How to Survive Grief And Loss
Many who suffer the loss, not only of a child but a grandchild, niece, nephew, sister, brother, father or mother, will ask themselves this very question: “how will I survive?” Unfortunately, there is no cut-and-dry answer to this question.
We all grieve differently. However, we all can parse through the same resources to help us find what works. Our grieving process for our son, Luke, will look very different from yours. Our son’s passing is why we set up LovesFromLuke: to memorialize Luke and provide families with the support and family grief resources that they will need to survive this tragedy without comparison.
Need Help Finding Grieving Resources Near You?
LovesFromLuke operates as more than just a non-profit that delivers care packages for parents who have suffered the loss of their child. We also provide letters and scriptures to help you and your loved ones understand and survive the years of grief, if not the days, weeks and months to come.
Our care packages include a teddy bear for comfort, a book to help with your grief, and a First 48 Hours guide for making a plan. You’re going to need to sort out many affairs in the oncoming weeks, and our guide will give you what we wish we had during the immediate aftermath of Luke’s passing. While based in Vancouver, Washington, we can send our care packages across the states. If you have another child also suffering the loss of a sibling, do not hesitate to ask us for a second teddy bear.
Furthermore, our online resources page will point you toward trusted grief support networks like GriefShare(.org) and the Dougy Center of Portland, Oregon. We also have compiled hotlines for cases of immediate need, other websites tailored to assist with particular types of loss, and books and blogs to help you learn about the process you will be undertaking.
“What you remember saves you. To remember
Is not to rehearse, but to hear what never
Has fallen silent.”
W.S. Merwin, “Learning A Dead Language”
Words For Those Struggling With Loss
Building the resources of this website involved reading and collecting a lot of literature on the subject of grief. There’s one piece of writing we would like to share, a comment from Reddit user GSnow—of all places—that describes the journey from a sea of sorrow to peaceful waters with superlative grace:
“In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they arrive, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything… and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
“Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
“Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too.”
