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Keywords: Grief

  • AUSTRALIA

    Dying and the question of dignity

    • Annmarie Hosie
    • 25 May 2021
    27 Comments

    Peace, laughter and lightness during dying might seem unlikely, but such experiences are common, not rare. Seeing and sharing in these sudden, strengthening consolations (and receiving them in my own griefs) have taught me about our awesome potential to transcend suffering, and confirmed why we don’t need euthanasia or assisted suicide.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Telling Aurelia

    • Julie Perrin
    • 11 May 2020
    13 Comments

    In the week following my mother’s funeral I wake up knowing I need to begin cooking again. I need to enter the world beyond my door. It takes me until lunchtime to coax myself out from under the doona. I will walk up to the local shops for bread and vegetables.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keeping vigil

    • Julie Perrin
    • 06 April 2020
    4 Comments

    While I stay by my mother, I glean only the edges of the news; already the horror of the fires has been at full stretch. In the quiet room where my mother lies, I think of people trying to sleep in unfamiliar environments, refugees from the fires.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Heart sparks

    • Diane Fahey
    • 09 March 2020
    3 Comments

    I remember, in the small hours, a spill of arcane patterns on the glass — heart-sparks treasuries of hallowed grief, of yet-to-be-lived hope, sequestered in the infinite.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This is not about the fires

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 22 January 2020
    11 Comments

    My dog I've had for 14 years dies, and I decide to spend two days in bed. I look online and see that more than a billion Australian animals have died in the fires. Guilt spirals on top of guilt. How gauche, to feel this private grief, when there is such public grief already.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Coming to terms with Christmas grief

    • Katherine Richardson
    • 16 December 2019
    10 Comments

    Now that I'm grown I've realised that while Christmas felt that way for me, it isn't magical for everyone. For many people Christmas is a hollow reminder that there is someone missing from the table, and no matter whether it's the first year or the 50th, that chair will always remain empty.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My September of grief

    • Katherine Richardson
    • 26 September 2019
    8 Comments

    Before that first September, my experience with grief was fairly limited. I was no stranger to death, but I hadn't yet felt the type of grief that makes you ache in places you never realised sadness could reach. My first experience with this was September 2014.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Jean Vanier's model for inclusiveness

    • Justin Glyn
    • 09 May 2019
    10 Comments

    Jean Vanier (1928-2019), sailor, academic, companion and man of boundless hospitality, died on 7 May, leaving behind him not only many communities in grief but also a model for how a world free of discrimination might look.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Elegy for Sisto Malaspina

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 15 November 2018
    2 Comments

    What is so urgent here is not a sense of being morbid. Nor, in the main, was there even a vengeful note. This was unalloyed grief, unimpaired by manipulation and political exploitation.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Giving suicide grief centre stage

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 August 2018
    1 Comment

    The play began in work with people who have survived suicide and who are helped to move beyond isolation and stigma by speaking about it in an encouraging environment. It helps those who watch it to break down taboos that might make them shrink from people whose relatives and friends have taken their own lives.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A sweet 16th turned bitter with grief

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 25 July 2018
    8 Comments

    Today my niece would have turned 16. It would have been a milestone, the teetering point between childhood and maturity. But there was something more formidable facing her, something none of us was aware of. So unbearable and obliterating was it, it would prompt her to end her life just three months after her 15th birthday.

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  • RELIGION

    What religions really say about suicide

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 15 June 2018
    14 Comments

    Amid the shock and grief for Anthony Bourdain's death, one blue-tick Twitterer attempted to capture five minutes of shameful fame, declaring that religious people believe hell or purgatory is his afterworld destination. While all the great religious traditions generally proscribe suicide, they also contain nuanced views of the suicide's fate.

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