing to live.

Now, I may be bereaved but I am by no means a fool! As I ponder the meaning behind “getting on with life.” I am capable of knowing exactly what those who say this have in mind. “Forget about your dead child. Quit grieving. You make me uncomfortable.” Getting on with life means don’t acknowledge August 25th, Daniel’s birthday anymore. Forget how he slid down the snowy bank in the recycle bin, sand in the van and ate gummy bears. Forget he had cancer, suffered and died at only age four. Don’t see the empty chair at the dinner table, don’t cry, just live!!!

Some who are more religious would like to believe that a bereaved parent can claim, “My child is safe and happy in Heaven. Therefore, why should I yearn for him?” Perhaps, I pose a threat to certain types because I let it be known I question God. I weep, I have been angry. I miss Daniel. Many old friends feel if they hang around me too long I might convince them that a few of their illusions about life are just that, only illusions. As my cries of anguish are heard, there are those who can only think how to make me quiet. To stop my heartfelt they say quite sternly, “You must get on with life.”

I am living. I do move on with life with Daniel in my mind and in my heart. Although he is not physically here as I continue to live, I continue to love. To sever his memory totally from my life would be creating destruction and damage that would ruin me. To push Daniel out of my life and not be able to freely mention his name or write and speak about who he was on earth would only bring more pain to my life. I’d shrivel up. Comfort for me comes in remembering with smiles how he drew with a blue marker on his sister’s wall, ran outside naked and picked green tomatoes. For the reality is getting on with life means continuing to cherish Daniel.

~ By Alice Wisler

Copyright 1999

Visit Alice’s website at:  http://www.alicewisler.com

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How I remember those early months after his death. I wanted to be like my Victorian ancestors and wear black, even a veil. Then my clothes could shout to my neighbors, those in the grocery store lines, and the many at church — look at me, I am a parent doing the impossible: living without her child.

I remember those who helped us as we put one foot in front of the other on the rocky path. My husband, three children, and I couldn’t walk it alone. Friends, with embraces as strong and wide as eagle wings, circled us, cried with us. They brought meals, sent cards, provided listening ears, and took care of our young children.

Then there were those uncomfortable with our grief. During the first weeks they joined our tears, but as the months dragged on, their expressions and subtle hints were shouting, “Get back to normal. Look at the joyous side of life. Heal your broken heart!” For some reason, as you may know, people put a timeline on grief. I think the general consensus is that you’re only allowed two to three weeks of sorrow.

When you are new to grief, even simple tasks can be laborious. Your energy and patience levels are low. But hear a comment or two that is completely out of line for anyone to say, and suddenly, you are propelled by anger. How can I forget the older lady in our church that called me every day for two weeks? She’d start off by asking how I was doing. My guts felt like they were stripped out of my body and my heart, mangled. I’d say, “It’s hard.”

One afternoon this woman told me with all the sincerity she could muster, “God needed another flower in his garden in heaven and took Daniel.” I nearly dropped the phone. This was supposed to provide comfort? I eventually did hang up, but politely. My frustration flared. I got a lot of laundry done that afternoon — throwing clothes into the washing machine, banging the lid shut, flinging socks and shirts into the dryer.

I am bolder now. When people tell me certain lines, aimed to help me and they don’t work, I let them know. My new mantra is, “Cry with me. Don’t pretend you understand why my child died. Don’t try to rationalize why my son was diagnosed with cancer at the age of three and died at four.”

Those who have helped are the ones who continue to remember his birthday and think of how hard it is to live the holidays without him. I appreciate the friends who join me at the cemetery, named by my children “Daniel’s Place”, and lift a helium balloon into the sky with me. Watch it soar.

I believe my son is vibrant and alive in Heaven now. I hope the balloon reaches him. Don’t tell me it pops when it gets out of sight. Let me be like a child and not know the laws of the stratosphere. Let me wish he knows how much I love and miss him. Let me believe he is alive and touching the face of God.

The sun does shine again in my world. Although the hole in my mother’s heart is always present, I’m grateful for the times I can tell Daniel’s story. Remembering him, writing about him, even sharing his jokes with those I meet, brings healing.

I place flowers at his grave. But Daniel is not another flower.

By Alice J. Wisler

Copyright 2005

Visit Alice’s website at: http://www.alicewisler.com

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My friend commented (which was quite nice) on reading in the high school alumni newsletter that my son had died. He was so sorry and went on to say he had just returned from his mother’s funeral. “So,” he wrote, “I am going through the grieving process.”

It was good to hear from this high school friend, and nothing against him, but the phrase “the grieving process” which has become a cliche in itself, got to me.

So I pursued it further, trying to hit the nail on the head, so to speak, as to why this phrase has caused my skin to grow clammy ever since I joined this griever’s path.

Cheese is processed.  Sausage, too.  These are molded and made into products.  In grief we are not processed as though a food item and then delivered as a final product to the shelves of the grocery store.  We aren’t put on an assembly line or a conveyor belt and pieced together.

Instead, I like to think that we are a growing creation, changing, due to the trauma and tragedy of losing a child or loved one.  We were thrown into this rocky journey of darkness and pain against our will.  We made the choice to survive. And we learn how to be bolder and more compassionate.  We have new ideals.  Old phrases and expressions may bother us.  Daniel was brain dead when we made the excruciating decision to take him off of the respirator.  So for me to hear a person joke about being “brain dead” due to their slip-up or mistake, doesn’t ever make me smile.  I don’t even like to use the word  “deadline.”

Sure, we’ve been told about the steps or stages of grief—shock and denial and finally, acceptance.  With all due respect to Elisabeth Kubler- Ross, I will never have acceptance of the awful truth of his death.  I do acknowledge his death.  He is, after all, obviously, no longer here.  But I won’t accept it as I would a birthday gift or an invitation to dinner.

It is a grieving life I’ve entered.  It’s a path of rocky trails, heavy with anguish. It’s agonizing music that penetrates every fiber and the loud noise can take years to fade.  It is not a path with “closure,” another word that bristles my skin because it implies we will finish being affected by our loved one’s death and move off the grieving path, never to feel sorrow again for the impact their death has made in our daily lives.

Grief is a zigzag of the soul.  You never know when tears will be triggered or when a word or memory will take you back, way back, and you are lost in thought for moments.  Parents who have buried their children decades ago still feel this zigzag in the depths of their beings.

I am not where I was when Daniel first died.  Time, pounding out my anger and sorrow to God and constant support from close friends has helped.  I have seen the sun shine again.  I have used the tool of writing to bring healing.  I have done, what they call “reinvesting in life”(a phrase I do like), and found my niche in volunteering, speaking, publishing and reaching out to those also on this journey.

Author John Alego says, “Like the growth rings of a tree, our vocabulary bears witness to our past.”  Therefore, because I became a griever over six years ago, I cannot sit well with the phrase “the grieving process.”

We are becoming as we adapt to and deal with the many facets of grieving.  And I think, becoming will take a lifetime.

So move over cheese.  Although I enjoy your many varieties, I am not one of them.

The Pinecone Wreath: after a child dies

Instructed to collect pinecones
We carried baskets
Deep into the forest where
Becoming begins
Through mud puddles
I picked up Sorrow and Despair
Easing over an embankment
I added Fear, Doubt
Soaking feet in a stream
Watching a pair of orange butterflies
I found Awe, Forgiveness and Hope
Under the shadow of the mightiest oak
I struggled with Acceptance of A New Life
The pinecone wreath I strung together
Is lopsided, a mixture of dark and light
But it hangs
It is as real
As I am becoming.

By Alice J. Wisler

Copyright 2002

Visit Alice’s website at: http://www.alicewisler.com

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Martha’s son had died in a car accident in Tennessee a year ago. She had tried to hold it together during the whole evening, blocking her tears, until at last she had to let go.  A private person, she hadn’t wanted to tell the others gathered about her son.

As she sat at my kitchen table with the tissues I supplied for her, Martha shared about her son Tony and her love for him.  She needed to go over the circumstances which led to his accident that snowy night on a mountain road.

I well remembered how much my husband and I had needed to go over every detail at the one-year anniversary of our son Daniel’s death.  We had to relive it all in order to get beyond the truth that we could not have prevented his death; we had not been in control.

To complicate matters, before coming to my house, Martha had just gotten off the phone with her sister.  Her sister was excited over her upcoming marriage to John.  Martha couldn’t muster up an ounce of happiness for her sister’s special day for the thought that her Tony wouldn’t be at the wedding was all consuming.

Then when her sister laughed and said, “If John’s dad wears that horrible toupee of his, I think I’ll die!” Martha felt her heart ache.

Martha was having a hard time dealing with what all of the bereaved must deal with - how a society can carry on as though we should be “fine” about the death of our loved one, especially after a year’s time and how we can keep on in a society which denies our grief and even pokes fun at death.

We do not live in a sensitive society, especially when it comes to understanding death and grief.  Perhaps the use of certain phrases that have the word “death” in them, but don’t mean physically dying, proves that we are not “death sensitive.”  One of Daniel’s oncologists answered my question of “Why do we make fun of death?” with “We often make fun of what we are afraid of.”

How many of these phrases that have to do with death and yet do not involve really dying have you heard this week?

Drop-dead gorgeous

A dead ringer

Deadline

Dead in my tracks

Almost died

Scared to death

Dying to see

Died laughing

To die for

She looked like death warmed over

It was like I died and went to heaven

We aren’t really speaking of death when we throw out these phrases.  The girl who wore the t-shirt to the museum that said she was “brain dead” during school hours didn’t really mean she was either.  Yet, it offended me and anyone else who has had a loved one who was medically brain dead.  She thought it was cute.  I wanted to leave the museum and cry.

Do others “get it?”  Do they care?  Some days their words may help; other times, their words sting.  They may be well meaning, but they are at a loss as to what to say.  Some say nothing and some say the wrong thing.  And there are days when the arms of a church or family member may encircle you and make you feel included and loved.  There are other times when you feel isolated from your family and friends.

It was stated to me many times that I should tell others how to treat me.  I needed to give them wisdom in knowing how to reach out and help me.  In the early months of grief, this can be one of the strangest things to have to do.  It is like having a broken leg and telling the doctor how to fix it.  Shouldn’t he know?  Likewise, we are the hurting ones having just buried a loved one, shouldn’t the rest of society know how to help us?  Why do we, when we are already in agony have to show people how to treat us?

If we don’t, they will never get it.  If we don’t let them know that we need permission to grieve, they will continue on in their lack of understanding.  If they say, “Well, he’s in a better place,” and you let it go, they will not know how that statement tears at your heart.  But if you can say without too much venom in your voice, “But he’s my son and I want him here just like you want your son with you!” then you have done a great service to that person.

I wish that we could all be as truthful and articulate as my friend Peg from Wisconsin.  She says, even now, nine years since Ross, her 4-year-old’s death from cancer, “I miss what he would have brought to the rest of my life.”

For the truth is, death is all around us.  We are born to death.  From the beginning of time humans have had to deal with their own mortality.  But instead of accepting this, we joke, tease and try to avoid death.  We use the phrase that the only two certainties of life are death and taxes and yet, we pretend death won’t get us.

To speak about death has been called the greatest taboo.  Yet, really, even more of a taboo is to admit that grieving over the death of a loved one is real and important.

We want to shove grief out the door.  People don’t want you to make them feel uncomfortable or sad when you cry.  They want to see you smile and be like you used to be before the death of your wife or sister.

When asked by a coworker how she was doing one mother, who had just lost her son said, “I’m not doing as well as I was three months ago.”

“Three months ago?” asked the coworker, puzzled by this answer.

“Yes, that was before my son died.”

There is nothing wrong with saying, “Not so good today” when asked how you are doing.  Sure everyone wants to hear that you are “fine,” but if you’re not, why lie?

However, we all know the setbacks to telling the truth.  We struggle because, while at times we want to let others know how we really are doing (not well today, thank you), we want to be careful that we don’t get an earful of unwanted clichés or platitudes that wrench our stomachs and torment our minds.

There are other platitudes people say in order for them to have something to say or perhaps in hopes that these will make them feel better about your devastation.

“Just trust God.”

“God needed another flower for his garden.”

“Life isn’t fair, you know.”

“You’ll grow stronger and better because of this.”

“God never makes a mistake.”

Whether these are true or not, the bottom line is that they don’t help we who are grieving.

In the words of Joe Bayly:  “I was sitting, torn by grief.  Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of why my loved one had died, of hope beyond the grave.  He talked constantly.  He said things I knew were true.  I was unmoved, except to wish he’d go away.  He finally did.

Another came and sat beside me.  He didn’t talk.  He didn’t ask me leading questions.  He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listening when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left.  I was moved.  I was comforted.  I hated to see him go.”

People want us to “get over it” and to “move on with our lives.”  These do not know the first thing about grief.   Grief is not an illness or an act of stubbornness or a desire to be difficult.  Grieving the loss of a loved one is a deep complicated inexplicable truth.

Over the next months I tried to help my friend Martha learn the ropes we bereaved parents all must learn - gently teaching and guiding others to understand the heart of a griever.

By Alice J. Wisler

Copyright 2002

Visit Alice’s website at:  http://www.alicewisler.com

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She seemed so small and frail in the graduation party atmosphere. And yet this was her granddaughter’s party–a gathering of family and friends amid the festive tiki lights and streamers of tiny lanterns. High school had commenced for her granddaughter and in the late summer the youth would be ready to head out to the exciting world of college. Friends bringing congratulatory gifts were decorated in smiles and small talk. A grandmother deserved to be proud and happy at a time like this.

Perhaps few outside of the immediate family could see what I did. This woman was newly broken. I could sense tears were not far from her aged eyes. As a close friend of the graduate’s family, I knew. This woman’s life-partner, her best friend, the man who had always been by her side at graduations and significant events, was no longer with her. Cancer had taken his life.

When I hugged her I could feel some of her pain. It mingled with mine and bonded in that commonality we bereaved share. Mine was old pain-although fresh tears were often not far. Over the eight years, I had learned to cope and adjust to my pain. She was not familiar with this intense aching and longing, a newcomer on this griever’s journey.

Her grief was for her husband’s loss. Mine, for my four-year-old son. Both loved ones had cancer. She and I had seen suffering as we had administered care and hope to our dying precious ones.

Knowing what it was like to feel small and frail and yes, dead-like in a room full of vibrant celebration, I ached for her. Even when I sat and caught up on the lives of those I hadn’t seen in years, I couldn’t help but look over at this bereaved woman and know the agony she must be feeling. It was in her eyes-that combination of bleakness right at the retina mixed with hollowness at the white of the eyes. It was there, deep and as constant as an echo that cries what-am-I-going-to-do-now?

I was afraid that the wall would absorb her until she disappeared. And then I thought that she probably would like to disappear and soar up to Heaven to be with her husband, leaving the hurt and sleepless nights of earth behind.

Bereaved eyes. They look the same to th rest of the world, but to those who have seen death take loved ones, we see the difference. These eyes will never be as they once were. They have changed over from the old life and now see the life without. The life without a loved one.

The bereaved acknowledge others in grief with their eyes. Like a secret handshake, it is at times silent, yet dominant. A bereaver’s eyes can be the hardest pair of eyes to look at. However, in time, the bereaved are also able to see more compassionately through their eyes because now they hold a new understanding of what it is like to suffer. Almost like a softness surrounding the pain, a bereaver learns to find rainbows in the midst of storms, tender daffodils in the early morning dew. She sees what is important in life and shields her eyes from what is not.

I am sure that is what my elderly widow friend is finding as she copes each day. Hopefully she will continue to connect with others, those able to hold her close and help her see the rainbows as she shares the life-giving memories of her beloved husband.

While voices can betray true feelings, when you set your sight into the eyes of someone grieving, there is no hiding; the pain is evident.

By Alice J. Wisler

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I felt something sour in the pit of my stomach and my swollen eyes widened in disbelief.  Too numb to say a word, I let her continue, telling me I’d be fine and to carry on with my life and family.

By the time I got off the phone, anger had risen within me.

“God needed another flower!” a fellow-bereaved mother spat out when I conveyed my conversation with Merna.  “Did you let this woman know how blasphemous that sounds?  As though God is greedy and takes.  That is not the nature of God.”

Little did I realize at that critical time during the early months of my bereavement journey that part of being bereaved is having to deal with those who want to console but are basically clueless.  I’ve had to learn that I need to guide them in knowing what is appropriate and what is not.  I’ve had to help those who want to comfort me understand just how to go about doing it.  It’s like having a broken leg and being called in to teach the doctor how to fix it.  Isn’t he supposed to know what to do?  Likewise, aren’t others supposed to know how to soothe the bereaved person’s wounds and what to say and what not to say?

Occasionally a newly-bereaved parent, spouse or sibling may encounter a person who knows that saying, “I’m so sorry” is really about all that can be said.  There is no magic formula of words that make the pain of grief go away.

But people still try.  It seems that everyone has an answer to our pain. “Don’t dwell on the death.  Don’t think about it,” many will say.  However when they are faced with the agony of loss, suddenly their advice does not work, not even for them.  I’ve even heard psychologists and grief counselors say that the advice they’d once given was immensely lacking and did not work when they suffered their own loss.

My friend Jan’s father died a few months ago.  She has already planned not to attend church this Father’s Day, her first one without her dad.  I tell her this is understandable.  Her mother and siblings don’t agree with me.  “Daddy would want you to go to church on Father’s Day,” they insist.  Jan feels it will be too painful to go to church on this day without him.  Finally she tells her family, “I’ll decide what to do when I wake up that morning.”

Grief is unique, as unique as the relationship we held with the loved one who has died.  My middle-aged friend, Kathi, says people look at her funny when she breaks down in tears over the breast cancer death of her aunt.  “She was more than an aunt,” explains Kathi.  “She was a mother to me.”

Many tell us that time heals our wounds.  But then I turn to the words of fellow-bereaved parent, Henry Nouwen, and wonder if this is only another myth we’ve created.

Nouwen writes:  “Real grief is not healed by time…  If time does anything, it deepens
our grief.  The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who he/she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what their love meant to us.  Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted.  Therefore, it is often only in retrospect–or better, in memory–that we can fully realize its power and depth.  Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain.”

I’ve lost contact with Merna over these five years.  But since then I have had plenty of her types enter my life.  One changed the subject when I told her about losing Daniel.  Being the stubborn person I am, I gently brought the conversation back to him.  I liked this woman, a co-worker of my husband’s, and was certain she could do better about handling my grief than changing the topic to her pet dog.  I continued to talk about Daniel and how it is without him.  She was touched by the things I do in his memory.  By the end of our talk, she was asking questions about what he had been like.  There were tears in her eyes.  I felt I had given her permission to show her empathetic side.

Yes, I’m all for educating the Mernas of our society.  I even hope that someone, somewhere has been educating her.  Perhaps she’ll call one day and ask how I am.  And when the topic comes to Daniel, maybe she will let me talk about how much I miss living without my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.  I can always hope.

By Alice J. Wisler

Copyright 2002

Visit Alice’s website at:  http://www.alicewisler.com

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