Grief Sisters Reunion
In 2022, four women from across the country met on Zoom attending a Bridge C-14 grief support workshop for people who had lost someone to MAID. Coincidentally, we had all just lost our husbands within a two-month span. We had much in common. So much, that when the ten weeks were up, we knew we could not lose the connection, so we continued to meet . . . and still meet today.
In 2023, I wrote about our experience in The Globe and Mail. This publication led me to Grief Matters. I had just moved to Nova Scotia to be near my daughter when the organization’s co-founder, Mary Ellen Macdonald, asked me to speak at a conference in Halifax. This talk gave me an opportunity to lay out the whole MAID journey, from first hints to final day. Eventually, I would expand that lecture into a memoir, We Walked Him to the Door.
This memoir includes a mention of my grief sisters – how could it not? – and how vital this connection has been to my recovery. In my Globe article I quipped about how much I looked forward to our first reunion, which I imagined might be in a villa in Tuscany. We would drink cheap red wine watching shirtless young men weed the villa garden and ride rusted bikes into town to buy fresh provolone, prosciutto, and tomatoes at the local market.
In May 2026 this dreamed of reunion finally happened. Alas not in Tuscany, but in Ottawa, which is also beautiful. We had never all met in person, although some had met one other at some point. Ottawa was a central place to meet – one of our members lives there. The other three flew in from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
We wondered if the bond would be as strong in person as it was in cyberspace. The short answer: yes, it was. What an incredible gift it has been to find this connection in the midst of so much pain. We sat on roof tops sharing tapas, on pizzeria terraces watching waterfalls, and at Tavern on the Hill, basking in May sunshine, surrounded by tulips.
There was lots of laughter, and of course, some tears. We didn’t wind down the MAID memory lane often, but when we did it was always organic. Things needed to be said, and experiences needed to be relived. The pain of that day; the joy and relief of that day. We share a secret language that no one is privy to unless they have had this particular experience of loss.
The importance of a grief community cannot be over-stated. I said it in 2023 and I will say it again: I love these women. We are all very different, because we are human, and perhaps our lives would not have intersected if not for the loss. Geography alone would have made that unlikely. But we are a team now. And for life.
We check in once a month these days, having gone down from our weekly Zooms which lasted at least two years after our husbands’ deaths. But much sharing takes place in between in our group chats. We mark each other’s loss anniversaries – which all happen between May and July. We share photos of dogs and grandchildren. We share when we are sick and need that sympathetic word. We share when grief bubbles up, unbidden, and knocks us off our feet. We are all fiercely independent women and yet we need this: to know there are a few people out there who really get it!
As if I needed more proof, I suffered another loss while in Ottawa. I found out that my husband’s youngest brother had taken his own life. Again, it was my grief sisters who literally picked me off the floor and helped me absorb the news.
We will meet again and are determined to do the west coast and east coast in the future. And who knows … maybe one day Tuscany.
