Dear Adam, I am very sorry for the loss of your mother

Dear Adam.

I am the father of one of your friends at school. He told us that your mother passed away yesterday, Wednesday, May 9, 2007. As you will soon learn, I know that there is absolutely nothing that can make you feel better right now and I am not going to try. However, I am going to try to help you for the rest of this year and the rest of your life.

We have never met but we share something awful. When I was 19, my father died suddenly of a heart attack about a week before Christmas. I learned the hard way what it feels like to lose a parent when you are a teenager and the special pain that is involved when they die just before a significant holiday. Like I said, there is absolutely nothing that can make you feel better right now.

My dad died 41 years ago and I still remember that pain. There are a lot of people who are going to try and make you feel better and some may even succeed. Enjoy them and be patient with them. And be patient and understanding with the ones that don't call or don't say anything. Some are not comfortable with anyone dying. Some just plain don't know what to say when a simple “I'm sorry" may actually help you know you are not alone.

I am going to suggest something to you that I wish I had done those 41 years ago. Just a suggestion that you may be grateful for 41 years from now when you see it happen to someone else or when you try to remember little things about your mother.

Memory is a funny thing. It fades with time no matter how vivid the impression is right now. You will always have photographs and maybe even videos and recordings to remind you how your mother looked and how she sounded. That is new technology giving us capabilities that people did not have 100 years ago.

There is one technology that was available 100 years ago and even longer. That is the ability to write down our memories and how we feel about those memories – in other words, to create a journal or diary or log or whatever you want to call it. Personal writing is an old technology that allows us to record an emotion in much the same way that a camera allows us to record a face.

I suggest that you write down your memories of your mother as soon as you can, as thoroughly as you can, and as often as you can. I sure wish that I had done it. I now know that it would have served two main purposes. First, it will help with the grieving process that is inevitable and necessary. Second, it will give you a picture of what you remember right now and what you feel right now when it is fresh, vivid, beautiful, warm, and even painful. It would be best if you write down both good and bad memories so that you will have a more complete multi-dimensional picture of your mother to cherish and to ponder when you are 40, 50, and 60 years old.

I guarantee that you will not be sorry if you do write those memories down and save them.

Be strong. Be open. Your life has changed in ways that you can not yet understand. I know. I have been there and done that. I am truly sorry that anyone else ever has to go through it.