We absolutely loved the family time activities and events like wiffleball games in the backyard or family cookouts. There are very few experiences in life that can be compared to the shock of death. Below are eight secrets to help you to better understand and manage your grief.

1. Proactively share with your friends and family how you are really feeling and specifically what type of help you need. Provide them with directions as to how to best help you. Ideas include:

• Encourage them to share stories and pictures about your loved one.
• Tell them to not try to fix your pain, but just to be there for you.
• Encourage them to be patient and understanding with you.
• Share with them that you have been through a traumatic experience and that you are a different person. Ask them to accept you for who you are now.

2. Try to understand that the world will go on, even without your loved one in it. It is so easy to get angry at the rest of the world. The sooner you understand this, the easier your grief will become.
3. Understand that “Everyone Grieves Differently”. If your spouse or parents or siblings appear to not be grieving or grieving differently from you, try to understand that everyone has the right to experience their own unique grief. It is not wrong, it is just different.

4. Accept the fact that it is natural for you to cry or get angry or be depressed. As a griever, you will feel multiple different emotions, sometimes all at the same time. These are normal. You are not going crazy.

5. Accept that your questions or “why’s” may never be answered. Example; Why did they die? Could I have done something different that might have saved them? Instead, let go of the “why’s” and accept what has happened and go on living. This is what the deceased would want you to do.

6. Identify and acknowledge that secondary losses like “loss of dreams” or “loss of financial stability” are a normal part of grief. Where the death of a loved one is considered the primary loss, experiences that flow from that death are called secondary losses. “Secondary” means that these losses come because of the death.

7. Try to find “new meaning” in your life. Ask yourself, what would my loved one want me to do? Would they want me to be sad and angry for the rest of my life, or would they want me to try to find new meaning and be happy once again? I think you know the answer.
8. Create something to “look forward” to doing. This could be a family getaway or vacation or something as simple as planting a garden. Just having something to anticipate in the future will help you get through the toughest of days.

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Even though Char and I had been married for 21-years, the way we grieved after the death of our two daughters, Jenelle-age 19, and Amy-age 9, as well as my mother, Jean, was like night and day.

• I cried often—Char didn’t cry for four months.
• I knew instantly that I would never see them alive again. She thought their deaths were a mistake and she would see them again soon.
• I was angry with God for not protecting them. Char knew they were in a better place—heaven.

Coping with grief as a couple is difficult. We were told that the divorce rate for couples after a significant loss was much higher than normal. We chose to not let our tragedy ruin our marriage. Instead, we chose to:

Plan Ahead

After a tragic loss, couples need something to “look forward to”. It can be something small—like a dinner date at a new restaurant—or something big—like a trip to Alaska.

It took us around seven months to even consider our future without Jenelle and Amy. In January 2004, we started talking about adoption. We had more love to give and were not ready to not have any children at home. We realized the process would take a long time, but we started looking forward to October 2005 when we would have a young child in our home again. Although the process took longer than expected, we first met our new daughter, Melissa, in Guangzhou China, on Christmas Day, 2005.

The second thing that kept us going was planning a family trip to Disneyworld in Florida.  Mom had always wanted to take the entire family—five children, five spouses, and eighteen grandchildren to see Mickey Mouse. We scheduled the trip around the first anniversary of the death of mom, Jenelle, and Amy.

Don’t focus on what you lost, focus on what you had!

It was nearly impossible to not think about our loss. It drove us crazy until we started thinking about the amazing nineteen and nine years, respectively, we had with Jenelle and Amy. Those years were amazing. Thinking about the good times helped us to be thankful for the years we had with our daughters and gave us the peace of mind to go forward with our lives. We also knew that our daughters would want us to have a good life, even without them. Ask yourself—what would your loved one want you to do?

Be Patient with Each Other

Couples need to support each other through this awful thing called grief. Understand that there will be good days and horrible days. Your job is not to make each other happy. It is to simply be there and let your partner know that you will be with them throughout your life together and that you can imagine a happier future together.

Write it Down!

Sometimes it is easier to write down our thoughts and feelings vs. trying to express them orally. If you are struggling with how to say what you are feeling and what you need from your partner, put it in writing instead. He or she will appreciate your effort and have a better understanding of exactly how to help.

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I lost my mother, Jean, and my two daughters, Jenelle-age 19, and Amy-age 9 to a distracted semi-truck driver on July 22, 2003. Believe it or not, the driver was speeding and reading when he killed them. Friends and family constantly offered to help but we were afraid to share our deepest thoughts and pains with them. My stupid logic was—if I didn’t need their help before the calamity, why would I need it afterwards?

Below are several thoughts that I wish I would have shared with family and friends back then. They include:

1. Please be patient with me and supportive of me. I am not the same person I was before my loss.
2. Please let me grieve in my own way and in my own time. Don’t tell me how or when to grieve or when to stop grieving.
3. Please understand that you cannot “fix my grief” or “take away” my pain. Instead, please simply listen to me and let me cry on your shoulder. If you feel like it, please cry with me.
4. Please forgive me if I say something thoughtless or hurtful towards you. I am frequently depressed and lose my temper frequently. It is nothing against you. It is my grief needing to escape. I may not even thank you for your help or apologize for my words. However, your help is always appreciated—even if I don’t say so at the time.
5. Please share stories and memories with me about my loved ones. I need to know that they will never be forgotten. Unfortunately, it takes words and actions to prove that to me. Please mention their names frequently. I need to hear them. I might cry or get sad. However, please remember that there are good tears and bad tears. Hearing a story usually brings about good tears and inspires me.
6. Please never tell me what to do or when to quit grieving. I am so tired of hearing hurtful or insensitive cliché’s like “time heals all wounds” or “they are in a better place” or “it was meant to be”. I would much rather hear “I am so sorry for your loss” or “I am here for you and your family” or “I am here to listen to you whenever you need or want to talk.” If you only focus on one item, please let it be this one.
7. Please be clear that nothing you can say to me will take away my pain. What I need are “hugs and friendship”. Please do not push me to do things that I am not yet ready to do or feel hurt if I appear withdrawn.
8. Please never say “I know how you feel” because you don’t. Instead, show empathy.
9. Please never stop calling me. You might think that you are respecting my privacy, but to me it feels like you are abandoning me.
10. Please accept me for who I am today. I have been through a very traumatic experience, and I am a different person.

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Our daughters, Jenelle, and Amy, as well as my Mother Jean, were all killed by a distracted semi-truckdriver on July 22, 2003. Hundreds of family members and friends reached out to provide solace to us. Unfortunately, instead of comforting us with their words and actions, some of the things said caused us more frustration and pain. Below are five of the most hurtful and helpful things we heard.

Hurtful Things:

• They are in a better place (We had no doubt that heaven is a better place than earth. However, we also thought that being right next to us was a pretty good place for our daughters to be).
• Time heals all things (Time does nothing but pass. How you use the time is what helps).
• At least they didn’t suffer (How the hell do you know they didn’t suffer? Have you ever been hit by a speeding semi-truck? This one hurt the most.)
• God doesn’t give you more than you can handle (God really tested us by allowing three family members to die suddenly. We were so frustrated and mad at God for not protecting Jenelle and Amy. This might be a better thing to say years after a loss.)
• At least you have other children (Yes, we really did hear this comment. We still have no answer for this bit of stupidity. Did that make it OK to lose two daughters, simply because we had a son as well?)

It took me a long time for me to understand that people didn’t mean to say stupid things.  Sometimes they simply open their mouths before they think about what they want to say. What’s that saying—Open Mouth, Insert Foot. The definition of empathy is “the ability to identify oneself mentally with a person or thing and to understand his or her feelings or its meaning”. As you are trying to help someone who is grieving, please keep this definition of empathy in mind.

Helpful Things:

You don’t necessarily have to say anything around someone who is grieving. This is hard for most folks, but your presence around a griever is sometimes all that is needed.  That healing touch or hug is much more important than spoken words. Below are some of the things that helped us the most.

• I am here for you and your family. I am here to listen to you if you need or want to talk. (Many times, someone who is grieving just needs someone to listen to them).
• I am here and I don’t have a clue as to how to help. Together we will figure this out. (This is telling the griever that they are not alone—a real important message to convey).
• I am here as a friend. It is OK if you want to cry or be mad or express anger. (It is so important to give permission to a griever to express emotions).
• I am sorry that I cannot make things better for you and your family.
• My favorite memory of your loved one was (Most people love to hear stories about their loved one. This is a great way to start a conversation with someone who is grieving).

There are no words that will make it right that someone we loved has died. However, there are words that will provide comfort, soothe the pain, and help with the healing process. If you are not sure what to say, simply offer a hug or a touch on the arm and say, “I am so sorry for your loss”.

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Before the accident, our family was a happy one. We ate together, played games and sports together, and went to church together. We enjoyed each other’s company while spending time as a family unit.

After their deaths, it was hard to be happy—in any manner. Before their deaths, we would break out in song, after their deaths, we would break out in tears. If for some reason we did have some fun, we would start feeling guilty.

It took a full year before we felt that it might be OK to add a little enjoyment to our lives. This is when we decided that it was possible and even OK to have limited fun in times of grief. To get to this point, we asked ourselves the following questions:

• What would mom, Jenelle, and Amy want us to do?
• Would they want us to be crying, angry, and grieving all the time?
• Would they want us to move on with our lives?

In our case, the answer was simple. They would want us to inspire and uplift others to continue to bring as much joy and happiness to the world as they brought when they were alive.

To get to the point of being happy again, we took a “small step” approach starting by understanding and acknowledging that our pain and emotions were normal. It was OK to cry. It was OK to still have good days and bad days. We focused on the important things like our health and our family.

Since this was going to be a monumental task, we decided to set modest goals. We realized that we had to get through a year of “firsts” before we could even consider trying to be happy. Those firsts like the anniversary of their death, the first Christmas, first missed birthdays, and hardest for me—surviving that first Father’s Day without two of my children. Once we realized that we would survive these first’s, we knew we could survive the second year and longer.

Was that second year better? Yes, a little bit. Our son, Matt, was heading off to college in the fall. We spent more quality time helping him to get ready for his grand adventure. We had also made the decision to adopt a child from China. We had more “love to give” and chose to expand our family by adopting a beautiful little girl. Melissa became part of our family on Christmas Day, 2005. Instead of thinking about Jenelle and Amy, these two planned experiences allowed us to “look forward” to something new and exciting.

My initial question was “Will I ever be happy again?” In our case, the answer was a qualified ‘yes’. If you are grieving the loss of someone special, you can also get to the point of “being happy” once again by doing the following:

• By asking yourself what your loved one would have wanted you to do.
• By making the decision to “focus” on important things like your family and your health
• By finding a way to “redefine your happiness.” We chose to adopt. You might choose to start a new relationship. Whatever it takes to “redefine your happiness” is what you need to do.

Life after a sudden and tragic loss is not an easy experience to survive as your life will never be the same. However, it is possible to be “happy once again”.

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