This Week in Bereavement

We’ve kept a space for Saying Goodbye since the first week in March. That’s when we all started losing things so fast we couldn’t keep up. There was no time to grieve.

Grieving doesn’t mean going around bummed out all the time and leading with sadness. To me it means being direct and clear about what’s been lost. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or little. I need to say it out loud and have someone who cares hear me.

That’s what our Saying Goodbye space is for. The other people there don’t care because they know each other. They care because we are all losing things, some of the same things, some different. When someone speaks plainly about what they have lost, they are speaking our feelings and that’s reassuring.

We hear about mental health issues from being cooped up for months — I think mental health issues were a major factor in daily US Life before the Coronavirus.

Well, here’s one small thing anybody can do to help settle the past and be prepared for the future. Say Goodbye.

Say Goodbye to little things like the local restaurant you went to after work for something you had every time and loved every time even if it wasn’t all that good for you.

Or little things like being jammed in close to the person in the seat next to you at a sports event and maybe making a friend, at…