My wife Tami

During each Good Grief fall and spring series, at some time during the rotation of different speakers, Tami would tell “Her Story”.

Part of living your life is dealing with the sudden loss of life. At twenty-eight years old, her beloved husband Dirk Maw just shy of being married for twelve years was killed in a car accident.

Never good at being alone, Tami was suddenly alone. Many of the things Tami talked about during her presentation was both confessing the mistakes she had made in going through her grief and what she could teach others by what she had learned.

One lesson Tami resonated with every grieving person attending the series was, “Your grief is YOUR personal journey”. Not many people know this, but after each class on the drive home, Tami would be sick with worry about each of the attendees somehow wishing she could take their pain away or if not, just make the grieving process a little shorter.

In all of her classes, Tami did possess one secret gift and that was to be blessed with having Christ like empathy. Having her main job as a manager at Standard Optical, Tami used to say she did that job for the paycheck and Good Grief was for her heart.

Now physically unable to work at Standard Optical, while preparing for the 2018 spring series, just trying to muster the energy to get to the library was so taxing and disheartening but she pushed herself to do it because Tami believed in Good Grief so much.

It was during the spring series that the hope of life slipped away from Tami in the early morning hours of May 21, 2018 as Tami would now teach us how to mourn her.

Sadness without surrender. Weakness without defeat. To truly know and understand Tami, we can love completely without completely understanding.

Winter Kill by Gary D. Hendricks

Spring: 

A time to be thankful.
A time of birth and rebirth.
A time for the emergence of love and renewed energy.
A time of tenderness and hope.
A time to celebrate the victory of daylight over darkness.
A time of planting dreams.



Summer: 

A time to enjoy and grow.
A time to live and laugh.
A time to learn, tend and teach our young.
A time to imagine and explore.
A time to gather together.
A time to enjoy the warmth of life.
A time of nature’s bounty.
A time to prepare and build.



Autumn:

A time to harvest.
A time of change. 
A time to mourn the surrender of daylight over darkness.
A time to witness nature preparing for winters onset.
A time to listen to the wrestling leaves confused by the wind.
A time to reflect on a life lived and chase the last rays of hopes and dreams.



Winter:


A time for sadness without surrender.
A time to test weakness while avoiding defeat.
A time of solitude.
A time to survive and time to die.
A time to witness natures savage beauty.
A time of stillness and bitter cold.
A time to pray and make amends to God.
A time to face winter kill. For the culled, a time to meet and at last, be with our creator.