{"id":33922,"date":"2021-09-11T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-11T07:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=33922"},"modified":"2026-06-06T12:17:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T12:17:20","slug":"how-to-grieve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/how-to-grieve\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Grieve — A Message From My Mother-in-Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"How<\/a>
Penny and her brothers. Barbara Newhall photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How to grieve?<\/p>\n

Ruth Newhall’s 12-year-old daughter had died. Letters and cards of condolence were pouring in.<\/p>\n

As a reply to one, she wrote: “Thank you for your thoughts. But we don’t think that way. We think about how lucky we were to have Penny for as long as we did.”<\/p>\n

That’s my mother in law, Jon’s mother, talking.\u00a0 Sixty-six years ago.<\/p>\n

Her daughter Penny — my husband’s little sister — died in 1955. Penny was Christmas caroling in the Berkeley hills with friends when a truck’s brakes gave way. The truck struck Penny. She died instantly.<\/p>\n

Ruth outlived her daughter by nearly a half century. I rarely heard her talk about Penny.<\/p>\n

So I first learned of Ruth’s thoughts on grief when I got a call the other day from Dave Nelson, an old family friend.<\/p>\n

Dave — who turned 100 last year — was calling to offer his condolences on Jon’s death<\/a>. But he wanted to tell me what Ruth had said so many years ago: “We were lucky to have Penny for as long as we did.”<\/p>\n

How to grieve? I dunno. I’m not my brave mother-in-law. I’m not ready to give up on being broken-hearted, outraged, despondent, horrified by the sudden death of my husband.<\/p>\n

Yes. I was lucky to have Jon<\/a>. But I thought I would have more of him. If Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are still holding hands<\/a> well into their 90s, why aren’t Jon and I?<\/p>\n

Jon’s not here any more. But, thanks to a phone call from Dave, Jon’s mother is here for a while, talking to me.<\/p>\n

Another story about the inimitable Dave Nelson at “Widowed: Life Goes on and Some People Like It.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"How<\/a>
How to grieve a 12-year-old? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"how<\/a><\/p>\n

How to grieve? I don’t know. I’m not ready to give up being broken-hearted, outraged, horrified at the sudden death of my husband.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[103,1013,2483,187,34,191,2484,2074,2485,517],"class_list":["post-33922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-widowed","tag-aging","tag-cemetery","tag-dave-nelson","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-grief","tag-how-to-grieve","tag-jon-newhall","tag-penny-newhall","tag-ruth-newhall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49440,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922\/revisions\/49440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}