“Skydiving is expensive, fun, and can kill you, just like drugs. You may get away unscathed, or with a limp from titanium intrusion, or scarred by the thoughts of all your dead or maimed friends.”

Taya Weiss is a writer, speaker, and retired world-record-holding skydiver.

The post No Easy Way Out: How to Quit Skydiving appeared first on Modern Loss.

Rosie O’Donnell and Barbra Streisand in 1997 (Credit: Warner Bros.)

“You were a constant source of light in an often dark childhood,” Rosie O’Donnell said to Barbra Streisand through tears in 1997, just after Barbra sat in the guest’s seat on Rosie’s show. Rosie was referring to her mother’s death when she was just ten. From my couch in New Hampshire on that afternoon, I allowed myself to cry, which was rare even though my own mother had died two years earlier, when I was twelve. 

Unlike Rosie’s mom, who had died from cancer, my mom had died by suicide after years of struggling with drinking and depression. Despite that, “often dark” didn’t quite feel like the right way to describe my childhood. A lot of people had looked after me, whether they knew about the hard times at home or not. One was my aunt Patty. She’d made a Streisand devotee out of me in the form of Funny Girl screenings and A Star Is Born sing-alongs. A source of light, indeed. It felt like Rosie was speaking to Barbra for me.

With Rosie’s return to the host’s chair when she subbed in for Jimmy Kimmel this summer, I found myself transported back to those 90’s afternoons, when I was in 8th and 9th grade and she kept me company after school. Patty, the same aunt who’d brought Barbra into my life, told me excitedly about Rosie’s show soon after it premiered. Just as with Barbra, I first dove into Rosie because I wanted to like what Patty liked. But very quickly, I watched Rosie because I liked Rosie. Along with VHS recordings of The Late Show with David Letterman from the previous evening (that’s another story), she became part of my after-school routine. While I’d been drawn to Letterman for his snarky deadpan humor, Rosie was a gleeful delight, uplifting talented kids and rising stars, all while wearing her emotions on her sleeve, whether she was swooning over Tom Cruise, advocating for a cause she cared about, or weeping in Barbra’s presence.

Rosie getting real with Barbra on her show, 1997

Since my own aunts were hours away in Massachusetts and Florida, Rosie became my fun TV aunt. I plopped down on the couch with Cheez-Its or Little Debbie Swiss Rolls while she showed off her Koosh ball slingshot and doled out Drake’s Cakes. 

Some adults in my life were understandably concerned about me spending too much time alone after my mom died. But what I couldn’t articulate to them, or even myself, was that these afternoons were when I could decompress without having to perform for the outside world. Before my mom’s death, as I came into the understanding that the drinking and yelling that went on at my house did not happen at everyone else’s house, I convinced myself that the better I did in school, the less likely anyone would be to think anything was off at home.

Everyone – friends, friends’ parents, teachers, neighbors – was shocked when my mom died the way she did, in part because we had done a good job of keeping our family’s secrets. I was shocked too, of course – I never thought it would come to this, even with everything I’d witnessed. As time passed in the aftermath, I was eager to appear as normal and as okay as possible. Somehow, I kept my grades up, became a diligent student council member and clarinet player in the school band, and went  to every middle school dance and sleepover I could.

I was trying to prove something to myself as much as to everyone else. I had briefly seen a therapist in the first year after my mom’s death, at my dad’s (very reasonable) insistence, but from the start I had been determined to persuade the therapist that I did not need to be there. About a decade would pass before I was ready to give therapy a real try. In these early years, I thought therapy would signal that I wasn’t okay. Doing well in school, seeing my friends, and relaxing in front of the TV all seemed much safer, much more normal. Of course, until I found myself weeping in front of Rosie and Barbra, overcome with the weight of everything I’d been holding in. Rosie’s tearful moment showed me that it was okay for emotions to bubble over and look a little messy. Barbra didn’t flinch; she teared up herself, then dabbed Rosie’s cheeks, then her own, with a tissue so their makeup wouldn’t smudge. 

Years passed before I understood that it wasn’t only Rosie’s big emotions that moved me that day. She was also living the legacy of her loss on stage with Barbra, unafraid to show her audience that grief doesn’t end and that it’s likely that our lives’ worst moments might come back and mingle with our best ones. 

This was a lesson that my mother never realized: her own father had also died by suicide when she was an adolescent. I had only heard her mention him once when I overheard an argument between her and my father, referring to why June, the month he died, was hard for her. Of course it was.

I don’t know much about my mother’s father, either about his life or about his death. What I do know is that she didn’t talk about him, and that he faced similar mental health struggles to hers. “She was a clone of him,” my aunt Patty once said to me. There’s no easy answer to what could have been done to keep either of them from doing what they did, certainly no breakthrough gleaned from Rosie O’Donnell or even Barbra Streisand. What they taught me was not about how I could have changed the past, but how I can live in the present.

I don’t host television shows. But in my own corners of the world, and in this case, the Internet, I try to emulate what Rosie taught me that day in 1997 – honor our people who aren’t here by telling their stories and by making sure they remain part of ours, even when it’s messy. We might not all have Barbra Streisand there to catch our tears. But we can build our own versions of that support in finding the people who get it, and who get us. 

Jamie-Lee Josselyn is an instructor and administrator for the University of Pennsylvania’s Creative Writing Program and Kelly Writers House, and has hosted the podcast series Dead Parents Society. She is working on a memoir.

The post Rosie O’Donnell Cried on TV With Barbra Streisand in 1997. It Taught Me How to Grieve. appeared first on Modern Loss.

… since your daughter died, you no longer have to anticipate grief…

I don’t remember exactly how she said it, but I do remember that she slipped the words in, seemingly unaware, during a meeting. They landed like an uppercut to the chin, and I was unsure of how to react. She thought her statement was full of obvious truth. Fact. She likely considered herself wise, and compassionate. After all, our life experiences in pediatric healthcare brought us together.

I tried to keep (more like regain) my composure. My partner and I, another bereaved mom, were onboarding another parent of a child with medical complexity and disability to our project training families as faculty in medical education. I was leading the meeting, and wondered, do I stop and gently correct her? The death of children in our community (and the grief attached) is not uncommon, but it feels like something people try to avoid talking about. Too close to home. Worst nightmare. I worried that things could go sideways. I did it anyway. I took a deep breath, gently raised my finger to catch her attention as she continued to talk, and watched as she finally stopped. “Could I respond to one of your thoughts?”

She nodded.

“You indicated that since my daughter died, I no longer anticipate grief. I, um, I just wanted to say that it’s not true. I still have plenty of anticipatory grief.”

“Well,” she said, her face revealing a bit of her internal scramble for the right words, “I mean that there is no more anticipatory grief because she is dead.”

I smiled, sort of, and maneuvered the meeting back on topic, realizing that a meaningful exchange was not to be had. In the days that followed, though, I could still feel the sting of the comment on my jaw. I raised my hand to rub it, trying to work out my discomfort and why I still felt it. I debated sending an email asking her to revisit the comment. And then I thought, turning in on myself, well, maybe she is right. So, I let it go.

In the past few weeks, the words from that meeting years ago have paced throughout the maze of my mind as the ninth death anniversary of my eleven-year-old daughter, Justice’,approached. She is dead. You know this. Back and forth. Justice is dead. Nothing to anticipate here. Zig, zagging through every thought. Nine years? 

A familiar feeling of fear started to build up inside. We are getting too close to ten years gone. What if I forget her completely? Will this be the year I no longer feel the chub of her cheeks when I look at pictures of her smile? The year that I forget her laughter? That my memories blur? 

Anxiety crept in, dragging a bit of depression with it and making me exhausted and weepy throughout the days. My heart joined along. The Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (also known as broken heart syndrome, a temporary condition triggered by extreme emotional experience) I experienced in the months leading up to the night she died returned. My ventricles felt like they were thrashing around while locked inside metal cages. I began a countdown to the anniversary. Eight days. Seven. Six. Five. The anticipation was killing me.

To ease my mind, I decided to look up the definition of anticipatory grief. Huh: The term is quite simply defined as “the process of grief, or mourning, before the loss”. In some articles it is described as “preparation” for the loss. Strictly speaking, the woman in my work meeting was right.

Cara and Justice on Sanibel Island, Florida, December, 2016 (image courtesy of the author)

Even though Justice was born with life limiting conditions, I never considered myself “prepared.” I had all the information— I worked in pediatric health care policy, research and education. I knew it was going to happen. I accepted it, adjusted to the fact that life would go on without her in it. And then she died. I moved into the pain of bereavement. But prepared? No.

The woman’s comment might have matched the standard definition, but it doesn’t feel that simple at all. My family still anticipates the ongoing grief about how she won’t be able to join pool time this summer. Or how she won’t tuck her wheelchair into the bleachers to watch her big brother’s return to basketball after injury, or her little brother’s high school debut. Or how she won’t be able to help her sister pick out a sparkly prom dress. We anticipate those phantom memories that were never made because of Justice’s death.

The grief I continue to anticipate after Justice’s death is as present as the grief I anticipated before it. It’s not complex or chronic. It’s as dynamic as my beautiful child — something to be cherished, felt, held and acknowledged. For the rest of my life, I will have to prepare to lose her over and over again.

Cara Coleman is principal at Bluebird Consulting and Executive Director of the Bluebird Way Foundation, a 501c3 in honor of and carries on the work of her daughter, Justice Hope, by using the arts, humanities, storytelling and narrative medicine to humanize health care and health profession education.

The post My Daughter, Justice, Died Nine Years Ago. My Anticipatory Grief Didn’t. appeared first on Modern Loss.

A week after my mom died from a long battle with breast cancer, my dad called in a grief consultation. Not with a rabbi. With a priest. 

After years of living in Boston for many years, my Jewish parents had developed an odd fascination with the Catholic Church, the way some people follow the British Royal Family. 

So there we were, in the backyard of my house in Cambridge, sitting across from a slightly rotund priest with a thick Boston accent.

He leaned in: “So do yah have any regrets?” 

“What?” I didn’t understand the question. I’m twenty. This was my first real loss. I didn’t know what “forever” meant yet.

He clarified: “How was your relationship with your mother?”

I took stock. Three years earlier, before her diagnosis, I would have said “our relationship was hard” or maybe just “not good.” Plenty of mothers and daughters fight during the teen years, but ours was a little extra. It was hard for us to talk about anything without a fight. If I bought clothes from a thrift store, she’d say: “Dead people wore those clothes!” They were a slap in the face to her; she hadn’t been able to afford expensive clothes when she was a kid the way I could.

We were different in most ways. She was sophisticated; I was silly. School came easily to her; it didn’t to me. It was a recipe for deep disappointment in me as an unexceptional child. As I got older, I stopped absorbing her nitpicking and the fighting started. It never stopped.  

Then my dad told me she had metastatic cancer and might not survive the week. She miraculously responded well to chemo, and I took it as my second chance to be a better daughter. I stopped fighting with her.

So I answered the priest’s question confidently. “I think our relationship was pretty good. We stopped fighting three years ago, when she got her cancer diagnosis. Right, dad?”

My dad didn’t need to take stock. He already had an answer. “Well, Father, I don’t know if “good” is the word I would use. Maybe “superficial” is more accurate.”

Together at Dara’s 8th birthday

Superficial?? We weren’t in a good place? But I had been so good with her. What could I even do now? She was dead.

He was right, of course. After she got sick, our conversations stayed on the surface, because going any deeper risked hurting each other. My parents had also built a wall around her illness to protect us, which meant I never felt invited to be “in it” with her. So instead of showing up for her, I focused on making her proud, doing well in school, which only widened the distance between us.

I spent the next twenty years carrying guilt and shame that I hadn’t fixed our relationship in time. My anger at things she’d said and done never fully left either, and it fed the guilt further. I didn’t have a name for it yet, but my grief was complicated. I loved my mother, but I also carried resentment that tainted the loss and confused the mourning. How do you fix a relationship that’s over?

A friend suggested I try a medium. “It really helped me find peace with my mother.”  

How do you fix a relationship that’s over?

Why not try? On a 10-point scale between an atheist to woo woo, I’d put myself around a 7.5. I can’t fully commit to the cosmic realm, but when presented with it, I’m always game. And the idea of getting healed while lying down and doing nothing sounded a lot more appealing than the alternative: therapy, which is exhausting.

During the session, the medium called in my mother. I felt her presence, and also, overwhelmingly, my anger toward her. So much anger that that medium ended the session early.

“I don’t think this is a good time for you to connect with your mother,” she said, “I’m going to send her off with her ancestors.” I pictured my mom getting swept off into darkness with a bunch of old Jewish ladies.

After my failed trip to the spirit world, I turned to actual experts and found a grief therapist. 

“Dara,” she said, “It might be time to accept that you might never come to peace with your mom. And that’s okay. You can stop beating yourself up about this.”

At first, relief. There was nothing I could do, so I could stop trying. Then almost as fast: hell, no! I’m not spending the rest of my life carrying this shit.

So I got to work. EMDR, self-help books, mindfulness practices aimed at self-compassion. And it worked. The compassion I learned to have for myself led to compassion for her, and I was finally able to let go of the anger, the guilt, the shame, the sense that I hadn’t been enough. Now I can grieve my mother, and the relationship I wish we’d had, without holding either of us to blame. We were both doing the best we could.

Is it possible to make amends with someone after they’ve died? I’d say yes. I thought our relationship ended when my mother died. I’ve since realized it’s still very much alive, which means it can still change. Which means I can still make it better.

Dara Kosberg is the Sr. Program Director at Reimagine and a storyteller, writer and comedian who recently performed her solo show, Homecoming, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Upcoming performance of Homecoming in Venice Beach on August 1

The post I Never Made Peace with Mom Before She Died appeared first on Modern Loss.

I can conjure up my father in a blink: the woodsy scent of his cologne, the shape of his nimble fingers, the texture of his silver hair, the spread of his smile whenever he looked at me. I can hear his voice, a quiet baritone mostly scrubbed of its Bronx accent. After thirty-two years of hugs, my arms still bear the imprint of his slim, strong body. My right hand remembers holding his left foot as I watched him die. 

He was impatient. He suffered fools poorly. He could be maddeningly absent-minded. But he also had a touching purity of heart, a rare innocence. He simply could not understand what motivated people to do bad things. Drivers who cut him off, politicians who lied, businesspeople who cheated—none of it made sense. If he could follow the rules, why couldn’t they? 

“I don’t see how anyone could reject their child for being gay,” he said when I came out to him. 

He was loving and kind, gentle and funny, searingly brilliant and a total goof. Then he was gone.

Earlier this year, on the eighth anniversary of my father’s death from bacterial pneumonia, I was scrolling through news apps in the laundry room of my building when I noticed an unfamiliar word: “deadbot.” Baited, I clicked. One article led me to dozens of others—and the more I read, the angrier I became.

AI companies have been developing deadbots—also known as griefbots or deathbots—for more than a decade. Their goal is to replicate the presence of a dead loved one in order to assuage, or even entirely avoid, grief. Some are text-based, others use voice simulation, and increasing numbers are fully interactive video avatars. This rapidly expanding field, variously called “death tech,” the “digital afterlife industry,” and the “digital-legacy market,” is currently valued at more than $20 billion.

How dare you, I thought as I read about the tech execs who claim to want to make grief “obsolete.” How dare you try to take my grief away.

Eight years ago, grief was an ocean determined to drown me. I foundered and flailed, spluttered and sank, slammed onto shore and got sucked back out by the tide. Its waters reshaped me, as an ocean shapes a coastline. But as painful as that erosion was, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Grief gave me perspective. It improved my patience, my endurance, and my ability to sit with discomfort. I’m able to be present with other people’s pain, having learned from the precious people who were present with mine. I’m a better friend now, a better daughter, a better lover. A better human being.

Still, I understand the temptation to use technology to alleviate an agony for which society doesn’t prepare us. American culture isn’t set up to model a way to deal with mortality, either our own or anyone else’s. This leaves individuals stranded on their own islands of grief, offered only minimal bereavement leave, expected to continue functioning while mourning on their own. Would being able to talk to a realistic facsimile of my father—to see his face on a screen, hear his voice speaking new words—assuage the pain of losing him? 

[Grief’s] waters reshaped me, as an ocean shapes a coastline. But as painful as that erosion was, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

In my case, I don’t think so. A “digital afterlife” is merely a consumerist fantasy. Worse, it robs us of one of our most ancient customs: acknowledging that we are mortal by laying the dead to rest.

Although my father loved technology, he loved humanity more. While reading about death tech, I realized I couldn’t create an avatar of him even if I wanted to. Deadbots are trained using a person’s digital footprint, including texts, emails, videos, and audio recordings. My father’s narrow technological trail goes cold far too quickly for any AI program to learn much about him.  But even if I could generate a realistic hologram capable of speaking with his voice, it could never recreate his actual presence, which is often what we miss most when people die. How can we not grieve the loss of a person’s touch, the absence of their scent, the silence of the rooms they no longer inhabit? Do we live our lives so completely through screens that it doesn’t matter? Maybe so, when people are falling in love with their AI companions. But what is love without the electric brush of a hand, that first shy kiss, a lifetime of hugs, or those acts of service we never forget? 

I recently made scrambled eggs for breakfast. They tasted just like my father’s—naturally, since he taught me how to cook them. All at once, a memory bloomed: his smiling face peering at me through my bedroom door in the morning light.

“Want some eggs?” he asked, as he always did.

I should have said yes more often, I thought. And the tears came.

Grieving my father is the cost of having loved him. If we’re unwilling to grieve, we are also, in some fundamental way, unwilling to love.

Barrie Kreinik is a writer, actor, singer, and award-winning audiobook narrator based in New York City.

The post I Could Bring My Father Back as a Deadbot. I’d Rather Miss Him. appeared first on Modern Loss.

Immediately after learning that Dan had died, I messaged his two sisters. Thank you for being such a good friend to him, one of them wrote back. He loved you very much. Dan had been one of my best friends since we were fourteen. Perhaps because I was in shock, my fingers slipped and I accidentally replied by sending his sister a ridiculous GIF.

I quickly deleted it, and we have not discussed it. I am devastated by Dan’s death, but right after the GIF mishap, what stung was that I desperately wanted to tell Dan about what happened. He would have found it hilarious. 

Dan’s sense of humor was brilliant, self-deprecating, and generous. He was the first friend I made in high school in Toronto, and it was his humor that drew me to him and kept us close. His yearbook quote was a wildly out-of-place reference to fighting a man with a purple hat. It still makes me laugh all these years later in its outright absurdity. 

That said, he did once lock me in a locker and leave me there. And on multiple occasions, he threw my school bag into the girl’s changeroom so that I couldn’t retrieve it. You’d be forgiven for thinking he was my high school bully and not my friend, but our bond never wavered through more than three decades. 

I am devastated by Dan’s death, but right after the GIF mishap, what stung was that I desperately wanted to tell Dan about what happened. He would have found it hilarious. 

For a time, Dan was a college instructor, teaching things like video game design and computer graphics. But his adult life was largely spent as an entrepreneur, He founded multiple companies and gave many young people their start. 

It was also spent chasing adventure. He loved racing dirt bikes; driving boats; and especially, flying planes as an amateur pilot, his lifelong dream. I was scared to go flying with him, but friends told me that in his first plane, the door would routinely swing open in-flight. It was the passenger’s job to hold it closed while Dan flew the plane. He said to me several times that he figured he’d die in a plane crash—but the freedom and sheer joy of flying was worth it to him.

He was wrong about that. On April 30, Dan was shot in the middle of the day in an idyllic Toronto park usually filled with kids and dogs; the very place where I am sitting now writing this. It seems to have been essentially random. There was briefly a small impromptu memorial at the site—a candle, some flowers, and a wooden toy plane—but when I went to visit less than a month after his death, it had all been thrown out.

Dan loved his wife and his family dearly, and he had a special place in his heart for his wide circle of friends. His funeral was the closest thing to a high school reunion that I have been to. Even those who hadn’t seen him in years said they would never forget the mark he left on them with his warmth, kindness, and humor. None of us could believe he was gone.

I was a pallbearer. As we buried Dan, three planes were flown overhead by pilot friends of his, one of them his own. On the second pass, it split off from the others and disappeared into the distance—the “missing man” aerial salute. But it wasn’t the planes that I’ll remember most. It was catching sight of the dirt at the bottom of his grave as we lowered him. When the casket was down, I touched it once to say goodbye. 

I’m sorry I accidentally sent that GIF to your sister, Dan. I know you would have found it funny that I did that. I’m just not sure she did.

I loved you, too, and the world will never be the same. 

But I’m still angry about that locker incident. Jackass. 

Gregory Levey has just finished writing his first novel. Dan helped edit it.

The post I Accidentally Sent a GIF to My Dead Friend’s Sister appeared first on Modern Loss.

There’s no rule that says a memorial has to happen in the days right after a loss. Some people need years. Some need decades. Some need a quiet Wednesday afternoon when something finally shifts and they’re ready to begin.

Whenever that moment arrives, creating an online memorial for someone you love is one of the most meaningful things you can do—not just for yourself, but for everyone else who carries that person with them. Here’s how to approach it, step by step.

Start Before You’re “Ready”

The most important thing to know: You don’t have to have everything figured out before you begin. A memorial page is not a final exam. It can be added to, updated, and shaped over time. Starting with one photo and one memory is enough. The rest will follow.

If the idea feels overwhelming, consider using a concierge service. Having someone guide you through the process—a real person, not a chatbot—can make the difference between opening the proverbial box and closing it again.

Gather What You Have

Go through your phone and computer for photos and videos, including the mundane ones—a random Tuesday, a meal, a moment that didn’t feel significant at the time
Family members and friends often have material you don’t. Ask around. You’ll be surprised what surfaces.
Letters, cards, and notes in handwriting are worth digging for
Even short videos count: a voice memo, a birthday message, a clip from a family event
Jot down what you remember, too: their expressions, their habits, the things they always said
Don’t edit yourself during this phase. Collect everything first and curate later.

Choose Your Platform

Not all memorial pages are created equal. Look for a platform that offers:

The ability to make the page public or private, depending on your comfort level
Space for rich content beyond photos — stories, recipes, favorite songs, places, quotes
A way for friends and family to contribute their own memories
Clean, customizable design that doesn’t feel generic or morbid
Long-term hosting so the page doesn’t disappear

Keeper Memorials offers all of this, including a world map for adventures, a family tree, donation links, video slideshows, and a dedicated section for friends to add their own tributes. You can also have a QR plaque made that links directly to the page; it’s a way to connect a physical place of remembrance to a vibrant digital one.

Build It in Layers

Think of the memorial page less as a project to complete and more as something to tend over time. A suggested order:

Start with a photo and a name. Just that. Get something on the page.
Add the basics: birth and death dates, a brief biography, a favorite quote.
Layer in the specifics: a recipe, a favorite place, a playlist, the things they were known for saying.
Invite others in: share the page with close family and friends and ask them to contribute memories, photos, and anecdotes.
Keep going: return to it as new memories surface or new materials are shared with you.

Decide Who Can See It

Most platforms allow you to control visibility. A private page is just as valid as a public one—it can be a personal archive, a place for a small circle of people who loved the same person. A public page allows anyone to find and visit it, which can be meaningful for people who knew your person in contexts you may not be aware of.

There’s no wrong answer. You can always change it later.

A Quick Checklist

Before you publish, make sure you have:

• At least one photo uploaded
• A short biography or description
• One piece of content that captures their personality (a quote, a recipe, a song)
• Your visibility setting chosen (public or private)
• At least one other person invited to contribute

One Last Thing

Grief doesn’t follow a timeline, and neither does honoring someone. A memorial built twenty years after a loss is not late. It is exactly on time.

Modern Loss readers receive 15% off Keeper Memorials with code ML26 at mykeeper.com.

The post How to Create an Online Memorial (At Any Point After Loss) appeared first on Modern Loss.