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Creativity in grief

Lynne Baab • Thursday September 10 2026

Three years and two weeks ago, my husband Dave went fly fishing with a friend. Dave brought both his fly-fishing gear and his painting equipment. They drove to the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River, an hour east of Seattle, beside the Gateway pedestrian bridge. Dave fished for about 45 minutes but felt unstable the whole time. He retreated to the shore, sat on his folding stool, and painted his friend as he fished.

Dave was 77 at the time of that outing. He had been a passionate fly fisherman in his 50s and 60s. After he got a chronic lung disease...

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Grief 101

Lynne Baab • Thursday September 3 2026

My close friend’s husband passed to the new life from ALS less than three months after Dave did. I’ll call these friends Sam and Sarah. For more than a year, Dave and I used to joke about who would go to Jesus first, him or Sam. Dave felt it was a bit of a race and talked humorously about it.

Sam was in a different hospice program than Dave was. Like our hospice, his hospice offers solid grief support, but in a different form than ours. A couple of weeks ago, Sarah attended a 2-hour seminar called Grief 101, something our hospice...

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Creation and grief

Lynne Baab • Friday August 28 2026

Next Tuesday is a remarkable day, the newly declared ecumenical Feast of Creation in Christ. I thought, should I take a break from my series on grief to write about how excited I am that Christians all over the world see the creation as central to their spirituality?

No. God’s creation plays an important role in the grief process. Here are some connections.

Nature as comfort. In my grief groups and in talking with widows, numerous people have talked about how important walking, gardening, and other ways of engaging with nature have been for them as they grieve. Pets, our fellow creatures, are companions...

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Surprises in grief

Lynne Baab • Wednesday August 19 2026

I thank God for the grief counselors at hospice. They keep affirming that everyone’s grief journey is unique. No pressure to conform to any expectation of stages or emotions or thoughts. This week, I’ve been pondering all the unexpected things that I’ve thought and felt since Dave’s passing to a new life on April 9.

You might not be able to guess what I was doing when these thoughts first came to mind. I was washing dishes! When Dave and I met, we began the practice of doing the dishes when the other one cooked. Even when we were dating, I could...

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