Everyone has experienced some form of grief to some degree or other, and I am no different. I chose to tackle the "Creative" assignment because there has been one major loss in my life that has profoundly impacted the way I have dealt with grieving and I am finally learning why I have spent so many years reliving the pain. For the purpose of this assignment, I will relate a poem I wrote last year on the tenth anniversary of the death of my intimate friend, Trevor.

Next, I will describe my story and the way this course has allowed me to explore how my own grief has yet to be worked through completely. Finally, I will connect my own feelings and thoughts about grief and loss to other academic materials on the topic. I feel that in order to be competent at helping others cope with their own grief and loss, it becomes important for me to do a self-check.

This course offers a unique opportunity to learn more about a subject in which each of us must eventually face in our lives, but which is also very personal and difficult to express. I hope that this assignment can be seen as both a learning experience as well as a case-in-point on the topics of grief, loss, and life after suicide.

Grief is agony, bleakness, devastation, gut wrenching, heartbreaking, isolation, misery, and wretchednesstoday.

Grief is abandonment, bereavement, disheartenment, frightening, guilt provoking, and solitarytomorrow.

Grief is dashed hopes, gloom, loneliness, and sorrowanother day.

Grief is lost loveit may recede into the shadows as the light of life moves us forward in time, but it never really goes away.
By Londie Harrisson
May 26, 2005

I remember very clearly the night I wrote this poem. I had just received a new MP3 player for Mother's Day and my husband had downloaded some old rock ballads from the nineties. I was standing in the plumbing section of Home Depot looking for a new bathtub handle while listening to my music and singing along like an old pro untilBAMthe first notes of Fly High Michelle, by Enuff Z'Enuff began. I remember feeling like someone kicked me in my stomach, my head felt tight and light, and I dropped the handle out of numb fingers.

All of a sudden I wasn't in Home Depot but was somehow in Trevor's dark basement slow dancing to this song and feeling the heat of his body through our clothes, his warm breath belting out the lyrics on my face and his long hair brushing against the bare skin on my arms. For a moment

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