MartyT

Dear Ones, Just FYI, the TV program is based on the best-selling book, For One More Day, by Mitch Albom (also the author of Tuesdays with Morrie). For what it's worth, I've read both books, and I didn't like this one nearly as much as Tuesdays. Writing in this week's TV Guide, critic Matt Roush describes the TV adaptation as a "thin, predictable memory play [about]. . . an alcoholic ex-baseball player whose thoughts of suicide are interrupted by a magical visit from the ghost of his mother . . . with whom he gets to spend a day remembering their unhappy history. 'Our Town' this isn't. It's the too-familiar fable of a boy who could never live up to his distant dad's ideals when he should have been listening to his all-sacrificing mom all along . . ." The son is played by Michael Imperioli (who played Christopher in The Sopranos), and Ellen Burstyn plays his mother.

Hi Wendy, Some of our other members may be better at answering this than I, but I will try At the top of the main page, click on My Controls, then, on the left side of the screen, scroll down to Personal Profile. Then click on Edit Avatar Settings, and follow the instructions there. As for the size of your picture, our site requires that, "Your avatar must be no bigger than 90 pixels by 90 pixels in size. Uploaded avatars from your computer must be no larger than 50 KB. The following file types are allowed: gif,jpeg,jpg,swf,png." I hope this answers, Wendy, and if not, I hope another member will step in and help ~ e.g. William? Maylissa, is your hubby available? Anyone else?

Linda, dear, many of us here are mourning the death of both our beloved parents, and we're glad you found your way to us. Please accept our heartfelt sympathy for your losses, and know that you are being held gently in our hearts.

Just as you have been there for all of us, Lori. You and your mom are in our thoughts today.

Dear One, Please see my post in our Loss of an Infant, Child or Grandchild forum: Worldwide Candle Lighting

Most certainly you can do this privately. You are free to adapt any ritual you find and make it your own. See: Suggestions to Help Plan Memorial Services See also the lovely holiday memorial candl-lighting ceremony by Sherry Williams, included in the body of my article: Including Your Absent Loved One in Family Celebrations. (Scroll down a bit and you will see it there, in a white box.)

Tootie, dear, it feels to me as if you've just given us one of the most precious gifts of the season ~ Thank you for your hearfelt sentiments, and know that we are sending the very same warm thoughts back to you. Bless your heart.

Maury, your Melanie may find this book very helpful and informative: Past Perfect, Present Tense! Insights from One Woman's Journey as the Wife of a Widower. (This link will take you to Amazon's description and reviews. Be sure to scroll down the page until you come to all of them, incuding my own.)

Dear Kevin and Pamela, I'm so sorry you didn't make it to our Pet Loss Support Group meeting today ~ I was looking forward to meeting you "in person." I know the weather was bad (for Phoenix) and I hope you're both all right. Please know that I am thinking of you both. Wishing you peace and healing, MartyT

Such stories warm our hearts and remind us that our loved ones are always with us, don't they? We just need to pay attention! Thank you all for sharing, and make sure you read the lastest addition to our Latest News forum, Helen's Christmas Story

Hi Christian, Bob makes some excellent points. It's important when you're on any prescribed medication to work closely with your doctor to make sure you're on the right dosage and getting the expected results ~ and, as Bob said, it takes a while for your body to adjust to and respond to any antidepressant medication. Antidepressants also have side effects that you can discuss with your doctor. If this one isn't working for you, there are others that your doctor can try with you. Other factors come into play as well, such as the time of day when you take the medication, and whether you're combining it with any other medication you may be taking. Be very careful to avoid alcohol, since it can also affect how well your medication works. Bob also mentions talk therapy. You told us a while ago that you planned to meet with a grief counselor. Have you followed through with that, and if so, how's it going? Have you contacted Marcus yet? There are many things you can do to process and manage your grief, Christian, and I think you know by now that by itself, taking antidepressant medication is not enough. We haven't heard from you in quite a while. How are other things in your life going for you now?

Thank you for saying that, Kay ~ and may we all add our voices to what you've said so beautifully to Teny?

Helen’s Christmas Gift from the heart of Bill Whittaker My wife, Helen, and Fred Astaire went way back. At least, it seemed that way to me. It started in the 1960s, when Helen moved from Connecticut to Chicago to take a job as a dance instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in the Loop district. Some twenty years later, Helen and I were in Paris when Fred Astaire died. We got the news on television – French television. Our language challenge was broken when a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movie was broadcast in tribute to the deceased dancer. Now, nearly 20 years after Fred Astaire’s death, Helen was dead, too. She had been totally bedridden for the last four years of her life. During that time, we watched a lot of television, a lot of movies. We watched Rogers and Astaire musicals whenever they were broadcast. We liked those movies. They always made us feel good. Another thing you need to know about Helen is she was an avid movie buff. She had to know who the players were, the year of release, the director, and all the details about a movie that only a film scholar could appreciate. To fill this need, I gave Helen a book that alphabetically listed all the movies ever made and answered all the questions she could ever want to know. It was a Christmas gift, and I gave it to Helen just before she fell ill. She loved that book. In a short time, she filled it with bookmarks. She used it so much, the binding started to fail and some of the pages were beginning to fall out. When she became bedridden, she would ask me to look up information for her. For Helen, this book was a crucial part of her movie-watching life. Helen was gone now and, for the first time in 25 years, I was approaching my first Christmas without her. I didn’t decorate or put up a tree. I didn’t feel like it. The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas moved along swiftly. My time was taken up with doing things around the house and staying abreast of the football games, both collegiate and professional. On December 23, a Saturday, I went to the store to get some things I needed. When I got there, every parking space was taken. I didn’t want to go shopping now even if I had found a parking spot. I didn’t want to face a crowd of holiday shoppers. I wasn’t up for that. I wanted to do something, though. To turn around and go home again would have been to surrender to the Crusading Consumers of Christmas. An inspiration struck me. I would visit the library. I drove over there and the library parking lot assured me I would find no maddening horde of people here. Just inside the door of the library building and before entering the library itself, there is a room where used books are on sale. In front of this room is a table for special bargains on books, CDs, video cassettes and DVDs. As I walked past that table, I couldn’t help but notice a thick, hard cover book that looked new. It was right on top of the pile of bargains. It stood out like a beacon on a moonless night. It was a book of essays about great movies. I thought, “Helen would have loved this book.” Curious, I picked up the book and opened it to the table of contents. The essays used the movie titles and were arranged alphabetically. As I went through the contents, I came to the title, “Swing Time.” Knowing it was a Rogers and Astaire film, I immediately went to the page of that particular essay and stood there reading the three and a half pages about this movie. When I finished, I had a new appreciation for this movie and a great feeling about this book. I bought it and went straight home feeling like I had found a rare treasure, a lost gold mine. For the rest of the afternoon I read essays about my personal favorite movies. I also read about movies that I had never seen. Before closing the book for the day, I reread the essay about “Swing Time.” When I finished, I put the book down and thought how Helen would have loved it. As I reflected, an unusual feeling came over me. This wonderful book about movies was Helen’s gift to me. I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling that this book was meant for me. That night, I went to sleep thinking Helen had said “Merry Christmas” to me. The next day was Sunday. It was Christmas Eve. I was ready to watch football all day. I didn’t ignore the fact that it was Christmas Eve, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal of it either. As I watched the games throughout the day, I would look at that book, flip through the pages, read some passages, and generally thank Helen for this wonderful gift. Between the day games and the evening game, I read the essay about “Swing Time” again. When the last game ended, I was ready for a good night’s sleep. I went to bed and turned on my favorite movie channel. I fully expected to fall asleep to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” After all, it was Christmas Eve. To my astonishment and amazement, the late movie for this particular evening was “Swing Time.” I was wide awake now, and feeling warm and fuzzy and good. I watched the entire movie. All the while, I couldn’t help but feel that Helen was watching with me. It was mystical. It was magical. It was miraculous. First the book and then the movie, it was an unforgettable Christmas package that could have come only from Helen. Copyright © 2007 by Bill Whittaker, ellis2455@aol.com In Touch Hospice of the Valley Bereavement Newsletter, November/December 2007 Reprinted with permission of the author

Elizabeth Harper Neeld shares with us the special column she was invited to write for the AARP Web site: A while back, right before the holiday season, a member of the national staff at AARP called to ask me to write a special column for their website. "Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas…all these special occasions are coming," Susan said, "Since this is such a difficult time for those who have experienced loss, we would like you to write a piece that might be useful to people who are grieving." I was happy to say yes to AARP's request because I knew, both from my own personal experience and from the research I had done for my books Seven Choices and Tough Transitions, that the holiday season is a specific kind of challenge. All of these holidays celebrate family, togetherness, light, peace, joy, and miracle…and for those of us grieving it is the very absence of all these things that make the days especially long and the nights empty. Here is the piece I wrote, called "Ashes & Embers." I hope you or those you might pass the newsletter along to find value in these thoughts that I send along to you today with care and love. Read on . . .

Bless your heart, Corinne, you are most welcome. Your children might like this idea, too: Light a Memorial Candle for Your Loved One

My dear one, I'm so very sorry for your loss of your beloved son Brandon, and I can only imagine the depth of your pain. You're so right ~ it isn't fair ~ there is nothing fair about it, and even if "everything happens for a reason," there is absolutely no reason in the world that will ever make this right. We are not supposed to outlive our children, are we? I also cannot understand the incredible insensitivity (dare I say ignorance?) of your school board members. I think they may need some education and enlightenment about dealing more effectively with the death of a classmate in their school. (See, for example, Encouraging Your School to be Grief Friendly.) I hope by now that you have found your way to The Compassionate Friends, whose mission is to assist and support families in the aftermath of the death of a child. You will find links to this and many other helpful resources on the Death of a Child or Grandchild page of my Grief Healing Web site. See also the links listed on my site's Child, Adolescent Grief page, as you may find some of them helpful in assisting Jeremie and Codie with their grief. At the very least, know that you are most welcome here, and know too that you are being held by all of us in gentle thought and prayer.

To hang a virtual stocking in memory of your departed loved ones, go to Christmas in Heaven

Held annually the second Sunday in December, this year December 9, The Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting unites family and friends around the globe in lighting candles for one hour to honor and remember children who have died at any age from any cause. As candles are lit at 7 p.m. local time, hundreds of thousands of persons commemorate and honor children in a way that transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries. Further details here.

(I know it's off the subject at hand, but I just wanted to tell you, Maylissa, how much I love the latest picture of your two little darlings. They're both sooooooo beautiful . . .)

I, too, am thankful for each and every precious one of you. And when I count my blessings, I count the members of our GH family twice.

To my knowledge, Derek, right now Hospice of the Valley is one of the few hospices in the country (if not the only one) that offers online grief support officially sponsored by a hospice, and whose forums are carefully monitored and moderated by professional hospice bereavement counselors. I cannot say how many hospices in other areas of the country know about this site, but I do know that we’re doing our best to let them know about it. Our site is always mentioned whenever one of us is interviewed or invited to write an article on the topic of grief. (For example, the site was featured in editor Andrea Gambill’s “Welcome” column in the July 2007 issue of Grief Digest Magazine.) Certainly members of our staff mention the site whenever we attend conferences at the national, regional, and local levels, and dozens of reciprocal links to us have been established through my own Grief Healing Web site. In addition, I believe that one of the best ways for people to learn about this site is through the personal experiences and recommendations of our individual members. If the site has been helpful to you, you can let others in your own circle know about it. (For example, you can tell Carson’s counselor about the site, so that person or agency can let other bereaved families know about it, too.) As for informal social gatherings of members in different parts of the country (including here in Phoenix), that is best left up to our individual members to arrange. Even in our “in person” support groups, we recognize that friendships may develop as group members get to know one another outside our groups, and that can be quite wonderful and special ~ but no member should feel any pressure in that regard.

Shelley, dear ~ I'm so sorry to learn this very sad news. Please know that we're all thinking of you and the children, and holding you in our hearts . . .

Hi Kevin, I've just finished reading a wonderful book entitled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. (I ordered the book earlier this week, after catching a televised interview with the author, Mark Levin, who happens to be a nationally-syndicated radio talk-show host. I had never heard of the man before I saw this interview.) The author looks at the loss of his dog from a man's perspective, and I found his book to be very moving and honest. This afternoon, out of curiosity, I paid a visit to Mark Levin's Web site, www.marklevinshow.com, where I found a number of video and audio clips in which he shares with other (male) talk-show hosts what he has learned from his own experience of adopting, loving and losing his beloved dog, Sprite. Since you're looking "to see if anyone had replied or if other posts have helpful insight into this experience," I thought you might like to visit Mark's site to listen to what insights he has gained.

Let's do it all together, yes? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR CHRISTIAN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU

Thanks for the video, Bob ~ fascinating stuff. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who once shared the profound observation that "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."