""Just stretch my shoes." These were among the final words my mother-in-law, Maureen, said to me when she was dying. She seemed to sense that she was near the end, though none of us could really believe it. Her sudden-onset illness was a shock to all of us, but seemingly not so much to her. On that last Saturday night in her hospital room, Maureen explained to me about how she wanted things to go for the family when she was gone."
"Although this loss happened many years ago, I have recently been reflecting on this conversation in terms of the deeper meaning of "stretch my shoes" that can be applied to loss. Instead of taking the suggestion about the shoes literally, I have decided to interpret the abstract meaning of her final words in relation to three areas where we often need to stretch ourselves after a death."
The loss of a loved one triggers a multitude of intense feelings that can make the world feel very small at first. A dying family member's final image of 'stretch my shoes' functions as a metaphor for adapting to loss rather than a literal request. Practical memories of the loved one, such as thriftiness and specific requests, shape the meaning of what remains. Grief represents the internal experience while grieving represents the active process of adapting and moving forward. The grieving process can involve stretching, widening, and evolving personal capacity to hold loss and to re-engage with life over time.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]