Grief

Today my extended family is grieving the loss of its oldest member - my mother's 98-year-old brother Erhardt. I won't be at the funeral - 3000 miles away - but I will miss his presence, knowing he is "there" - as he has been my whole life. His family home was always a welcoming place for our whole extended family. It will be different without him.

"Grief," writes Joan Chittister, "is simply a measure of the joy, the depth that comes from growing to know another..."


















"Where does grief for the dead come from, in fact, if not from the anger and sense of abandonment that emerges from the realization that some part of ourselves has been taken away from us without our permission?"

A loving husband and father - and older brother to his remaining eight siblings - he will be greatly missed!