Grief article truly moving

I was so moved by your article on grief (The Front Porch, Stefanie Pettit, Jan. 3) that I had to respond. We recently spent our 10th Christmas since the loss of our adult son to cancer. He was diagnosed in April after two months of misdiagnosis and a serious surgery that revealed the cancer. Ten months later he was gone.

You are so right when you say that grief is forever. It lies there buried deeper and deeper as the years go on under layers of life events only to unexpectedly be brought to the surface by an unforeseen trigger. Each time it is as heart wrenching as ever. It gets easier to control but the pain never diminishes.

One of my biggest sources of pain is the feeling that life is going on without him. I am saddened when I think that people have forgotten him and am touched very deeply when someone mentions his name along with a special memory of him.

I can’t say if the experience is the same for everyone, but I suspect it is agonizingly similar.

Barbara Richardson

Spokane Valley