I Married My Boyfriend’s Best Friend. People Think They Know The Full Story, They Don’t

Posted on 22/08/2026 by Boris Clair

We’re at a dimly lit restaurant, the kind 30-somethings swap for the clubs of their 20. Across from me and my husband, Greg, sit potential new friends we met in the hallway at our son’s daycare.

After enough stop-and-chats at pickup, we figured it was time – dinner on a balmy Saturday night in the thick of a hot Chicago summer.

We’re halfway through appetisers when the other wife asks, “So, how did you two meet?”

It’s a classic first-date-with-potential-friends question. Poor thing, she has no idea what she’s stepped into.

For most people, the “how we met” story is a gift, one of a couple’s greatest hits, perfect fodder for an evening with new friends. But Greg and I have a different kind of story. That’s why he nudges me under the table, our code to tell the simple version. To be fair, he thinks he looks worse in the story than I do. I disagree. But I’ll let you be the judge.

“Oh, we met through a mutual friend,” I say.

It’s true. Technically.

Adam was our mutual friend. It’s just not the whole truth.

The wife isn’t buying it. She tilts her head, eyes narrowing as she glances at her husband.

“Really?” she says. “You look like you have a story.”

Those looks are anxiety and hesitation. She’s not wrong. We do have a story.

Greg shoots me a tight, uneasy smile.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think either of us comes off looking bad. It’s just that telling it feels a lot like getting naked in front of someone you just met. And while I’m weirdly used to that feeling – metaphorically, I mean – Greg is not.

I’ve lost a lot of people for someone my age. After a while, vulnerability becomes muscle memory. I’m basically an emotional nudist at this point.

More than anything, I feel like we owe the story to Adam – like his legacy demands it. Otherwise, the parts of him that remain – his stories and the love he left behind – they evaporate. And he’s already so gone. The least we can do is keep his thread alive in how we met. Greg knows that, which is why he lets me begin.

“I knew it,” the wife says, excited now. “Come on, tell us the real story. We can handle it.”

“

Adam was our mutual friend. It’s just not the whole truth.

Here’s another thing: the more someone insists they can handle something, the less they actually can. That’s not confidence. It’s anxiety pretending to be confidence. I know this because my anxiety does this all the time.

“Can you?” Greg asks, half-joking. Even her insistence tells me she probably can’t. But I’m already halfway in, so I begin.

“I used to date Greg’s best friend, Adam.”

Her smile falters.

“Oh my God, what a scandal,” she says, trying to play it light.

And this is the part where she’s absolutely going to feel like an asshole.

“Well… not exactly. Adam died. He had an undetected heart condition,” I say. “We started dating after he passed.”

The wife looks like she might throw up.

The husband mutters, “Oh my God.”

I don’t blame them. It’s a lot. Most people aren’t prepared for this plot twist with their burrata.

“It’s OK,” I say, gently.

Greg adds, “It’d be a normal story if we were in a nursing home.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Very on-brand for your 70s. Less so at 26.”

The author, Greg (left) and Adam out to dinner in 2015.

The full backstory is that I first met Greg on Halloween 2013, though I wasn’t looking for him. I was on a street corner in Chicago dressed as Aziz Ansari, already tipsy, already confused. I’d been Instagram-stalking Greg’s best friend, Adam, who had piqued my interest. We had mutual friends from college, and he was always photographed with a cup of coffee and a far-off look, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

Greg showed up in a lot of Adam’s posts, so when I ran into him that night, the first thing I said was, “Hey, where’s Adam?” Greg, having never met me, let alone me dressed as Aziz Ansari, responded with something like, “Who and what are you?” I introduced myself. He drunkenly wandered away.

I didn’t end up finding Adam that night, but we connected not long after. We started texting, then emailing, and eventually we started dating about three months later. We were together for three and a half years.

Greg was a fixture in our world – wild, entrepreneurial, energy abounding. Adam loved him, so I did too. Over the years, we double-dated plenty, and I watched Greg move in and out of relationships.

A few months before Adam died, Greg moved abroad to start a travel company. He had flown back for a friend’s wedding, which we were all attending together. That same week, Adam had a health scare, something like a seizure, but the doctors couldn’t explain it. That’s the thing about being young and seemingly healthy. No one checks your heart.

The afternoon before the ceremony, Greg and I had some alone time while Adam was visiting a friend. I told him how worried I was about Adam. He reassured me that Adam was probably fine, because most 27-year-olds are.

I have only two photos from that weekend. One is a picture Adam took of me on the phone. The other is one he took of Greg and me holding hands. Adam had made us pose together. It made him laugh to think of us as a couple.

The author and Greg at a friend's wedding in 2015. — The author and Greg at a friend’s wedding in 2015.

Two months later, Adam died.

Greg flew in for the funeral, along with every other person who had ever known or even brushed past Adam. Greg stood by my side the entire time. I think this is probably the part where Greg thinks he looks bad, like it was his plan all along, or he was trying to be, as Bette Midler sang, The Wind Beneath My Wings. But it wasn’t like that. Nothing felt premeditated; it was natural.

He was there when my knees gave way at the burial, putting a hand on my shoulder. At the shiva, as well-meaning mourners swarmed, Greg graciously offered me a Xanax (which I desperately needed). Later, once the dust had somewhat settled, he suggested I might need to get away.

I was in grad school at the time, training to become a therapist, arguably the worst possible setting for a loss. Greg invited me to visit him and another friend in Buenos Aires over spring break. With nothing tethering me to the present, I said yes. That trip became the only thing I looked forward to. In the months before I left, I grieved, unravelling a life I’d built with Adam and still reeling from losing my mom a few years earlier. I was drowning.

Greg called me every day. He made sure I was eating, drinking water and going to class. His voice kept me afloat. But if you’d asked me then, I’d have said, “He’s like a brother to me.” (Side note: If you ever describe someone as “like a brother,” there’s a good chance you’re going to sleep with them. That’s the plot of every romantic movie, but I was too far gone to recognise it.)

When spring break finally came, I found out our other friend couldn’t make it right away. It would just be Greg and me for a few days. That’s when I got nervous. But I got on the plane anyway.

I landed in Buenos Aires around 10pm, barely breathing. When I got to Greg’s apartment, I found him waiting on the corner of his quiet street in the darkness of the Argentine fall. After a quick shower, he took me to a loud bar. We were both awkward, so to quell the awkwardness, we each ordered two drinks. We talked about Adam. About travelling. About everything. My grief loosened its grip just a little.

Later, back at his apartment, we both cried. At some point, I started eating rice cakes, and then I remember getting my computer to put on some music.

Neither of us remembers who made the first move, but I’m pretty sure it was Greg. And that’s how we started dating.

The couple across from us sits in stunned silence. Greg clears his throat and asks, “So… how did you two meet?” They answer, in unison, “Hinge.”

I smile faintly. There’s something I feel in that moment that isn’t exactly jealousy, but it’s close – an awareness of the simplicity of their story. A clean beginning, uncomplicated by loss. A simple story for a party that doesn’t cause any eyebrows to raise or mouths to go agape or leave you feeling like you’re in the emotional nude.

Greg and I don’t have that story. We crashed into each other in the wreckage of something devastating and built something out of the rubble. Our path wasn’t perfect. People were hurt. There were complicated feelings about us being together, and it was absolutely not love at first sight. It took grief, time, Buenos Aires, and a man who called me every day just to make sure I was still getting out of bed every morning.

In the 10 years since, I’ve come to understand that the messiness is what makes our relationship work. There’s a rare honesty between us – an authenticity that comes from having met each other at our most undone.

When you fall in love in the rubble, you don’t get to perform the beginning; you just have to be yourself. There was never any doubt that Greg could support me at my worst; after all, we started there. And the willingness to tell the real version of how we fell for each other is its own kind of love story for Adam, and I want us to tell it because we’ll always be indebted to our dear mutual friend.

Nicole Garelick is a San Francisco-based writer and creator of The Performance Plan, a Substack newsletter about the comedy of getting life wrong. Her writing has appeared in Hey Alma, Spread the Jelly, and Katie Couric Media. She lives with her husband and two young kids, who give her a lot of material. She is represented by Jennifer Simpson at CAA.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

Why Hayden Panettiere’s Death Feels So Personal To So Many Millennials

Posted on 18/08/2026 by Boris Clair

When a famous person dies unexpectedly, people who enjoyed their work often feel the loss deeply. The news of Hayden Panettiere’s death at 36 has particularly hit many millennials who grew up watching her performances in a way that can be hard to articulate.

Therapists and mental health experts say that reaction is completely understandable, and it says something meaningful about the generation that grew up with her.

“I hear this from clients all the time – that there is this confusion about why they’re crying over someone they’ve never even met,” Gina Moffa, a grief therapist and author of Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss, told HuffPost.

“We have all felt it at some point with a favourite public figure. And what I say is this: Your brain doesn’t actually care whether the relationship was mutual. It bonds with what’s familiar, what’s constant, what’s shown up for you again and again, even if that showing up only ever went one direction over a TV screen or a radio.”

The clinical term that helps explain what many people are feeling right now is a parasocial relationship – a one-sided bond that the brain forms with a public figure through repeated exposure. But experts say the term doesn’t entirely capture what these connections actually feel like from the inside.

“If someone’s voice or presence has been an important or meaningful part of your life for years, through your breakups, your late nights trying to fall asleep, your growing up, your body doesn’t check whether they knew your name or were an actual part of your life in any reciprocal way,” Moffa said. “It only registers that this was steady, this was meaningful to me, and now it’s gone.”

Therapist Tychelle Graham-Moskowitz explained the neuroscience behind these bonds.

“Our brains process the familiar faces and voices of celebrities we come to know and love the same way they process real friends because we see them on our screens, often daily, in our own homes,” she said.

“This is partly rooted in mirror neurons, which fire when we observe someone else’s emotions and allow us to internally mimic or feel connected to what we see as we may be experiencing many of the same emotions and events in our own lives,” she continued.

“When we watch a celebrity on TV, these mirror neurons let us resonate with their emotions, creating a bridge of identification.”

That’s why your brain doesn’t need a two-way relationship to form a meaningful attachment. Spending formative years with a pop culture figure creates a sense of familiarity, which can foster a genuine sense of companionship.

“Whether it is music, movies, sports, television or social media, we can feel like our paths have mirrored the path of the celebrity and we have ‘grown up with them’ or they represent a particular moment or time in our lives,” said Dr. Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist and chief wellness officer at the University of Tennessee System.

“I think about this like, ‘Oh, that movie meant so much to me when…’ and we have feelings that associate with that movie, that time, that character, and those translate to the human who portrayed them.”

“

As we age as millennials, the death of celebrities shakes us out of our egocentric internal teenage feeling and forces us into the fragile reality that our own mortality is real.

– Tychelle Graham-Moskowitz, therapist

So when that celebrity dies, you might feel grief over who they were to you or that time in your life. For nostalgia-driven millennials, it can be a powerful gut punch.

“I do believe there is a special relationship with millennial grief of celebrities,” Moffa said. “With my millennial clients, what I notice is that the grief they experience is not really just about the person, but also about the version of themselves that existed the last time they watched them and how they felt about their own life and themselves in the world.

“These weren’t just actors and actresses – they were sitting on the couch with us as kids, shaping what we thought friendship or relationships or love looked like. So when they’re gone, part of what’s actually being mourned is that chapter of your life feeling unreachable in a new way.”

Because Panettiere was a child actor as well, many millennials literally grew up alongside her and feel her death in a deeply personal way.

“As we age as millennials, the death of celebrities shakes us out of our egocentric internal teenage feeling and forces us into the fragile reality that our own mortality is real,” Graham-Moskowitz said.

Public figures remind us of the passage of time and our own place within it.

“When a person who represented those memories or versions of ourselves dies, it can feel like a piece of history lost, or it can make us confront our own age more and the idea that we are getting older, our friends are getting older, and we will have more loss as a result,” Gold said. “Death reminds us that time has passed – even if part of us still feels like we were watching them on TV yesterday.”

Hayden Panettiere died on Aug. 16, just days before what would have been her 37th birthday.

Panettiere and other former child actors who have recently passed away – like Michelle Trachtenberg and Daveigh Chase – served as role models and influential peers in a sense.

“Celebrities who were present during your developmental years become part of your internal reference system,” said Chloë Bean, a licensed marriage and family therapist.

“They model resilience, sexuality, independence and aspirational qualities when you’re just starting to figure out who you are. You looked up to them in your youth for guidance and self-direction. So you’re grieving that chapter, your childhood, and the part of you that felt so connected to them.”

She also pointed to the role cable TV played in cementing these bonds as well.

“For many millennials, the TV was the babysitter and an escape,” Bean said. “These actresses felt like friends because they were in your home multiple nights a week, sometimes for years. You weren’t just watching them on the screen, the experience felt like you lived and grew up alongside them. Millennials compare themselves to millennial celebrities in a way that no other generation has before. We aged with them, watching them getting married, struggling, hitting their 30s and 40s.”

Other technological advancements further deepened the connection and the sense of certain celebrities as a constant, stable presence in life.

“Millennials were the first generation to have access to the internet in our homes as a regular occurrence, so not only did we see our favourite celebrities in movies, on television, in magazines and so on, but we got a chance to search more about them on the internet and eventually in the palms of our hands,” Graham-Moskowitz noted.

It’s safe to assume Gen Z may feel celebrity losses even more intensely due to their lifelong parasocial access as well.

“The loss of a celebrity can also be a grief trigger to other grief – other relationships we’ve lost or represent a loss of time, innocence and childhood, or even symbolise our own death or mortality,” Gold said. “And, the communal reaction on social media can also amplify the expression of it all. The grief is usually about more than just the person.”

Therapists pointed to another profound dimension in grieving Panettiere’s death.

“With Hayden specifically, I think what made this loss land so [personal] for so many people is that she wasn’t just a face we grew up watching – she used her platform to speak openly about postpartum depression and trauma and battles with drug use, at a time when very few public figures are willing to say those things out loud and be this vulnerable,” Moffa explained.

Indeed, Panettiere’s recent memoir and interviews added to the depth of connection.

“Unlike many celebrities who have struggled with mental health or substance abuse, Hayden was extraordinarily open about her experiences, and that kind of vulnerability results in followers truly rooting for her and wanting her to overcome these obstacles, which makes her loss even more devastating,” said licensed marriage and family therapist Becky Stuempfig.

“When someone visible says ‘me too,’ it gives people permission to stop hiding their own pain,” Moffa added. “She didn’t just play characters we loved; she showed up as herself, in her own struggle, and that kind of honesty tells people watching from their own dark moments that they’re not alone in the struggle. That can be a whole other part of the grief experience we don’t talk enough about.”

Bean captured what makes this grief so uniquely hard to put into words.

“The millennial generation will feel every celebrity passing because we grew up believing we knew them,” she said. “Social media provides intimacy and daily access, but growing up watching these actresses on shows created a fantasy that felt real. We’re grieving them like we’d grieve a friend who turned out to be a stranger, someone we only knew from one direction. That’s where the grief hits hardest, and it’s what makes it so difficult to articulate.”

“

She didn’t just play characters we loved; she showed up as herself, in her own struggle.

– Gina Moffa, grief therapist and author

If you’re feeling blindsided by how much a celebrity death is affecting you, therapists have some guidance.

“Don’t let anyone talk you out of feeling the shock and grief, because the relationship wasn’t ‘real’ in any traditional sense, or because they were ‘just a celebrity,’” Moffa said.

“Grief doesn’t require reciprocity to be legitimate. It only requires attachment and meaning. If someone shaped who you became, at any age, or time in your life, in any way, that grief deserves the same gentleness you’d give any other loss.”

She emphasised that you don’t need permission to feel deep sadness and loss.

“When a death is sudden and shocking, the unanswered questions and uncertainty about the death being accidental or intentional [exacerbate] the complicated nature of the grief process,” Stuempfig said. “This is very different than an anticipated dying process from a medical illness or ageing. Our brains and bodies have a harder time processing emotions when there are unanswered questions.”

Talk about those feelings with a trusted friend or family member, ideally even someone who was also a fan or can help identify these emotions.

“The concept of ‘name it to tame it’ can be helpful with grief as it is critically important to identify the various feelings that arise so they can be validated,” Stuempfig said.

Be mindful of social media consumption, too.

“You don’t need to read every tribute, every post, and every statement if you feel impacted,” Gold said. “You can still care about an event or person and their death, and detach and take time away from the news, if needed. You also should not feel like you have to post or comment if you don’t know what to say. You can take time to figure out your feelings about something or grieve alone, that is OK, too. You don’t have to say something to show you care.”

Remember that grief, as painful as it can be, may also be a source of social connection.

“As we mourn the deaths of our favourite celebrities, know that we collectively mourn together, much like to do when we mourn in our own family members,” Graham-Moskowitz said. “The connected space that the internet creates can bring us a sense of comfort and togetherness, where we feel seen. This can be helpful. Also, go call a friend!”

And when these experiences bring up heavier feelings around your own mental health, Gold encouraged reaching out.

“If any of these deaths make you think more about your own mental health, I hope you reach out and ask for help,” she said. “There are hotlines, local therapists and everything in between. You can also start with a trusted family member or friend. Just start somewhere.”

Help and support:

Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.

It Was Too Late To Fix My Relationship With My Dying Father, So I Taught Children To Read Instead

Posted on 15/08/2026 by Boris Clair

I hadn’t seen my dad in five years when my sister texted me that he had fallen at home. After I had my first child, the childhood abuse I had previously overlooked to keep the peace suddenly became incomprehensible, and I chose to become estranged from him.

But when I found out he was dying, I knew time was running out to reconcile. I didn’t want to regret missing it.

On my first visit to see him, I brought flowers and kneeled by his bedside. He was thin, jaundiced and bedridden. His fine hair was snowy and delicate over his scalp, his movie star cheekbones more prominent than ever. His brown eyes still looked like mine.

But he didn’t recognise me. He stared at me and looked away repeatedly, his expression bewildered and hurt.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I was stunned and told him who I was.

“Is it OK that I’m here, or would you prefer I go?” I asked.

“You can stay. I’m just surprised. It’s been a long time.” There was grief and accusation in his voice.

“I know,” I said.

I wouldn’t apologise for the estrangement. He wouldn’t apologise for the abuse. We wouldn’t talk about the past when death was so close.

When I left, I kissed his forehead and promised I’d be back.

A few weeks later, I signed up to be an early literacy volunteer, teaching young children to read. Once a week, I spent an hour with the students during their lunch break, reviewing the alphabet and helping them sound out words while they ate orange slices and whole wheat pizza.

Then I would spend an hour with my dad at the healthcare facility where he lived for his last five months. We would share a few minutes of small talk, I would feed him small bites of baked fish or tater tots, and we’d watch TV.

The two things were connected. My father’s side of the family is full of educators. My dad was a professor for more than 50 years. He’s the reason I have post-traumatic stress disorder, but he’s also the reason I love literature, travel, art, food and languages. His mother – my namesake – was once a missionary-teacher who rode on horseback four miles every day to reach her students.

“Teaching is a spiritual thing,” my dad said.

I thought volunteering to help children read would connect me to my dad and our family as he was dying. The kids were at the beginning of their lives and education, while my father, the professor, was coming to the end of his.

I volunteered on Mondays. Usually, I visited my father at the end of the week. My weeks were measured in the bookends of life.

There were six schools where I could volunteer – all underfunded and with low reading test scores. I chose the one closest to my childhood home, my dad’s house. I was a kindergartener in that neighbourhood the first time my dad squeezed my wrists so hard that bruises encircled them for weeks.

The school was a rectangular building made with dark bricks. I had passed by it countless times as a child. From the outside, it looked institutional in the late September sun. But inside, I was surprised by how light it was. The hallways were painted white and worn in places with scuffs and pencil squiggles – imprints from students growing up.

Three large trees grew in the foyer outside the library. Their shiny green leaves wove a canopy over the grey and blue tiles where kids walked from recess, lunch and library time. That’s where I met the kids with whom I’d be working, affectionately called Book Buddies.

The volunteer program coordinator handed me two folders, each bearing the name of a little boy. We had two assignments for the day. The first was to complete “getting to know me” sheets. The second was to assess how many letter names and sounds they knew.

I asked them their birthdays, their favorite colour and to draw their favourite food. My first buddy knew the letters in his name but no others. My second buddy surprised me by knowing all the letters and their sounds, but he said them quietly with his eyes downcast.

The author volunteering for the Book Buddies program

At the school, there was the squeak of sneakers as kids ran in the hall and the voices of teachers announcing it was time to line up. There were boxes of small books, word games with dice, pencils, plastic utensils and thin straws for chocolate milk cartons.

Over time, I learned my first buddy loved to take a big sip of chocolate milk and burp and then we’d laugh together. He introduced me to his kindergarten friends. In the winter, his boot shoelaces were always undone, so I tied them before he returned to class.

My second buddy rarely made eye contact but read everything I put in front of him perfectly. He was reserved, but told me he lived with his dad and loved reading books the program gave him.

I praised both kids for their reading, hard work and the progress they made.

Sometimes after volunteering, I’d drive by my childhood home. With my father gone, the house stood empty.

At the healthcare facility, there was a crane to lift my dad, who used to hike by the Sequoias near his own childhood home. There were nurses who joked as they spooned medication into his mouth and the blare of televisions playing at full volume. There were cartons of Ensure and automatic hand sanitiser dispensers.

Sometimes my dad seemed stronger. On a good day, we watched Star Trek, and he laughed out loud for the first time in a while. When I left, he called after me in a strong voice, “Love you, honey.”

But organ failure is a rollercoaster with many ups and downs, all heading toward the inescapable end. Mostly, I worried about the emergence of new symptoms like the jaundice and itchiness that came and went. The bones I hadn’t seen before, jutting clavicle and breastbone. Lost fat on his fingers, every knuckle visible beneath the thin skin.

On a cold January day, I was with my dad when he began seizing. The seizures were quick, full-body and terrifying. He didn’t remember them – he just thought he’d fallen asleep for a minute. The doctor said there was nothing else they could do.

Four days later, he was unconscious. His breaths were long, slow and gasping. His TV was off. He had stopped responding to us. I asked my sisters for a minute alone with him. Everything we had left was in that small room.

“I hope that in whatever comes next, you receive the love you didn’t get as a child and you’re able to give that love to yourself and others in return,” I told him. “If there’s regret or anything else you’re carrying, you can put it by the wayside. You don’t have to carry it for me.”

He died the next morning. After he took his last breath, I watched the pulse in his neck grow fainter until I couldn’t see it beating under his skin anymore.

“Dad, I’m just going to check your pulse, OK?” I said. I placed two fingers on his neck – a place I had never touched before – and felt no movement.

Before the funeral home director placed him on the gurney, I kissed his forehead one final time and then wept.

Depleted by grief and the paperwork that accompanies a parent’s death, I didn’t return to volunteering for a month. Sometimes I’d look at a photo of my dad from when he was 5 years old – the same age as my own son and my volunteering buddies.

In the picture, my dad wore a black cap over his dark hair, and his left hand was in the pocket of his checkered coat. Although I knew he had an unsafe, loveless childhood, he beamed a proud smile. I wished I could go back in time to protect that little boy.

The author's father, John Townsend, at 5 years old — The author’s father, John Townsend, at 5 years old

When I went back to the school, my first buddy walked up to me with his lunch tray and a mildly scolding expression on his face.

“Where have you been?” he asked, as if I were a child who missed curfew.

“One of my family members was sick,” I said, smiling. “I’m back now.”

I was glad to be in the school, reading with the kids under the trees in the foyer. One day, as I arrived, my buddy was standing in the lunch line. He saw me, exclaimed to a friend, “That’s my Book Buddy!” and ran to hug me.

Later, when my second buddy caught a cold, I gave him tissues to take back to class because I knew he’d be too shy to ask the teacher. I helped another student carefully cut out a booklet for herself to take home to read. I made sure one of their classmates didn’t leave behind her lunchbox.

Little acts of care I wish had been given to the children that my father and I once were.

On the last day of volunteering, we held a party in the school library. I helped my buddies don plastic gold medals and paper graduation hats. We gave them backpacks with books, a toy keychain, bubbles and a red bracelet that said, “I love to read.”

“Do you love to read?” I asked my buddy, who was now reading several levels ahead of where he began.

He looked down bashfully and nodded with a smile, his two front teeth missing. We listened to a story about joyriding farm animals and played sight word bingo with candy. Then I tied his shoelace one last time, wished him a great summer, and watched him walk back to class.

I realised that while a child cannot heal their own parent, I could give that care to my kids and to other children who needed it. It was too late for my dad, but it might be right on time for them.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

Help and support:

If you, or someone you know, is in immediate danger, call 999 and ask for the police. If you are not in immediate danger, you can contact:

The Freephone 24 hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge: 0808 2000 247
In Scotland, contact Scotland’s 24 hour Domestic Abuse and Forced Marriage Helpline: 0800 027 1234
In Northern Ireland, contact the 24 hour Domestic & Sexual Violence Helpline: 0808 802 1414
In Wales, contact the 24 hour Life Fear Free Helpline on 0808 80 10 800.
National LGBT+ Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0800 999 5428
Men’s Advice Line: 0808 801 0327
Respect helpline (for anyone worried about their own behaviour): 0808 802 4040

When My Husband Died, I Thought My Life Was Winding Down. I Couldn’t Have Been More Wrong.

Posted on 11/07/2026 by Boris Clair

Three years ago, I stood beside my husband Al’s bed and prepared to say goodbye.

After 25 years of marriage, cancer was taking him where I could not follow. Before he died, he looked at me and said something that shocked me at the time.

“Diane, you’ll need another man.”

I immediately dismissed the idea. I was 80 years old. I had already experienced a full life. What on earth would I need another man for? I certainly wasn’t looking for one.

Then life did what life often does. It ignored my plans.

Just a few months after Al died, friends introduced me to a man named Bob. I welcomed it because I was experiencing what I later discovered, after many late-night Google searches, was called “widow’s fire,” a fierce longing for intimacy and closeness after losing a spouse that, despite being surprisingly common, few people talk about.

Some people, including some of my children, thought it was too soon for me to begin dating. But grief doesn’t follow a timeline.

I wasn’t looking to replace Al. No one could. But for 25 years of marriage, I had been part of a pair. Suddenly, I was standing alone. The silence and loneliness were overwhelming.

What I realised was that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I wanted companionship, laughter, conversation and, yes, physical attraction. And to my surprise, I found that in Bob, a kind, funny and handsome man who understood that loving him didn’t mean I loved Al any less.

Bob and I have been together for more than two years. We are deeply committed to one another, but marriage isn’t part of our equation. At our age, we’ve learned that relationships don’t need to look a certain way to be meaningful. What works for us is love, honesty and a healthy dose of practicality.

That practicality was put to the test recently when Bob and I embarked on a 22-day adventure through Norway, France and Spain. With me at 82 and Bob at 83, travelling halfway around the world requires a little more planning than it did a few decades ago.

Before we left, I sent an email introducing my daughter and son-in-law to Bob’s brother and sister. Not because we were planning a family reunion. Because we were 82 and 83 years old and about to cross an ocean together.

“Should we get lost along the way and need your assistance,” I wrote, “you now can connect with one another and try to retrieve, grieve or rejoice from our far distant travels.”

I also informed everyone that I had travel insurance in case my body needed to be shipped home and that Bob had thoughtfully prepared his own end-of-life arrangements. My children thought it was hilarious. Bob’s family may have thought I was crazy. They’re not entirely wrong.

But if you’re going to travel the world in your 80s, you learn to laugh about the realities that come with it. Like money. People don’t like talking about finances in matters of romance, but they should.

In our case, I happen to have a larger wallet than Bob. Before we left, we talked openly about expectations. I agreed to pay for the trip itself, including the airline tickets. Bob was perfectly willing to fly economy. I was perfectly unwilling to sit in first class without him. The good Lord knows I’m spoiled, and I wasn’t going to be up front sipping champagne while the man I loved was squeezed into seat 34B. Besides, I like him next to me.

We agreed that he would cover many of the extras along the way, including meals, excursions and spontaneous treats. There were no complicated contracts. Just two adults having an honest conversation.

Widowhood taught me many things. Like I wish more people understood that discussing money isn’t unromantic. Avoiding it is.

The author and Bob ending a long day at the hotel bar with their favorite drink, Old Fashioneds.

The trip itself became a lesson in something even bigger. Standing in Norway, surrounded by glaciers that looked as though they belonged on another planet, I found myself thinking about Al. He loved to travel.

The glacier train rides were breathtaking. The scenery was so beautiful it almost didn’t seem real. It was colder than a witch’s teat but magnificent. Al and I had never made it to Norway together, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much he would have loved it.

Unexpectedly, I didn’t feel guilty. For a long time, widows are made to feel that happiness somehow betrays grief. It doesn’t. Missing Al and loving Bob can occupy the same space. Both things are true.

Bob understood that. He never tried to compete with my memories. He simply stood beside me while I carried them. That’s one of the many reasons I love him.

Norway also introduced me to two things I never expected: iced cider and brown cheese.

The cider was delicious.

The cheese was downright addictive.

I liked it so much that I packed half a pound of it in my suitcase and hauled it through France, Spain and all the way back home to Florida.

At 82 years old, apparently, I travel internationally with contraband cheese.

The author and Bob sailing on a catamaran through Sognefjord, Norway's largest and one of its most breathtaking fjords. — The author and Bob sailing on a catamaran through Sognefjord, Norway’s largest and one of its most breathtaking fjords.

Then there was Bergen.

The minute we arrived, I announced to Bob, “I could live here.”

It had everything I love: beauty, charm, walkability and friendly people. We spent our days wandering old streets, taking in spectacular views and pretending, just for a moment, that we belonged there.

Next came France.

Of all the places we visited, Normandy affected me the most.

Standing among the endless rows of white crosses at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, I felt humbled in a way that is difficult to describe.

The older I get, the more familiar loss becomes. Friends die. My spouse died. Parents die. Even pieces of ourselves disappear. The woman I was at 40 no longer exists. Neither does the woman I was before widowhood.

Yet there I was, halfway around the world, still creating memories. Still laughing. Still planning. Still living.

Spain brought its own lessons.

I use wheelchair assistance because of a painful foot. Bob uses a cane. Airport assistance services managed to leave us at the wrong gate on two separate occasions, causing us to miss our flights.

After missing our second flight, I told Bob I could have learned to become a professional tango dancer in less time than it took airport personnel to move my behind through that airport. For two days we were shuffled from gate to gate while trying not to lose our sense of humour. Thankfully, we succeeded.

By the time we reached Mallorca after nearly three weeks abroad, we realised something. We may have been tourists, but we didn’t particularly want to be around tourists anymore.

Maybe we were tired. Maybe we missed our own beds. Or maybe we had officially become old people. Either way, home was sounding awfully good.

Traveling at 82 also comes with one unexpected advantage: I no longer care about impressing anyone.

The author having a delicious meal at Le Marsala in the heart of beautiful Bayeux, France.

When I was younger, I packed as though every day required a completely different outfit, matching shoes, jewellery and accessories. These days, I pack for comfort, practicality and the occasional nice dinner.

For 22 days abroad, Bob and I shared one checked suitcase, and we each carried a small bag. It wasn’t because we were trying to prove anything. It’s simply that we’ve learned what matters and what doesn’t.

I’ve discovered that one scarf, one pair of comfortable shoes and a little confidence can carry you remarkably far. That’s one of the gifts of ageing. You spend less time worrying about how you look and more time enjoying where you are.

At this age, I’ve learned that nobody really cares what you’re wearing, whether your hair is perfect or if you’ve packed the right shoes. What people remember is whether you laughed, loved, showed up and enjoyed the journey.

And that’s true whether you’re standing on a glacier in Norway, wandering the streets of Barcelona or simply sitting beside a koi pond at home with someone you love.

The greatest surprise of the trip wasn’t Norway’s glaciers, Normandy’s history or Barcelona’s architecture. It was realising how comfortable I have become with this unexpected chapter of my life.

If you had told me three years ago, while I was sitting beside Al’s hospital bed, that I’d be crossing Europe with another man, I would have told you that you were out of your mind.

If widowhood has taught me anything, it’s that we don’t honour those we’ve lost by stopping our lives. We honour them by continuing to live them.

When Al died, I thought my story was winding down. Instead, it simply changed genres.

The author and Bob enjoying a drink by their hotel's pool, overlooking the beautiful yacht basin in Mallorca. — The author and Bob enjoying a drink by their hotel’s pool, overlooking the beautiful yacht basin in Mallorca.

These days, I’m perfectly content sitting beside that pond with Bob discussing books, sports, grandchildren, politics or whatever we’re streaming on Netflix. Twenty years ago, I would have called that boring. Now I call it happiness.

One of the most damaging myths about ageing is that life becomes smaller. I’ve found the opposite. Life becomes more precious. At some point, every one of us realises our time is finite. The horizon becomes visible. Oddly enough, that’s what makes each day matter more.

At 82, the future looks different than I imagined. It includes a new love. A few more aches and pains. Occasionally a wheelchair. And gratitude for every single day I still get to wake up and see what comes next.

Al knew all this before I did. He knew I would need companionship. He knew I would need laughter. He knew I would need someone to sit beside me on airplanes and hold my hand during life’s inevitable turbulence. Most of all, he knew I would need a future.

As it turns out, he knew me better than I knew myself.

Diane Heiler is the author of “A Widow’s Fire: An Intimate Memoir of Heartbreak, Survival and Moving On.” Widowed in 2023 after caring for her husband through his battle with cancer, she writes about grief, resilience and finding joy again after profound loss.

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I Lost My Daughter To Cancer. 4 Well-Meaning Words Left Me Feeling More Alone In My Grief

Posted on 18/04/2026 by Boris Clair

When we hear about the death of a child or young adult, we are unsettled, unmoored. Such deaths are out of the natural order. And if it could happen to your child, it could happen to mine. Life is never safe once you have children.

When my daughter died of cancer at age 40, some people remained silent, distancing themselves, as if the death of a child might be bad luck, contagious. Other well-intentioned people hesitated, retreated, reaching for a safe landing.

“There are no words.”

“Your loss is unimaginable.”

“I can’t imagine what you are going through.”

Why is it so easy to find words for joyous occasions – births, graduations, weddings – yet we lose language when seeking words to console and comfort the bereaved? Death humbles us, revealing the empty spaces in language.

I understand. I do. My daughter’s death left me without words. It is incomprehensible to lose a child. Grief isn’t one emotion; it is a tsunami of sadness, anger, shock, pain, helplessness and deep yearning. Perhaps reaching for the shorthand, “There are no words,” is an easier way to say: There will never be words large enough to express this sadness.

After Alex died, I fell into many empty spaces in language, especially the space where I had no name for myself, a parent who has lost her child. Names exist for a child who has lost a parent (orphan), or for a woman who loses her partner (widow), but what do we call an orphaned parent?

Recently, though, I stumbled upon vilomah – a Sanskrit word that means “against the natural order.” The word vilomah embraces the primal injustice of outliving one’s child, inverting the generational order, an upside-down world. Parents expect to predecease their children, not bury them. To be a vilomah is to become an unwanted messenger from a distant point of human existence.

Bereaved parents – vilomahs – aren’t surprised when we learn the word bereavement has its roots in Old English, meaning to deprive, rob, take away. The future tense has been rearranged: Our children have been deprived of their hopes and dreams – their future – and we, their parents, are robbed of our future with them.

The author (right) with her daughter Alex at a family party.

But placeholders such as “there are no words” close off conversations when they most need to begin, forcing a parent who has lost so much to find words to comfort the speaker. Bereaved parents need their friends and families to be safekeepers, using specific words to describe our beautiful children, reminding us that our children live on in their memories.

I needed words of comfort to bring her back – stories about her light and love, her acts of kindness and courage. I needed to hear people say her name – Alex – and surround me with words of love.

Here’s what I want to say to everyone: be brave. There are no perfect words to comfort the bereaved, no comfortable words for something so uncomfortable. You can’t fix my loss, but you can hold in your hearts everything about Alex that made her specific and human – her love for birthdays and balloons, pandas and popsicles, dresses with pockets, Japanese art and fashion design, running marathons and then ultramarathons, making everything look so easy.

You can reminisce joyfully about photos of Alex at the finish line of her 100-mile runs, beaming with a thumbs-up, or about the ways in which she celebrated life’s small pleasures and brought family along for the celebration. Her beautiful curls and welcoming smile that felt like a hug, or the big-hearted gifts she gave – she was a spectacular gift-giver.

Or her love for s’mores and ice cream cake, sushi and dumplings, for growing dahlias and daisies, for the multitudes she contained. These loving, specific words capture the light Alex carried, the vividness with which she lived her life.

When someone says, “There are no words,” I hear “That’s all there is to say,” and when they say, “Your loss is unimaginable,” I hear “I will not try to imagine your loss.” These expressions allow speakers to retreat, staying emotionally adjacent to the bereaved parent’s loss, leaving us isolated, sealed off, deprived of moments of true connection.

When friends and family tell an Alex story or ask for one, they open the uncomfortable spaces in language and let my daughter live on in words.

Bereaved parents live with the geography of our grief, becoming familiar with its peaks and valleys, its edges. Our grief doesn’t disappear; its tail is long. No worries if you didn’t bring the casserole or cannoli; there is plenty of time to offer comfort to a bereaved parent and honour a child’s memory.

I am grateful to the many friends who continue to lift up Alex’s name and carry grief with me – like the neighbour who cooked Alex’s favourite dumplings each month for an entire year, leaving them on our front porch with a simple one-word note reading “love”. For the friends who plant dahlias to honour Alex, or wear dresses with pockets remembering her, and the friends who are listening presences, lingering in the backyard to talk about Alex.

And I am always grateful to the wonderful friends and family who put April 2, Alex’s birthday, and July 15, the day she died, on their calendars, knowing these are both rough days for me and important days to honour Alex’s memory.

A Jewish proverb reminds us of why we need to try to fill the empty spaces in language: “One dies twice – the first time when a body stops breathing; the second time when a name is no longer spoken.”

To a bereaved parent, silence feels like forgetting. Whenever someone speaks the name of my beloved child and asks about her, her life story is kept alive.

If you know a bereaved parent, reach out with loving words and gestures, show up and help carry their grief – and do it again. And again. Become safekeepers of memory – tell a story; ask for a story. Help a bereaved parent find the spaces where their beloved child continues to live.

There are always words.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

Help and support:

Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.

My Senior Dog Couldn’t Walk Anymore. Before She Died, She Led Me To My Husband.

Posted on 22/02/2026 by Boris Clair

“JUST BRING BACK MY MAYAAAAAAAA,” I sobbed into the phone to my then-boyfriend of two years, Tom.

He had just left our East London apartment for a two-hour journey to the specialty vet hospital, where our 13-year-old paralysed chiweenie waited to be picked up. Housebound with Covid, I waited impatiently for him to return with the love of my life.

Tom knew that Maya had always been my soulmate. She had been at my side since I was 19 and going to college in Greenwich Village. She gently snorted in my bag as I snuck past security into my film class, where a treat from my professor awaited her. Bouncy and bright, Maya romped through the city with me, often drawing adoration from passersby for her cuteness.

We were inseparable. I would wake to the surge of traffic or the rumble of street construction below, Maya nuzzled into my dark hair. Up we went to the coffee shop’s takeout window, where, surprise, surprise, more treats were ready for her taking. On the subway, to friends’ houses, on road trips across state lines, and on flights home to sunny, smoggy Los Angeles, Maya came along every step of the way.

During Hurricane Sandy, it was Maya and me against the world. No power, no running water. Maya and I traipsed along the Westside Highway at twilight, a Blessed Virgin Mary candle ablaze as a torch, walking past what felt like a post-apocalyptic downtown.

Maya even moved across the pond with me to London when I turned 30 – a reset after a five-year relationship abruptly ended.

She first moved in with my mum, who FaceTimed me at least four times a day while I spent the longest three months of my life waiting for her to arrive.

When she finally did, I felt whole, like I could exhale and lean into my new London chapter.

A few months later, Maya, almost 12, lost mobility in her back legs. I placed her in a leather duffel bag (unzipped, of course), threw in some blankets and rushed into the November night to the same specialty vet hospital, which would become our refuge for the next three years.

Still in my yoga pants and sweatshirt from that afternoon, the only thing I could think about was getting Maya better. I kept reassuring her, “It’s OK, it’s going to be OK,” even though I was ultimately reassuring myself. Stroking her soft face and trying to keep the tears back, I knew our lives would never be the same.

“Intervertebral disc disease,” the neurologist said. “She needs a spinal fusion immediately.” With only a 50% chance of regaining movement in her hind legs, I began to prepare for whatever came next.

Maya glowed in her new neon pink set of wheels. She zipped along the Hackney Canals with even more flair than before, drawing even more smiles in her new form than she had on four legs.

It was during this period that I met Tom. We both swiped right, and I planned for him to meet Maya on our third date. By then, I had accumulated a handful of dog sitters for her. While she could be home alone for up to four hours, for special nights out, I needed backup.

Maya was still figuring out her new self and was scooting all over the apartment in her white puffy diapers. As soon as I brought Tom up to meet her, Maya had an accident all over a floor pillow. Embarrassed, I began to apologise.

“It is not a bother,” he laughed as he picked her up. “Come on, you. Let’s get you cleaned up,” he cooed as he reached for the kitchen roll.

It was at that moment that I knew Tom was here to stay. During lockdown, he would drive from the other side of London and spend the entire weekend with us, giving Maya baths, making a duvet fort for her so we could watch The Twilight Zone, and going for long walks with Maya rolling beside us. He would even adorn her with origami crowns. My plus-one became a plus-two.

Tom and Maya in our yard in London, December 2020.

On our first family holiday in summer 2020, we rented a cottage in the Cotswolds, where Maya rolled in green fields sprinkled with cows grazing. When she grew tired and needed a rest, Tom would scoop her up in his arms, like a bride being carried over the threshold, and blow on her face to cool her down.

When the three of us finally moved in together, our priority was securing a ground-floor apartment so Maya could come and go with ease. Our entire existence centered on Maya. It was never just Tom and me, but rather the three of us, moving as an imperfect unit into this new, cohesive life together.

As our love deepened, Maya’s age began to catch up with her. Despite being the ultimate roller girl, more health issues began to pile on: hyperparathyroidism, myoclonic seizures, pancreatitis and blindness. During this time, she would be up all night, distressed, howling and crying.

We took turns, surviving on three hours of sleep, our collective mental health wearing down, yet we persevered. On these late nights, I would turn on sound bath playlists, sing to her and do everything in my power to keep her settled on the futon we had set up in the living room. We would not give up on our Maya.

In January 2024, we celebrated her 16th birthday together. Our only measure of time was her comfort. As long as she was still eating, still bright-eyed and not in pain, we kept going. She had traded in her wheels for a stroller, and we pushed her everywhere, her head poking out to take in the breeze.

Maya was on a cocktail of medication, and our lives revolved around the rituals of caring for her – giving her syringes of medicine, hiding pills in peanut butter, cooking for her. She was a metronome, and our lives played to her rhythm.

Maya flew home with me that spring. By now, she could not be left alone, so it was easier to travel with her to ensure round-the-clock care. During this time, I felt Maya’s clock was running out.

Maya's 15th birthday party in London, February 2024. — Maya’s 15th birthday party in London, February 2024.

I knew an engagement was just around the corner. I had found the ring in his sock drawer, and I kept saying how important it was to me to have Maya at our wedding. She would be the bouquet, as I dreamed of carrying her down the aisle.

Tom would not be marrying just me; he would also be making a vow to her.

Within 48 hours of returning to the UK, Maya was rushed to the emergency vet because she could no longer breathe on her own. We began Googling videos on how to build an oxygen chamber at home from a plastic storage container. Tom found all the parts we would need and was ready to pick up the oxygen tank when the call came. It was time.

We sat with her on our laps for five hours, crying as we looked through all the photos of our many adventures over the years: Maya gliding in Williamsburg, a soggy Tom holding an even soggier Maya after a lake dip, Maya in her skulls and crossbones sweater, us singing happy birthday to her. And then my worst fear finally happened. Her spirit had grown too big for her now very tired body.

I was devastated. I don’t remember getting into the car or Tom driving us home. He held my hand and, through his own tears, led me into our now very empty apartment. Even though he was tucking me into bed and telling me to try to rest, I felt truly alone for the first time in 16-and-a-half years.

The engagement came six weeks later, while I was waiting for a taxi to Heathrow to fly back to New York. It would be the first time I would be in the city without her. Maya’s vet gave me an envelope of bluebells to plant in her honour. On that solo trip back to NYC, I walked down Sixth Avenue, turned left onto 13th Street, and stood in front of the apartment where Maya and I first became inseparable.

Maya's representation at the author's wedding in the Cotswolds, July 2025. — Maya’s representation at the author’s wedding in the Cotswolds, July 2025.

Maya had always been my constant, my heartbeat outside my body. Losing her was like losing a piece of myself, the glue that held my world together. Kneeling, I spread some dirt beneath a tree and scattered the seeds.

Across the ocean, I knew my person was waiting for me. His love for Maya over those four years was one of the greatest acts of devotion I had ever witnessed. Our love for her and the shared grief of her absence would now be a journey Tom and I would navigate – together.

Jordan Ashley, Ph.D., is a writer and the founder and executive director of Souljourn Yoga Foundation, a nonprofit creating transformational yoga retreats that support girls’ education worldwide. Learn more at souljournyoga.com.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

When My Husband Died Suddenly, One Of His Family Members Said 5 Words That Taunted Me For Years

Posted on 13/12/2025 by Boris Clair

Not long after my husband, Keith, died suddenly in April 2000, I overheard one of his family members tell someone that she didn’t feel sorry for me and my young children. “This will make them stronger,” she asserted.

Seventeen years later, her words taunted me as I shuffled across the sizzling parking lot of a suburban shopping center on my way to a therapist’s office. Stronger. What a joke; I could barely walk.

Once inside, I slumped into an oversized chair and wearily told my new therapist, Elizabeth, my problem was that I sucked at life and the visit would be a waste of time for both of us.

The only reason I was there was because one of my adult daughters had threatened to call 911 if I didn’t get help for myself. She’d become alarmed after she couldn’t reach me and had stopped by my house, where she discovered me flat on my back on my sofa. I hadn’t bathed or changed my clothes in weeks.

Assuming Elizabeth would show me the door so she could move on to a more worthwhile patient, I was surprised when she instead asked me to elaborate. After listening for nearly an hour, she said, “What you’re suffering from has nothing to do with being bad at life. It’s called resilience fatigue.”

I’d never heard of it, but I knew all about resilience. Its necessity had been drummed into my head since I was a kid. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps ….” “When the going gets tough ….” “If at first you don’t succeed ….” As I saw it, resilience was the crux of my problem. If I wasn’t so weak and lazy, I could allow adversity to transform me into a deeper, tougher individual.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Elizabeth told me.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.”

“Adapting” is the key word. If stressful events never let up, there’s no time to adapt. Resilience fatigue or toxic stress is about prolonged, excessive and unmanaged intense stress that leads to a sense of being constantly overwhelmed. Without sufficient coping mechanisms, the body’s stress response becomes overworked. This, in turn, can lead to an imbalance in our physiological systems and affect everything from mood to the immune system.

That sounded like me.

I’d been living in a near-constant state of anxiety mixed with dread since April 2000. I’d grown so accustomed to the feeling of impending doom — the racing heart, the perpetual tightness across my shoulders — that I thought it was normal.

Apparently it’s not.

Keith’s death would have been challenging enough on its own, but overnight I also became a single mother of three. Worse still, I was pregnant with our fourth child.

And that was just the beginning.

The author and Keith on their wedding day, March 4, 1989.

Keith had minimal life insurance. I’d been a stay-at-home mother for almost a decade while we continually moved for his job as he climbed the corporate ladder. Even before I buried him, the realisation that I’d have to find both work and child care ASAP filled me with terror. A family of five had to have health insurance. We’d been insured through Keith’s employer, and I couldn’t afford to pay for it outright.

Finding work took precedence over everything, including grieving my husband and bonding with the baby born three weeks after he died.

I’d always assumed the capacity for resilience was limitless and also hardwired into human beings like the fight-or-flight response, but during my counselling sessions, I learned otherwise. It’s not innate; rather, it’s learned and comes not just from individual effort but also from available support and resources.

The times I attempted to discuss my fears or concerns with others, they dismissed them: “You’re young, you’ll bounce back ….” “God never gives you more than you can handle ….” “In a few years you’ll remarry and hopefully the next guy will be rich ….” This was what passed for support in my world.

Still, I believed grit and determination would not only save me but someday I’d look back on those terrible days and be thankful for what I’d gone through while reflecting on how far I’d come.

For a hot minute, that seemed to be the case. After an obsessive job search, I found a position in an auto insurance call center with top-notch benefits. My parents, who’d recently retired and had moved nearby, agreed to watch my kids and not charge me. I began humming the song “I Will Survive.”

Unfortunately, the job turned into a trap. Callers were frequently angry; they swore and shouted at me all day. There was little room for advancement unless I could put in overtime or travel, which was impossible given my situation. I’d leave work depressed and drained and come home to a messy house full of bickering kids and memories of the life I used to love.

I also began flashing back to the morning I found Keith dead in our bed. As time passed, I thought about him more instead of less, and I couldn’t understand why the last day of his life played on a constant loop in my head, as if I could change the outcome if I relived it enough times.

When I mentioned this to a relative, she chastised me. “You need to focus on all the good things you still have, not on the bad.”

Of course I was grateful for what I had, despite the fact that my finances were eroding at a frighteningly rapid pace. Despite the fact that I’d gone from enjoying a vibrant, hope-filled life with a man I loved to living like a cloistered nun. Despite the fact that one day my future had beckoned like the yellow brick road and the next there was a ROAD PERMANENTLY CLOSED sign blocking the entrance.

The author's family on their last family vacation in 1999. "Keith had less than a year to live," the author writes. — The author’s family on their last family vacation in 1999. “Keith had less than a year to live,” the author writes.

Most of all I was grateful for my parents.

In their mid-60s, they were now practically raising a toddler and an infant. I was tired all the time and so were they. Our relationship deteriorated even as I suffered crushing guilt over what they were doing for me.

Yet I was certain I could turn everything around. So I prayed daily for acceptance of my situation. The Secret became my Bible, and I spewed positive affirmations morning, noon and night. I tried to banish negative thoughts from my head and focus on future abundance, not what I’d lost.

Nothing changed. Eventually I went through bankruptcy followed by foreclosure. I was fired from my job for not being able to keep up with the ever-changing metrics. When I discovered my oldest daughter was using heroin, I thought life could not get any worse.

I was wrong.

My father developed Alzheimer’s disease, and I moved in with my parents to help care for him. Two years after he died, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I took care of her until the end.

By then my daughter was no longer using heroin, which was an unexpected miracle.

But at that point my younger daughter was in trouble for school truancy and drug use. Eventually she was removed from my home by Franklin County Children Services after her high school filed a criminal complaint with the local juvenile court and a judge ruled that she be placed in foster care at a local psychiatric residential treatment facility. It was a good thing I was unemployed, as my days became a merry-go-round of mandatory meetings with social workers, psychiatrists, counsellours and a court-appointed guardian. They picked apart my life and told me everything I was doing wrong as a parent but offered nothing in terms of concrete solutions or support.

My daughter was gone for over two years. Upon her return, she told me she’d been sexually assaulted while she was at the treatment facility. Guilt for what she’d been through vied with an impotent sense of rage deep inside me. The feelings were so inflammatory that sometimes I was sure I’d self-combust.

In the midst of my ongoing crises, I met a man in a writers’ group I’d joined in an attempt to get away from my life. Jim became a bright beacon in my otherwise dreary existence, so much so that I dared to envision a future with him. But three months after my mother passed, he died by suicide in my car. My younger son, who’d adored Jim, was so traumatised he had to be hospitalised after he became suicidal. My older son ghosted me for several years, deeming me a toxic mother.

I could no longer deny that my life had become a not-so-funny running joke, with me as the punchline. Sometimes I imagined my husband disgustedly shaking his head as he watched his family fall apart.

Just thinking about it exhausted me. One day I lay down on my living room sofa and couldn’t find the strength to rise again. I prayed for death as I thought about how I’d failed everyone, including myself.

Elizabeth helped me to reframe my viewpoint.

“Your husband died, then you had a baby. You had to hit the ground running with no time to grieve him or help your children. Your life became a runaway train that took 17 years to crash,” she said.

She put me in touch with a psychiatric nurse who prescribed a combination of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. She also utilised cognitive therapy, including EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing). Slowly I began to feel better.

The author and her youngest daughter, Dianna. "She was born three weeks after her father died," the author writes. — The author and her youngest daughter, Dianna. “She was born three weeks after her father died,” the author writes.

Of course you can’t always control what life throws at you, but Elizabeth pointed out that my path might have taken a different turn if I hadn’t been forced into a race against time to secure health insurance and child care, those fickle twins that dictate life for so many Americans.

Still, I had trouble letting go of the conviction that I’d traded in resilience for lethargy. All my life I’d heard that adversity builds character and that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Elizabeth shook her head. “Those are dangerous generalisations and they’re mostly false. Beliefs like that allow us to minimise other peoples’ suffering without feeling guilt.”

A growing body of research shows that despite the widespread belief that negative life events result in “post-traumatic growth” or positive personality change, “the only type of growth that seems to arise consistently is deepened relationships,” according to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Our relationships with loved ones often become more meaningful during times of struggle.

“But that requires having supportive relationships in the first place,” Elizabeth said. “Other than your parents, who were tossed out of the frying pan into the fire with you, you’ve been going it alone all this time. What would you say to that relative who told you Keith’s death would make you stronger if you saw her today?”

I didn’t hesitate. “I’d say, ‘You have no idea how badly I wish you’d been right.’”

Seven years on, my own mental health is in a much better place, and my children are thriving. We’re closer than we’ve ever been, and all four are involved in healthy relationships and working at jobs they enjoy. My older daughter became a psychiatric nurse and the younger one is pursuing a nursing degree in the same field.

After my oldest child went through a divorce a few years ago, I began watching my two young grandchildren while she worked, paying it forward the way my parents did for me.

I understand the urge to offer platitudes to someone who’s experienced a loss or tragedy. The right words can be difficult to find. But it’s better to say nothing than to imply they’ll somehow benefit or be improved as a result of their misfortune.

Suffering hasn’t made me stronger, but it certainly has taught me about the kind of person I want to be. Now I’m able to offer more than platitudes to others going through difficult times because I can share my experience along with empathy. Pain does not build resilience; lending support does, even if it’s only a sympathetic ear.

I’m grateful that today I can be that support for my family.

This piece was originally published in December 2024 and we are sharing it again now as part of HuffPost Personal’s “Best Of” series.

Margaret Jan Feike’s personal essays concerning subjects such as addiction, mental health, and grief have been published by Salon, McSweeney’s, Modern Loss, and other venues. She resides in central Ohio with her younger two children and a herd of cats and recently completed her first novel.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

When My Daughter Received A Life-Altering Diagnosis, I Heard The Same Phrase Over And Over. I’ll Never Repeat It To Anyone Else.

Posted on 27/09/2025 by Boris Clair

I had just stepped out of the shower when my husband, Scott, called from the hospital, where our 9-year-old daughter had been a patient in the paediatric ICU for four weeks. He had relieved me that morning so I could go home, shower and return for a meeting with the doctors about our daughter’s condition.

When he told me our daughter’s diagnosis was “neuromyelitis optica,” a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system, my heart didn’t just sink. It stopped. A silent, internal arrest. In a single moment, my physician’s mind ran through the prognosis. Rare, incurable, potentially fatal. My heart broke under the weight of my devastation.

Steam still hung in the air, my wet hair dripped as I clutched the towel around me, my skin still damp. When the words came through the phone, my legs gave way. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold bathroom tile, the phone pressed to my ear, my breath caught in my chest.

Scott asked if I was still on the phone. “It’s good we finally have a diagnosis,” he said, searching for a foothold of hope.

After a long silence, I whispered: “That’s not a good diagnosis.”

As a physician, I knew exactly what this diagnosis meant: Not only was it incurable; it often led to blindness, paralysis and ongoing hospitalisations.

About a month ago, our daughter Nell had woken up one morning with nausea, dizziness and overwhelming fatigue. When I took her to the emergency room, her symptoms escalated rapidly. She became unresponsive, and a brain MRI revealed multiple large areas of inflammation.

As her neurological status declined, her tongue and the other muscles involved in swallowing became paralysed. Because she couldn’t clear her oral secretions, she developed aspiration pneumonia and was admitted to the ICU, where she developed right upper extremity paralysis and lower extremity weakness.

She remained in the ICU for five weeks, hooked up to beeping monitors and struggling to recover from what appeared to be a paediatric stroke. The diagnosis was made a few weeks later.

The contrast between the recent memories of my daughter powering down the lacrosse field, her face lit up with joy after scoring a goal, and now seeing her lying in the ICU was stark. She was unresponsive, her face pale, her little body wired with tubes and monitors. The sound of machines beeping echoed where there once had been giggles.

The author's daughter in the hospital. — The author’s daughter in the hospital.

I had clung to the hope that we would find a cause, treat it and somehow reclaim the life we once had. I am a fixer. It’s in my DNA, both as a doctor and a mom. But this? This wasn’t a problem to solve. It was a reality to endure. In an instant, the future I had imagined for her vanished.

I was left without a script, utterly lost.

And what made it harder were the unspoken and sometimes spoken expectation that we would “bounce back,” pick up the pieces and return to life as it was before.

Friends meant well when they told me, “You’re strong, you’ll bounce back,” or “She’s young, she’ll bounce back.” They thought they were encouraging me. But to me, it was a dismissal. This wasn’t a sprained ankle. This wasn’t a rough semester. This wasn’t a setback. It was annihilation.

The question wasn’t “How do we bounce back?” and return to some previous version of our lives. That was impossible. The real question was: How do we grow through devastation?

I had to learn to sit in the terrifying, liminal space between “what was” and “what is,” without knowing “what will be.” I had to let go of the fixer and become the witness.

It was agonising. The grief, the pain, the fear. I wanted to escape all of it. But once I stopped pressuring myself to bounce back and allowed myself to sit in the rubble of my old life, something shifted. I stopped denying the destruction. I started to feel loss, anger, vulnerability. And in that heaviness, I discovered the first step toward healing.

Only then could the real work begin. Not rebuilding the same house, but examining the pieces that remained. I asked myself: What is worth keeping? What needs to be left behind?

My daughter’s rehab journey was gruelling. I watched her take her first wobbly steps with a physical therapist by her side, her legs shaking but her face set with determination. I watched her clutch a pencil with weak fingers, her letters uneven and jagged like a toddler’s. I sat in waiting rooms as she cried in frustration, knowing her friends were back at school, sprinting down fields and hallways while she struggled just to walk across a room.

The ache of what was lost was overwhelming.

The author's daughter in rehab working with her PT on strengthening and stretching her lower extremities. — The author’s daughter in rehab working with her PT on strengthening and stretching her lower extremities.

But slowly, something new began to take shape. My daughter didn’t return to lacrosse. Instead, she discovered art and writing. She found a way to transform her pain into creativity and purpose, eventually writing a book to help other kids and teens navigate hospitalisation and chronic illness.

We didn’t return to our old normal. We built a new one, grounded in acceptance, resilience and hope. We set aside dreams of athletic glory and the illusion of control, but we kept our core: love of family, strength and the belief that even pain can forge meaning.

That terrible experience, the one I desperately wanted to forget, has become part of who we are, woven into the fabric of our lives. It fuels our rare disease advocacy, shapes our shared mission and deepens our gratitude for each new day.

Now, when I face challenges, big or small, I don’t tell myself to bounce back. I sit in the rubble and really feel what has been lost. Because it’s only from that stillness that true growth begins. Not by rushing to return to what was, but by moving forward into who we are meant to become.

If you’re in your own rubble, whether it’s a diagnosis, a broken relationship, a lost job, or a quiet despair you can’t name, I want to offer you a different approach. Replace “When will I get over this?” with: “How is this experience changing me?” or “What is this pain teaching me?” This shift invites curiosity rather than judgment and opens the door to possibility and transformation.

Today, Nell is walking on her own and back in school full-time, although competitive sports are no longer part of her life.

Though Nell’s disease is incurable, and we live with the ongoing possibility of relapse, we are grateful for the few FDA-approved drugs that help keep the inflammation at bay. That reality, knowing the ground could shift at any moment, makes us cherish each day she can attend school, pursue her passions, cook meals with us and create new memories.

Having lived through this trauma has also connected us to the rare disease community, where we witness the extraordinary love parents pour into children who are dying or living with profound disabilities. This experience serves as a portal into a world that stands in stark contrast to the mainstream, where humanity can sometimes seem absent. But here, in the community of parents of children living with the uncertainty of rare, chronic conditions, humanity feels alive and fierce. Witnessing and being part of this has filled me with a humility and gratitude deeper than I could have imagined before.

The author with her daughter Nell on the beach 2.5 years after her diagnosis.

I’m still a fixer at heart, but I’ve learned not to lament the things beyond my control. I’ve come to trust that my envisioned life may not, in fact, be the best way. And I’ve realised that trying to “bounce back” to my old life would negate the growth, the perspective, the resilience and the connections I’ve gained.

By sitting in this space and allowing it to reshape me, I have discovered more hope and connectedness than I ever thought possible.

Maggie Kang, M.D., is a physician, TEDx speaker, resilience and healthcare coach, and rare disease advocate. After her daughter’s rare disease diagnosis, she writes and speaks about grief, growth and finding meaning in the face of life’s disruptions. Learn more at maggiekangmd.com.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

‘I Was Made to Feel Like a Nuisance’: How Death Admin Becomes A Second Trauma For Grieving Families

Posted on 15/02/2025 by Boris Clair

Losing a loved one is something we all will experience at some point – and unfortunately, no prior loss can prepare us for the ones that lie ahead and the world-shattering emotions that come with them.

For those of us who have to face the financial admin that’s left behind when somebody dies, there is a compounded grief as we try to navigate the institutions and paperwork that are an essential part of death admin.

In fact, in Octopus Legacy’s Human Cost of Dying report, families rank financial institutions among the least helpful when dealing with a loved one’s death.

These findings reflect the stories of people like Rosie and Lucy, who have faced overwhelming hurdles in the wake of their loved ones’ passing.

HuffPost UK spoke with Rosie and Lucie about the traumatic obstacles they faced following their losses – and what needs to change.

Rosie’s mother dying left her with an unmanageable amount of admin

Rosie lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children.

Back in 2003, Rosie’s mother came to live with the family. But sadly in 2009 she suffered from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, was rushed to hospital and placed in the high-dependency unit.

Speaking with HuffPost UK, Rosie explains how her mother’s health deteriorated over time: “She was non-responsive for a couple of weeks – and as she woke up, it became evident that something wasn’t right.

“She had suffered a stroke during the operation and was eventually transferred to a hospital which supported stroke rehabilitation. From there, she was eventually well enough to come home.”

Unfortunately, their family’s peace didn’t last long.

“A few months later, as I was coming home from a run, I saw my mum waving at me from a bedroom window. I then watched her fall,” says Rosie.

“I ran home and found that she had suffered another stroke – we returned her to the local stroke unit, and then back to the rehabilitation hospital. This time, she wasn’t in for stroke rehabilitation but in a geriatric ward. She never left.”

The family experienced a prolonged period of grief prior to her passing

Rosie admits: “For me the grieving process was initiated in 2009 when she first went into emergency surgery. This was a long, tortured process of gradually watching my mother losing herself.

“My mother had been a force of nature, immensely practical and sensible. If there was a problem, my mother would find a way to resolve it.

“There were moments, during her rehabilitation when her very strong sense of humour would peep through. She would have a twinkle in her eyes watching the banter between staff on the ward. She would beam at me or my children when we came to visit – and pat our hands.”

But mostly, as she watched her mum deteriorate, she grieved.

“When my mum died it was a release. For her – and for all of us. We could actually say goodbye,” says Rosie.

Thankfully, the funeral went smoothly. Rosie and her family shared stories of her mother and bonded with others over their stories.

But the financial admin following the funeral was when the problems started

Rosie is self-employed and offered to work on the financial side of her mother’s estate on behalf of her siblings for an agreed fee. However, it wasn’t as simple as she had expected it to be.

“My mother had 13 ISAs with different institutions,” Rosie says.

“When my father died, my mother had become really interested in money management. She had invested in the stock market and had also taken advantage of great rates each year for her TESSA (tax exempt special savings scheme) and ISA allowance.

“I discovered that each bank had different requirements in order to close the accounts. Some required a death certificate certified in a branch. Some required a death certificate certified by a lawyer. Some required correspondence just from me. Some required correspondence from all three siblings. No two of the financial institutions I approached required the same process.

“The details are woolly now – but I remember sending endless letters / forms to my siblings for them to sign and return.”

The admin put a strain on Rosie’s relationship with her siblings

For Rosie, it seemed bizarre that there wasn’t a standard process that institutions used.

“Had I known at the outset, I would not have proposed to complete this work, particularly given the fact that my mother had died in Scotland, but her will was drawn up in England,” she says.

The siblings ended up needing to engage a legal firm to complete the work anyway.

“The whole process was time consuming, resulting in me spending far longer on the process than I had anticipated. Rather than supporting each other in a period of loss, we were really discussing who wanted a footstool, a salad bowl – or who had signed what form,” she says.

“The length of the process created friction between me and my siblings to the point that we had periods of not speaking following this time.”

One silver lining during this dark time was that Rosie’s mother had already been through the process of settling an estate when her husband died in 1993.

“As a very practical person, she had written a list every year, of all her assets and where they were. That was invaluable,” says Rosie.

“My mother had also taken the precaution to open joint accounts with each of us, so that we would be able to access funds in the event of her death.”

The admin following the loss of her husband put Lucie’s life on hold for years

After losing her husband during the pandemic, Lucie encountered administrative hurdles that sent her back to when she lost her husband.

Between receiving questions from pension providers like “could you have saved your husband?” and having bailiffs sent to her property, Lucie spent the next two years battling against a range of institutions.

Her life was on pause, and she was forced to relive the trauma of finding her husband dead every single time.

Speaking with HuffPost UK, Lucie says that young widowers face a wealth of obstacles that leave them unable to process their grief: “There are very few widows, particularly young widows, who can leave the financials to sort themselves out.

“Mostly, we really need that cash to keep going and enable at least a sense of stability at a time which is so destabilising. Having to relive your trauma, deal with what seems so trivial (yet unfortunately vital) takes strength and clarity which is so challenging to achieve at this time.

“Instead of focusing on self or family, one has to really focus on getting through a challenging process which means setting aside the grieving process – which, in my view, prolongs the process.”

Financial institutions left Lucie feeling overwhelmed and frustrated

If Lucie could suggest anything to organisations that frequently speak with grieving families, it’s better training. She urges: “Have specifically trained teams with appropriate scripts and understanding of the challenges.

“Additionally, ensure that customers are regularly reminded to provide statements of wishes, emergency contacts, nominated representatives who can deal with financials in the event of death or critical illness.”

She also believes that empathy can go a long way

Following a loss, particularly the loss of somebody very close to you, the world can feel like such a strange place – like you are the walking wounded and nobody quite understands the particular pain that you are feeling.

This is compounded by a lack of empathy in institutions that aren’t suitably prepared to work with people going through something so life-altering.

Lucie admits: “I was made to feel like a nuisance. So many inappropriate questions about the nature and circumstances of my husband’s death, none of which were relevant.

“Because I was pushing hard for resolution, I was made to feel like I was in the wrong and almost not grieving enough. It was a genuinely awful process.”

Lucie shares a warning to couples and families

Some of this is still unavoidable for families in the wake of a death, but Lucie believes preparation is essential.

She advises: “Agree on where you will store passwords. Communicate well about what financial products you have and where the information is.

“Draft a will. Complete your expression of wishes and update them regularly. Get comfortable talking about money and death.

“My biggest reflection is that these were not conversations we had; I had no idea where my husband’s paperwork was and most of it was on his laptop, the password of which I did not know… Share this stuff!”

An 88-Year-Old Woman Was Brought To My A&E. When Her Family Told Me Why, I Was Stunned.

Posted on 24/12/2024 by Boris Clair

The computer said she was an 88-year-old female with a chief complaint of fatigue. From experience, I knew fatigue in an older person could be caused by almost anything. So … was it a heart attack? Depression? Cancer? An infection somewhere? Or was she just … fatigued?

The real reason she was there never crossed my mind.

The tiny woman had positioned herself precisely in the centre of the gurney. Her white tennis shoes sat under the chair with a thick, flesh-coloured knee-high stocking tucked inside each one. On the seat of the chair was a neatly folded yellow cardigan atop an equally neatly folded brown dress.

She wore her hospital gown like a jacket, open to the front, and her knobby hand clutched it closed over her cross-your-heart bra and waist-high white cotton panties. A Catholic cloth scapular with an image of the Virgin Mary hung on a string around her neck, and a tiny gold cross on a fine gold chain nestled in the hollow at the base of her neck.

“Hola. Mi nombre es Doctora Birnbaumer. Como se llama?” I said to her.

“Hola, Doctora. Mi nombre es Maria,” she replied.

Her eyes sparkled, and she sat up straighter, her posture that of someone who found life interesting. I checked her armband and offered to cover her with the sheet folded at her feet. She nodded.

I asked her how she was feeling. Fine, she told me. Was anything bothering her? No, she said. Any pain? No. Any shortness of breath, chest pain, headache? No, no and no. I went through my list and she denied anything being amiss.

Maria’s only encounters with the medical system had been for the births of her many children, several of whom she had outlived. She had been widowed over two decades before. She lived alone, with family nearby. She wasn’t working but had spent most of her life as a housekeeper. No meds, no allergies, no surgeries.

I asked if I could examine her, and she nodded. From head to toe, she was remarkably fit. Her bright, curious eyes nestled in a sea of soft skin and were bracketed by deep crow’s feet sculpted by years of smiling. The rest of her head and neck exam were normal. A tiny bit of curvature of the spine. Clear lungs, a strong, steady heartbeat with no abnormal sounds. Abdomen, extremities, neuro exam… all normal.

I was flummoxed. She watched me expectantly.

“So, are you sure nothing is bothering you today?” I asked.

She shrugged and raised her hands in a “what can you do?” gesture.

I was getting nowhere. Time for a different tactic.

I asked her why she was in the emergency room. She said she didn’t know.

New angle: “How did you get here today?”

Her face blossomed into a smile. Her daughter, granddaughter and great-grandson had come by her home, picked her up and brought her to the emergency department.

Finally. Maybe an answer.

With Maria’s permission, I sought out her family members in the waiting room. They were easy to find, all three resembling the petite woman on that gurney. The same dark eyes stared at me as I approached them, but while hers were bright and inquisitive, theirs were red-rimmed, and their eyelids were swollen.

As we entered the “family room” to talk, the two women deferred to the teenage boy, who acted as spokesman. He remained standing as the women and I sat.

They all turned to me, waiting. I cleared my throat.

“So, I was wondering, why did you bring Maria to the hospital today?”

Instantly all three sets of eyes filled with tears. The oldest woman nodded to the boy, and he spoke, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“My cousin. He died. The police came to my aunt’s house and told her he got shot.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Now I understood the tears.

We sat for a few more moments in silence. No one moved. And I still didn’t know why Maria was there. I ventured, “So, is there something wrong with your great-grandmother?”

The boy answered. “My cousin. He is… was… Abuelita’s favorite. Everyone in the family knows it.” The boy’s voice was pleading, but I still didn’t understand. “We want you to tell her he’s dead,” he blurted.

And there it was.

The author at work in the emergency room.

I wish I could deny it, but my first reaction was irritation. Really? There was nothing medically wrong with her? The emergency room was packed with people, some were really sick, and I just spent 15 precious minutes on this? Did people really think the emergency room fixed everything?

Then the three of them started talking at once. They feared she’d have a heart attack or a stroke when she found out. They were terrified the news might kill her. They didn’t want to tell her. They wanted someone else to do it, and she needed to be somewhere that, if something terrible happened, she’d be taken care of.

I sat with what they told me for a moment. I recalled how I felt when my dad called me with the news that his thigh pain was from a tumour that had spread from a mass in his lung. I remembered how much I wanted someone to tell me it would be OK, that we would all survive this, that the world, now horrifyingly askew, would somehow right itself.

The healing that eventually happened didn’t result from any discussions with a doctor but grew from the love and support we gave each other as a family, from the times we would lean together, our hands and heads touching, creating an edifice, a steeple from which we could all draw strength.

Through these memories, my path forward became clear.

I took a breath and leaned forward to look each of them in the eyes. I made sure they heard me when I told them I was there for them, all of them… including Maria. I said I would be there with them, in the room, and around for hours to watch Maria if she needed anything and to make sure she was safe and taken care of. I told them I had their backs, but that the news needed to come from them.

They searched each other’s faces, and then they all nodded.

As we all walked into Maria’s room, her bright smile faded when she saw our faces. They moved to her bedside. I slid a box of tissues onto the table near Maria and stepped away.

Maria was now surrounded by the three generations of her progeny. They spoke to her in Spanish in hushed tones, and I watched as four lives — four generations — confronted the dreadful news.

Maria listened quietly. Her straight posture sagged the tiniest bit, her smile disappeared, and her face aged decades in moments. She reached one hand, spotted with age and deformed by years of labor, out to her family, and they all joined hands. With her other hand, she clutched her scapular, pulling gently on the string that attached it around her neck.

I eased out of the room, leaned against the wall in the hallway and remembered.

I remembered being a young woman deeply invested in caring for others and deciding my future was in medicine. I happily took on the years of schooling and training and debt required to become a doctor. I recalled the thrill of learning about the human body, how it works and what to do when it doesn’t.

I remembered cringing when I learned to start an IV and the patient gasped in pain. My heart broke the first time I told a patient they had a terminal disease. I cried myself to sleep the night when, as a third-year medical student, the man I assured would do fine during his coronary bypass surgery died on the operating table.

But I couldn’t remember exactly when my empathy started to slip away.

I knew that when I started my shifts, I walked through an ambulance bay packed with paramedics, gurneys and patients. I knew that no matter how hard or how fast I worked, the waiting room would never be empty. Patients came to the emergency department when they were injured and ill, but also when they could not get in to see their own physicians or when they lost their insurance or because after-hours was the only time they had off between jobs. Police brought in patients who had nowhere to go or had behavioural problems or whose addictions had consumed their lives.

There were never enough beds, patients waited for hours, and everyone — patients and staff alike — was understandably tired and angry. There was no way to do a good job — at least not as good a job as I had been trained to do. Despite that, administrative bean counters reduced my performance to counting how many patients I saw per hour and how many tests I ordered.

When I became an emergency physician, I had been all in on taking on the hard work and the erratic schedule, the difficult decisions and the busy shifts that went with the job. Over time, though, I had let the demands of a changing, overstressed and broken system knock me off course.

Standing in that hallway, listening to the soft murmurs of Maria and her family, I remembered why I was there — why I chose this profession, why I worked these crazy hours, why I did this job.

I pulled away from the wall and headed off to care for the next patient waiting to be seen.

Maria didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. An hour later, she sent her great-grandson to find me to tell me she wanted to leave. Her family helped her into her clothing and gathered her things as I prepared what was needed to send her home. At the door to her room, I hugged each of them in turn, Maria last, knowing her visit to the emergency room was exactly what she and her family needed.

Apparently, it was exactly what I needed, too.

Note: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned in this essay.

Diane Birnbaumer is an emergency physician and writer living in Los Angeles. Her poems and essays have appeared in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine and the medical journals Annals of Emergency Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine, as well as the anthology “The Things They Wrote: A Writing/Healing Project,” published by Room: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action. She is an ambassador for The OpEd Project and attends The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.

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Tag Archives: grief

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‘I Was Made to Feel Like a Nuisance’: How Death Admin Becomes A Second Trauma For Grieving Families

Rosie’s mother dying left her with an unmanageable amount of admin

The family experienced a prolonged period of grief prior to her passing

But the financial admin following the funeral was when the problems started

The admin put a strain on Rosie’s relationship with her siblings

The admin following the loss of her husband put Lucie’s life on hold for years

Financial institutions left Lucie feeling overwhelmed and frustrated

She also believes that empathy can go a long way

Lucie shares a warning to couples and families

An 88-Year-Old Woman Was Brought To My A&E. When Her Family Told Me Why, I Was Stunned.