Hundreds of people mourning major losses attended the inaugural BYU ‘Life After Loss’ conference.

By Holly Richardson

“The pain here is palpable,” said Carrie Moore, whose husband died in a plane crash in 1996 and who was presenting at last weekend’s first-ever “Life After Loss” conference at BYU. The pain was palpable. And so was the relief at not being alone in that pain, at least for those two days.

Over and over, I heard presenters and participants say they felt so lonely while going through deep loss. That mirrors my experience as well — grief is isolating. It’s hard to talk about the nights spent collapsed on the floor, sobbing until your eyes burn and your throat is scraped raw, especially when life continues in other ways — kids still need to be fed, jobs need to be returned to and somehow, our society thinks there is a timeline for “getting over” major losses.

Grief, as participants well knew, also impacts brain function. One presenter said our brains function at about 30% for a while after deep loss. That brain fog meant for me that it took more than an hour to choose a necklace for our 5-year old daughter to be buried in when she died in 1995. I just stood at the jewelry counter in the mall, staring at my choices, unable to decide. I couldn’t decide if I should bury my daughter with a diaper on or a pair of underpants, because her Down syndrome meant she hadn’t yet mastered potty-training. Brain fog also meant that I couldn’t think of what to feed my surviving children beyond macaroni and cheese and cereal. I couldn’t decide what to wear day after day, so I defaulted to sweats and a ponytail, not just in 1995, but every time we’ve lost children.

For me, the grief process did not get easier when we buried another daughter in 2005 and another one in 2009 and yet another one in 2011, all daughters with disabilities that eventually took their lives. In fact, I think multiple losses have scarred me in ways that I can’t seem to change....

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2023/3/21/23650170/life-after-loss-byu-conference