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Grief as a Gift: Discovering Strength and Hope Through Loss

Writer's picture: Jennifer ZareJennifer Zare

Jennifer Zare, LISW-CP / Pathways Counseling Center, LLC

Ten years ago, my world was forever changed. After a painful three-year battle with multiple myeloma and dementia, my mom slipped away, surrounded by my father, my three siblings, myself, and my infant daughter, Colleen. She was 73. I was 35. In that moment, life as I knew it was forever changed.


As a result of being the youngest of 4 — "surprise package," as my mom lovingly called me—I was no stranger to death. I had experienced grief early on, losing my paternal grandmother to a lengthy battle with dementia when I was in second grade. My maternal grandparents passed when I was in middle school, and my last surviving grandfather during my freshman year of college. Each loss was painful, but nothing could have prepared me for the profound grief I felt as I watched my mom decline and die.


It’s taken me ten years to truly look at, and finally share, the photo I took of my mom "holding" my six-week-old daughter, just one day before she passed away. I remember capturing the moment, recognizing the beauty in it, but feeling immense sorrow at how frail and distant my mom had become. My mother had always been so energetic and filled with an incredible child-like joy. Seeing her like that—old-looking, weak, and on the edge of death—was heartbreaking.

I felt then, that it wasn’t the right time to share the photo with anyone other than family. Yet, I instinctively knew that one day, it would hold deep meaning—a symbol of the bittersweet intersection of life and death. Precious new life cradled in the arms of a loved one nearing the end. The circle of life captured in a single photo. The beauty and pain in that one precious moment when my dying mom was able to "hold" her brand new baby granddaughter.


These painful moments can leave us drowning in despair, questioning God and wondering what the point is in a life so full of pain and loss. In these moments, we come face to face with the hardest truth: life is transient, and we are all on borrowed time.


My mom passed away around 3 a.m. on October 24, 2014. As the sun rose a few hours later, it felt strangely surreal to watch life continue on around me. My world had been upended, yet so much around me moved forward as though nothing had changed. It is a lonely feeling that most people experience at some tragic point in their lives - that life can carry on with indifference, even in the face of profound personal loss. In that moment, it felt like the world should have paused, acknowledging the void that now existed in mine. A void only a mother’s love can fill, because no one loves you like your mama does.  Yet the world stops for no one, and life must and will carry on. 


I am most grateful that it was in these times of deep sorrow, that I have felt closest to and most held by our Creator.  Though I often felt as if no human could quite adequately relate during this time, I never truly felt alone.  Through visions, dreams, glaring God winks, and the incredible peace bestowed upon me by the Holy Spirit, God reassured me that He is always there, and I am never alone. Perhaps because it is in these moments that I fully turned to Him with the deepest surrender, realizing that only God’s love is permanent, only God is everlasting.


Looking at this picture 10 years later, I am finally ready not only to see it but to share it, print it and frame it. To celebrate the life my mom lived so well and to honor and accept the way it ended. This image will serve as a reminder—to me and to those I love—that all life inevitably ends in death, making each day we have precious. It reminds me that grief and joy can coexist and that through the peaks and valleys of life’s journey, a strong faith in God can give us the strength to continue on—transforming our hearts, minds and spirits in the process.





A beautiful song for grieving hearts


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