The Caring Death Doula
In a world that rushes past death and ignores grief, The Caring Death Doula stops to listen with tenderness, truth, and time. Whether you are grieving right now or here to learn how to help those grieving, join your host, Frances, a certified grief educator on the journey of finding connection, conversations, and comfort. Let's make grief and death a natural part of our conversations.
The Caring Death Doula
Missing Someone After Ten Plus Years
In this episode, I share with you how grief can resurface after a decade and why that does not mean we failed to heal. A small moment online triggers a wave of memory, and we choose compassion over judgment while inviting space to speak names out loud.
• how a simple reel reopens deep memories
• permission to feel grief many years later
• longing for the life that could have been
• the silence culture places on the bereaved
• speaking their names as an act of love
• reassurance that feeling is not failure
“Know that you can always send me an email. Tell me about your loved one. Tell me their name.”
This is The Caring Death Doula, and I am here for you.
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Hello and welcome back. Thank you for joining me today. It means a lot to me. This week I have been just sharing some of my own thoughts on the experiences that people have shared with me, on the experiences that I've had in grief. The other day I was scrolling. I try not to do that too often. It's very addicting and it's time consuming, isn't it? But I came across this reel, just this sweet, precious reel of two older men. And I realized, oh, they were twins. They looked exactly alike. And it's so amazing that they're in their 70s and they still look so alike. And they actually looked like the dad of my heart, who has been gone this December, it will be eleven years. And I listened to their reel. They were singing a song. And they just they brought back memories of him because they looked like him so much. They carried themselves like an older man. I mean, they just, it just made me think of Grizz. And then I realized he would have loved this reel. He would have enjoyed watching these two. And all of a sudden, I started tearing up and almost crying. And I thought, which just shows you how ingrained this is, because even though I am trained otherwise, my first thought was, Oh, come on, Francis, it's been almost eleven years. You've lived eleven years without him in your life, without his involvement with your children and your grandchildren, and you wouldn't what I stopped myself. And I thought, no, this is okay. This is okay to have these feelings, and it's also okay to have these thoughts. It's okay to realize that I miss him. I miss those eleven years where I would have gotten to know him even deeper, where our relationship would have been enriched so much more. And I should have counted before I started this episode how many years because I was I was in my twenties when he came into my life. Yeah, so I guess I would have been in my forties when he died? Something like that. And so how many, you know, add eleven years to that? How much more fun would we have had? Laughter, enjoyable times together as a family, watching him with my children as they grew up, having them there at the weddings, and now as the grandbabies are coming, they would be his great grandchildren. How many more conversations would we have had? Oh, the beauty of it, the richness of it. So, yes, it's okay that I still grieve the loss of his part in my life. There's a place in my heart, and there always will be a place in my heart for him. And I'm grieving the love that I have for him. I'm grieving the time that I would have had with him. I'm grieving the relationships. I'm grieving, like I said, seeing him with my children and my grandchildren, seeing his joy, having good conversations, deep conversations, laughing with him. So if you're grieving someone who's been gone for ten more years, ten or more years, it's still okay. I know that society may tell you that it's not okay. And why are you still doing this? Why are you still feeling this? Why are you bringing it up? Or, you know, whatever you've heard from people. Or maybe you've heard nothing. That's one of the things our society does, doesn't it? We don't say the person's name, we don't talk about the person, but they're not really gone. We carry them in our hearts, we carry the love that we have for them. It's not gone. And it's okay if you have moments where you can think of them fondly, and it's okay if you have moments that hit you and the tears come. And it's okay if you want to talk about them, if you need to talk about them, if you enjoy talking about them. And I'm sorry if you long to talk about them, and no one around you will let you. Know that you can always send me an email. Tell me about your loved one.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me their name. I see you. I'm witnessing you.
SPEAKER_01:I'm holding space. You are okay, you are not broken. It is not wrong to grieve someone when it's been ten or more years. They are still such a part of you. I am the caring death dealer, and I'm I am here for you.