Chels in Progress

The first GriefShare Journal Prompt suggests pretending to write a letter to a friend to help them prepare for grief. My thoughts were scrambled, where does one even start? So I began here: Dear Friend, I'm so, so sorry you're about to be hit with grief. There's nothing I can say or do to lessen or expedite your grieving process. I'm not sure it'd be good to do so, anyhow. It hurts like hell some days, but you also get so many opportunities to remember your person and reflect, even opportunities to get to know them better; I'd hate for you to miss out on the beautiful things. Know that no one in your family or life will experience grief in exactly the same way as you. My grief is different from my dad's, my grandma's, my aunt's, my cousin's. We all loved my mom very much, but she was someone different to each of us: Mom, wife, daughter, sister, aunt. No loss is greater or less, just different. Never let anyone minimize your loss,

I bought a tiny orchid shortly after we brought my mom home on hospice. They day we learned we could bust her out of Our Least Favorite Place (the hospital), I left in a flurry, desperately looking for sunflowers anywhere. For the first time I could remember in my time with Trader Joe's, sunflowers were out of stock, crushing my vision to fill my mom's room with sunflowers before she was discharged. I ended up with five shoddy, overpriced bunches from Home Depot. As the sunflowers began to fade, I tried to find pretty things to replace them with. Sunflowers were, annoyingly, frustratingly , still out of stock. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed like it was enough, as if bringing home her favorite flowers would give us extra time together or ease her pain. Even so, I brought this tiny orchid to her, because I thought she would like the pineapple-y pot. The fact that she wouldn't get to actually look at it was irrelevant. I kept the tiny orchid after my mom was gone. I