Articles

Honesty and Grace at a Memorial Gathering   By Rev John T. Schwiebert, ThMjohn@metanoiaumc.org     To the readers of this on-line newsletter: Pat and I thank you for honoring our need to express ourselves personally following the recent death of Pat’s mother (my mother-in-law) Josie Mineburg.  And thanks especially to you who sent email responses of encouragement, and who confirmed that reading our comments was helpful to you as well.  I share below the remarks I made at the...

­Holidays Magnify Everything   By Pat Schwiebert, R.N.pat@tearsoup.com   There is more noise…more shopping…more sorrow…more gatherings…more tears…more loneliness…more decisions…more pain…more memories. It’s no wonder that the bereaved see holidays as something to dread. Holidays magnify your loss by placing constant reminders all around you of what you are missing in your life. It’s at the malls. You’ll feel it at church. You’ll get it through the mail. You’ll hear about it at work. There is no place safe to hide. ...

High Maintenance   By Pat Schwiebert, R.N.pat@tearsoup.com     “High Maintenance” is a term sometimes used to describe persons who demand or require an extraordinary amount of time, energy and attention from others without giving a corresponding degree of attentiveness in return.  My mother was like that.  In gatherings where everyone else was sitting, she would stand and pontificate on whatever happened to be the current topic of conversation.  She craved an audience.  When my kids were very young she...

Help for a 'hidden population' of caregiving kids     By Danielle Berger, CNNwww.cnn.com Boca Raton, Florida (CNN) -- At 13 years old, Nickolaus Dent is his mother's primary caregiver. He's responsible for the grocery shopping and cooking. He cleans the house. He does all the laundry. His mother, Janine Helms, has been battling HIV for as long as Nickolaus can recall, and her health has deteriorated in the last couple of years. Nickolaus makes sure she takes her medication. He often...

Growing Up Without A Mother   By Jessica Axelhttp://www.thefrisky.com/2011-05-02/girl-talk-growing-up-without-a-mother/ I’ve never been a big fan of Mother’s Day. It’s not the commercialization that fuels my dislike, though — it’s that for 14 years, I haven’t had a mother to celebrate. On September 20th, 1996, my mother’s 36th birthday, she died. Four years earlier, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In the intervening time, she endured hours of chemotherapy and radiation, the loss of her hair to the chemo and a...

Grieving, With or Without Hope   By John T. Schwiebert, ThMjohn@metanoiaumc.org     But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.                                                                              --1 Thessalonians 4:13 This past month I have had two occasions to reflect upon these words of the Apostle Paul, which are a part of his first New Testament letter to the church of the Thessalonians. The...

Grieving What Never Was   By John T. Schwiebert, MDivjohn@tearsoup.com      “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  This aphorism has proved helpful to many who have experienced the loss of a marriage partner or other beloved companion.  It encourages the surviving partner to balance a keen awareness of what they have lost through death, and even divorce, with appreciation of all that they have received through the relationship with the one who is...

Grieving the Loss of Democracy   By John T. Schwiebert, MDivjohn@metanoiaumc.org     Most of us, when we speak of grief, usually think first of the loss that we experiences when a beloved human being or pet dies.  But grief is also the normal response to any kind of loss, including (1) the loss of a something good that once was and is no more, or (2) the loss of something longed for but never realized. For some time I have...

Grieving the Loss of Certainty   By John T. Schwiebert, MDivjohn@metanoiaumc.org     I’ve been thinking about the grief faced by the relatives and friends of the persons on the Malaysian Airline Flight that has been missing now for several weeks.  It occurs to me that their grief is complicated because they must deal with several real and/or potential losses at the same time.  They may or may not be experiencing anticipatory grief over the loss that bears the name “death,”...

Grieving Parents Seek Answers   By Rev. John T. Schwiebert   Recently I received a letter from a man whose son completed suicide some 20 years ago. He was trying to reconcile two conflicting messages he had received from the leaders of his church. On the one hand he was assured that God loved his son; on the other hand it was obvious that many of his fellow church members believed that his son was burning in hell because of...

Grieving for What We Have Never Known   By Rev John T. Schwiebert, ThMjohn@metanoiaumc.org     As you may know, Grief Watch takes its name from a story found in the Bible (Matthew  25: 36-46) in which Jesus says to three of his closest disciples, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and watch (i.e. stay awake) with me.”  Like us, Jesus needs his friends to be a quiet, attentive presence with him as he faces a grief...

Grieving for Mom on My Birthday   by Alisha KrukowskiReprinted with permission from HelloGriefhttp://www.hellogrief.org/thinking-of-mom-on-my-birthday/   October 6th marked the 33nd anniversary of the day my mom saw the culmination of 9 months of waiting and hoping and sore feet and food cravings.  Funny how I never thought of it like that until just now. I’ve spent my whole life celebrating my birthday with cake and presents, and hopeful anticipation about which friends will remember, sing to me, or send me a card. ...