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A winter workshop on surviving grief will be held on Thursdays from 3-5 p.m., Feb. 5-March 12, at Brookdale Place Jones Farm in Huntsville, Ala. (File)
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When my friend Elizabeth cleaned out her mother's closet six months after the funeral, she thought she was done with grieving.
She'd tucked away the sympathy cards, written thank you notes for the flowers, and told herself to move forward.
And then she found the glasses. They were an extra pair her mother kept in an unused jewelry box. The blue bifocals were folded and ready in case the others were broken or lost.
She cradled them in her hand and cried over a pair of glasses her mother hadn't even worn. She wondered what was wrong with her.
Nothing, Rev. Carl Malm would say. Everyday objects represent the loved one we lost and take on special meaning. A grief consultant and director of The Center for Loss, Grief, and Change, Malm says grief can be set off by an unexpected discovery of an unused pair of shoes or a pair of gloves a husband finds in his deceased wife's car. The gloves are empty of the hands that wore them. Suddenly, the loss feels real.
We have to feel that loss, Malm says. "We can only heal what we feel."
A former hospice chaplain, Rev. Malm has done grief and bereavement work for thirty years and will lead a winter workshop on surviving grief. The sessions will be held on Thursdays from 3-5, starting Feb. 5 through March 12, at Brookdale Place Jones Farm. The sessions are free and are open to anyone experiencing loss of any kind.
Sponsored by First United Methodist Church, Hospice of North Alabama, Laughlin Funeral Services and Brookdale Place, the workshops will cover the tasks of grief and the tips for surviving.
In his years of helping people cope with loss, this is what Malm has learned:
People think they can avoid grief by staying busy and not thinking about their loss, but this is a mistake. One of his favorite quotes about grief comes from Henry Taylor: "He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend."
People grieve differently when death is unexpected. A suicide, a homicide, an accident--all are sudden, and a person goes into a kind of shock. After the shock wears off, the work can begin.
"We all want to say good-bye, or 'I love you' or 'I'm sorry.' If we don't get that chance, we experience a different kind of grief."
Some people have to give themselves permission to grieve. Once they do this, they can tell their stories over and over.
"It's in telling our stories that we heal," Malm says. "And when you hear other people's stories, you feel less alone."
People go forward at their own speed. Malm doesn't talk about stages of grief, since that makes people feel they're not moving along predictably.
Guilt is part of the grieving process. "We all have regrets about things we did or did not do; things we said or did not say. It's very common."
Most importantly, Malm has learned that light comes in, eventually, and life goes on, though it's a different kind of life than before.
"Grief and change are hard," he says, "but they are survivable. Hold on to hope."
For more information about workshops, call Jana Seikel at 256-8816111
or Rev. Carl Malm at 256-8836539