grief and gratitude Archives

Over and Over

July 5, 2017

By Jessica Knuth

There is an unexpected sense of loneliness in watching the dead body of someone you love being taken away from your home. Alone in the back of a car. Zipped up inside a body bag. Driving away into resounding blackness.

Somehow, in your delirium, through the tears and snot, through the sharp pains in your chest and loved ones touching your shoulders, your hair, somehow you manage to walk down the hallway where your Dad should be sleeping, where he has slept your entire life, and you look inside his bedroom, though you know you shouldn’t. The bed is unmade, sheets jumbled and repositioned in haste. There is a stain on the bed and you can’t tell if it’s blood, or urine, or vomit. Otherwise, the room is the same as it was two hours earlier when he was still alive. When his lungs still worked. His heart, his brain, however limited. Before he went from present tense to past tense. Animate to inanimate. Living to dead. Continue Reading…

courage, Grief, Guest Posts

The Circle.

February 10, 2015

By Robin Gaphni.

She pulled into the parking space and turned the engine off. “Third time’s a charm,” she thought. The first time she drove here, she sat in her car, watched the people file in and 90 minutes later watched them file out. She never even unbuckled her seatbelt.

The second time she waited until she saw, what she hoped was, the last person enter the building. Then she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the car door and walked across the asphalt parking lot. When she got to the door, she gripped the heavy brass handle and froze. She stood silently there for about five minutes, her heart racing, her hand molded around the door knob, her body absolutely unable to move forward. After a bit she slunk back to her car and drove home.

But today she was determined. She glanced over at the door. It was one of those solid, double doors that often grace the entrances to churches-tall, heavy and formidable. But this was not about religion. She had talked to the leader of the group three times and had been promised it was not religious at all, it just happened to be held in a church.

So before she could conjure up any more excuses for not going into the building, she opened the car door, grabbed her backpack and walked briskly across the parking lot. She pulled the heavy church door open and stepped foot in the airy entrance. It was dim and she couldn’t see well. The sanctuary to her left was pitch black. But across the hall there was a light under the door and she assumed that’s where the meeting was. She walked to the door, hesitating only for a split second before turning the handle and walking in.

Jen Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Join her in Tuscany for her annual Manifestation Retreat. Click the Tuscan hills above. No yoga experience required. Only requirement: Just be a human being. Yoga + Writing + Connection. We go deep. Bring an open heart and a sense of humor- that’s it!