We grieve because we have loved. Grief is love expressed by one.
This website is a casual non-commercial one man show.
I don't ever wish to disturb those who grieve.
If you wish to receive email notifications when new Volumes of Seven Pages of Grief are made available for download, please send me a message to that effect via the Contact form at top right of this page.
Be well and peaceful.
18 years
It’s June 6, 2023, today we pass the 18th anniversary of the death of our perfect 20 year old son James. James was home from a brilliant first year at University on a prestigious full tuition and fees scholarship that he had been awarded. He was newly in love with a beautiful young woman that... Continue reading→
Not Fair
The only fairness we can find in death is that, without exception, death will eventually come to each and every one of us. Death is never fair. it has no ability to be fair. The Universe is unemotional, a massively chaotic place ruled by rigid mechanical laws. There is no fundamental capacity in those mechanical... Continue reading→
Upbeat on Grief?
I do not fear my own eventual death, instead I fear not living and loving today while I have this precious gift of another day. I fear that those who will grieve my eventual and inevitable death will become lost in that grief, and so by these writings I want more people to better understand... Continue reading→
Fabric of Love
The death of a loved one can quickly become very damaging to even the tightest woven social fabric of a solid family, and destructive to already worn thin social fabrics of less close families and circles of friends. For visualization, I like the metaphor that a community or family is a social fabric woven from... Continue reading→
What do I say?
When someone you know suffers a loss, many people just don’t know what to say, and this discomfort surrounding grief brings deeper silence and isolation to those grieving. So, here is my not so short guide attempting to help you to speak more effectively to grieving people, mostly by understanding things not to say. There... Continue reading→
Anticipating Grief
In any good life filled with love there is an implied but usually not discussed acceptance of grief. We grieve because we love. No love, no grief. The longer and deeper the love the more challenging the grief. When we love someone, we implicitly accept that one of us will die before the other. Grief... Continue reading→
Love’s Flow Controls
The purest forms of love are unconditional love, wide open pathways between two souls where love can travel instantly with great force and reaction. The soul contains our conscience which tries to protect us from danger, and an unconditional wide open pathway for love to flow out of our soul is a very great danger.... Continue reading→
One wrong turn
Content warning: This post directly addresses suicide Originally published in 2009 as a column, but it's history is deeper. Having experienced suicide as a survivor, I will try reach our to families when I hear of a suicide in our circle of friend or extended circle of acquaintances. Knowing the complexity of the immediate aftermath... Continue reading→
Why hide grief?
Part of the ancient human instinct for survival is to not show weakness or fear. It’s a defense against predators, to appear strong in all ways, to increase the chance of survival by fooling predators into thinking that you are stronger than you really are, hoping the predators choose weaker appearing victims. This process likely... Continue reading→
What is love?
With a technician’s spirit, and once I had modelled my soul (see: https://distillinggrief.com/2023/04/24/a-model-of-a-soul/ ) as an invisible reservoir where we store and release love, I realized that grief had emptied me of most or perhaps all of the love in my soul. We often hear people describe grief as a dark place, and the loss... Continue reading→