The Light Beyond

If There's Anything I Can Do: how to help someone who has been bereaved

Today sees the launch of our new book, If There's Anything I Can Do. An immensely practical ebook for the friends and families of the bereaved, it shows you exactly how to help without getting in the way.

It is awful when someone you love goes through the unbearable pain of bereavement. You feel distraught and completely unable to help. You can't take away the grief, but there are many things you can do to make everyday life more bearable. And no-one knows better what those things might be than people who have been bereaved themselves.

This guide explains how it feels, and also passes on the advice of many other people who have been bereaved. These people know exactly what helped them most (and what was well-meant but not helpful) at the time, and in the months, weeks and years afterwards.

This ebook is full of little ways - and big ways - you can help someone you care about cope that little bit better. Click here to read more about If There's Anything I Can Do...

White envelopes for Christmas...

It's just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas. Oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it, overspending, the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma, the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way. Our son, Kevin, who was 12 that year was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended, and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church.

These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in the spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes. As the match began I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford. Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat. Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, "I wish one of them could have won," he said. "They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them." Mike loved kids, all kids, and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse.

That's when the idea of his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition, one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on. The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents. As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical present, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn't end there.

You see we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.

Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation watching as their fathers take down the envelope. Mike's spirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.

Nancy W. Gavin

This story is a true story and inspired four siblings from Atlanta, GA to start The White Envelope Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting this tradition and charitable giving. The White Envelope Project founders are regularly in touch with the family in the article and are thrilled to have their support. The Gavin family and now thousands of others continue to celebrate the "white envelope" tradition each year. For more information about The White Envelope Project or to honor a loved one through a "white envelope" gift this year, please visit their website: www.WhiteEnvelopeProject.org

I watch the sunrise lighting the sky...

From the ever-wonderful and inspirational Marion Ryan, based in Ireland:

Jake mentioned the other day that Gran'ma hadn't sent him an advent calendar this year.

As if she had our kitchen bugged, the very next day's post brought a large red envelope addressed to the man himself and inside, was the identical calendar she sends him every year, a simple little one she buys in the church.

He came into my office waving the two enclosures he'd found alongside the calendar - a £20 note and a little leaflet of hymns from the church.  "Here - this one's for you" he said, holding out the twenty, only to snatch it back at the last minute.  "Not really.  Yours is the hymns".

In the ten years I've been living in Ireland, sterling has become funny foreign money, endowed with the same kind of exotic strangeness I used to associate with proper foreign currency.

Anyway, a sterling 20 looks exciting to these euro-weary eyes, especially with those sparkly silver egg-shapes running down the middle of the note as if the Governer of the Royal Mint had given his Barbie-crazed 9 yr old carte blanche to design the new notes.

It wasn't till this morning as I waited for the kettle to boil that I picked up the leaflet and saw that it was one of my favourite hymns my mum had sent me:

I watch the sunrise
Lighting the sky
Casting its shadows near
And on this morning
Bright though it be
I feel those shadows near me

But you are always
Close to me
Following all my ways
May I be always
Close to you
Following all your ways, Lord

The hymn goes on through another three verses so I had plenty of time to sing it while I made coffee.  I'm afraid I've forgotten the name of the singer I first heard sing the song but if you've heard the recording I'm sure you will know what I mean when I say it's an uplifting and poignant song.

I decided that I definitely want this sung at my funeral and felt rather pleased that I'd made a decision about something even though on that occasion I won't even be present.  That's control freakery taken to the limit I guess.

When I popped out to buy milk a little later I spotted the headline in all the Irish papers that I suppose I should have seen coming - "Katy died in her sister's arms".

Katie French was probably not known outside Ireland.  She was a 24 yr old model who was always attracting publicity - for the most mundane reasons.  I never took any notice of her or the publicity machine though just one week ago it was hard to avoid her as a huge birthday party was laid on to celebrate her 24 years and it was reported in all the papers.

I'm not sure there was any reason for this; simply, she was young, pretty and carefree - she sold papers.  I glanced at the story but I had no interest in her beyond thinking I didn't much like her dress.  During the weekend, it seems she went partying somewhere else and sniffed too much - or the wrong sort of - coke.   She collapsed.

I think people panicked or didn't panic enough.  No-one called an ambulance, instead, after some delay, she was brought to hospital where, during the course of the week, the papers reported she'd had a heart attack, was on a life support machine... and yesterday, she died in her sister's arms.

Though she meant nothing to me, I've cried today for - for her?  Only a little.  I've cried for her friends and family and for the friends and families of all the (predominantly young) people who will die, not from old age, but from drug abuse.

I'm used to expressing this sort of unnecessary death as a "life wasted" but I believe utterly that her spirit continues and so maybe, though this was a shockingly short life for someone otherwise healthy and beautiful, it wasn't wasted.  Perhaps her purpose during this particular life was to dazzle people with her joie de vivre so that in being killed by cocaine, she will serve to deter some people who would have thought it'll never happen to me.

I watch the sunset
Fading away
Lighting the clouds with sleep.
And as the evening
Closes its eyes
I feel your presence near me.

Here's to you, Katy.