Grief practices: Who taught you?
Experts say the language and practices of grief are best learned at home, when we are little, role-modeled by the adults in our life.
The poem What I Learned from My Mother by Julia Kasdorf is a great explainer of this. Here's an excerpt:
I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches...
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
Who taught you what to do when someone dies or is sick?
(S-R archives photo)