Grief is Love

Grief is Love

“I’ve learned to transform the pain from loss into loving memories of those who left us earthside. It is possible to find magic again, we just have to look.”

-Lauren Seeley @Ahhsweetdeath

I can’t recall a moment where I didn’t know grief, from my earliest memories until the present time. When I was 5 years old, I had a crush on a boy at my daycare. We used to play together every day we were there. One day, I was told by my babysitter that he wouldn’t be coming back. I overheard the adults talking about how he had died in a fire. I felt such a sadness, knowing that our time together had ended. I didn’t quite understand those feelings and to this day, wish someone would have told me the truth instead of pretending like I didn’t know the secret I wasn’t supposed to hear.

When I went to another babysitter, I was quite fond of the babysitter, Linda’s Husband, Joe. Later that year, we found out that Joe had cancer and was dying. By the time I found this out, he was going into the hospital. We all went to visit him, and my sister and Joe’s daughter had rehearsed to sing “These Dreams” by Heart to him while we did. I remember that being such a warming moment, and I remember his tears. He never came out of the hospital. Linda Made professional cakes as another business. She made the cake for Joe’s funeral. Ever since then, I feel sentimental whenever I taste black frosting.

My Oma was such a warm and loving person. She owned a pet shop in Monterey, California, with my Opa. Much of my memory of my childhood with her is connected to smells: delicious food, wet dogs (grooming smells) the sequoia trees in her backyard, and more than anything…roses. She loved roses. She had many beautiful rose bushes in her backyard. When she got sick from cancer, I spent every moment I could with her. I wasn’t as present as I wish I could have been, but I sure did my best to help take care of her in her last days. I was also 14, deep in drug addiction, and unable to connect to anything but where my next fix came from. Before she passed, she told me that she couldn’t go until she knew that I would be ok without her. I assured her I wanted to get better, and that I promised I would be ok. The day she died I was trying to find drugs and missed it. There’s not a lot in life I regret, but that day is one that took me a long time to forgive myself for. I kept my promise, though. I went to rehab. I turned my grades around, moved in with my Opa and committed to helping him take care of my 96-year-old grandmother with dementia. This would also be my second experience at a young age of caring for a loved one at the end of life. This would continue for 4 years.

I could write an entire book on the losses I’ve experienced in my life. Most of my friends, partners, my young stepson, my first husband, the list goes on. Whenever people ask me how I got into grief work and death care, I explain that I am a grief expert, as I have been through a lot of it. What I do as a Death Doula for humans and pets, and as a Grief Support Doula, is hold space for people anticipating or experiencing loss. I show them the ways we can transform grief into love, pain into beauty, and learn to grow around our grief. I teach others how to forgive the guilt they may carry in their heart. I urge people to allow themselves to feel, and how to let their grief as love flow through them. Everything I show others and share with the world are all of the ways I’ve learned to transform the pain from loss into loving memories of those who left us earthside. It is possible to find magic again, we just have to look. We just have to believe that our loved ones are never too far away from us, and that they are loving us from the other side.

Written by: Lauren Seeley