Grief

Perhaps it is a hydrangea chosen because it was Grandma's favorite flower. Or a rose bush rescued from Mother's garden before the old homestead is sold. It may be as simple as a potted plant retrieved from the funeral home or as elaborate as a meditation garden with a reflecting pool. Grief often finds its expression in nature. The simple act of planting a tree or creating a quiet spot outdoors to sit and remember - or the therapeutic exertion of working in a garden - is a mysterious source of comfort for the bereft.

When classmates at Overlea High School told 17-year-old Erica Nesbitt to "get over" her best friend's murder, it made her angry. No one seemed to understand her pain."

With complaints of online fraud reportedly up sixfold last year and consumers spending more for e-travel than for any other Internet purchases, vacationers should cruise cyberspace with caution.Most e-travel problems seem more the fault of inexperienced entrepreneurs still working out the glitches of a rapidly changing business milieu.Web fraud, says the U.S. Tour Operators Association, falls into two categories: e-mailed "special offers," often claiming the recipient has won a contest, and Web sites advertising false travel deals.

FRIENDSHIP CHURCH of the Brethren is sponsoring a series of Lenten seminars on grief starting today at the church, 217 Mansion Road.The sessions, from 7 p.m. to 8: 30 p.m., are designed to help people cope with losses in their lives, such as the death of a loved one. They include videotapes and discussions led by David Leiter, pastor of the church.The topic for today is "The Five Tasks of Grief." The rest of the schedule is: "Healing Guilt" on Feb. 28, "Fear and Anger" on March 7, "Growth from Divorce" on March 14, "Infections of the Grief Wound" on March 21 and "Saying Goodbye to Our Losses" on March 28.Information: 410-789-2422.

Ten chairs form a circle at the Barnes & Noble bookstore downtown. Here on a breezy November evening, two Baltimore mothers, Anne McCracken and Mary Semel, will give their first reading of the anthology they've just published: "A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies."Neither woman knows how tonight will go. McCracken is eerily unnervous. A glass of wine has soothed Semel's jitters.They know what it's like to lose a child. Their book is a compilation of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by authors who know what it's like, too.The circle fills with friends, family members and strangers.

William Tabilio, a tailor who as president of the English-American Tailoring Co. introduced laser cutting to the industry, died Feb. 14 of cancer at his Timonium residence. He was 84.Mr. Tabilio's nearly 50-year career in the garment industry spanned the era from handmade clothing cut from chalk and scissor patterns to the era of computerized laser cutting.He was born in Picciano, Italy, and immigrated in 1919 with his family to Philadelphia.Growing up in heavily Italian South Philadelphia, he quit school at 16 and apprenticed himself to a local tailor.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to note the habit: The natives he encountered on what he believed to be land near India were smoking a green, previously unknown herb.Amerigo Vespucci reported that the natives, by then called Indians, "chewed like cattle so that they could scarcely speak."Europeans thus encountered tobacco.They greatly liked it.Their first impressions are worth re-reading, as a reminder that cultural habits can radically change.The chroniclers were writing long before knowledge or worry about lung disease.

NEW YORK -- The two worlds of Jonathan Levin came together yesterday as teen-agers from the South Bronx and titans of industry gathered for the funeral of the slain schoolteacher and son of Time Warner's chief executive.Grief proved a powerful uniting force as students and moguls alike expressed similar sentiments: admiration for the way Levin lived his life teaching poor youngsters at a public high school and disbelief at the grisly way he died. He was found shot to death -- his feet bound and chest stabbed -- in his Upper West Side apartment Monday night.

The Jury said "Guilty" and the Judge said "Life" but he didn't hear them.Opening words of"The Mansion," 1960Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.From"Wild Palms," 1939From beyond the screen of bushes which surrounded the spring, Popeye watched the man drinking.Opening words of"Sanctuary," 1931Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, "I have come from Alabama; a fur piece."Opening words of"Light in August," 1932Memory believes before knowing remembersFrom"Light in August"Pub Date: 9/21/97

WASHINGTON -- Here Abraham Lincoln and his wife retreated in grief after the death of their son. Here the wartime president and his family found a few moments of peace and solace amid war and struggle. Here the Great Emancipator learned of the Union victory at Antietam, repaired to his second-floor office and worked on a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.Lincoln's summer White House stands so far from the daily commerce of politics that it is all but forgotten. No one ever visits. No post cards are available.

One of the worst things about any big trouble is the way it isolates us at the precise moment we're most in need of comfort. It matters not one whit if the people sharing our dinner table or office cubicle are going through the identical crisis, because no two traumas are exactly the same. Every loss, every grief is as individual and specifically coded as a set of fingerprints. That's one of the main insights to be gleaned from David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Sitting at the February funeral service for the four members of the Browning family, Garland Williams was overcome by the sheer number of people grieving the couple, their two youngest sons and the arrest of their eldest boy on murder charges in the deaths. "Nobody knew how to be. People were just being there because their hearts were wounded with this grief," he recalled. "I thought then, `There's got to be a place, going forward, to sit and reminisce.' This grief will never go away completely, but we can, perhaps, change the direction of that grief."

BAGHDAD -- Grief engulfed this city's most prosperous and lively enclave yesterday as residents struck by a suicide bomb attack a night earlier mourned their lost loved ones. Authorities said the death count had increased to 68 people and that 120 others were injured in the Thursday evening attack, which targeted the Karada shopping and residential district. Fatalities rose steadily overnight as patients suffering severe burns and shrapnel wounds died. The carefully planned attack was one of the most devastating in Baghdad in months.

Perhaps it is a hydrangea chosen because it was Grandma's favorite flower. Or a rose bush rescued from Mother's garden before the old homestead is sold. It may be as simple as a potted plant retrieved from the funeral home or as elaborate as a meditation garden with a reflecting pool. Grief often finds its expression in nature. The simple act of planting a tree or creating a quiet spot outdoors to sit and remember - or the therapeutic exertion of working in a garden - is a mysterious source of comfort for the bereft.

LONDON -- There were the familiar clusters of wilting flowers propped in the fence, the poems, the sniffles, yet another replaying of Elton John's "Goodbye, England's Rose." But in the end, a nation still fractured by 10 years of grief and accusations over a dead princess showed signs yesterday of moving on. There were two memorial tributes to commemorate the fiery end of Princess Diana in a car crash a decade ago. One, at the Guards Chapel near Buckingham Palace, was for the upper-crust: the royals, the prime ministers, the rock stars and film directors, and the various lords and baronesses - women in intimidating hats.

Hospice to present talks on grief, loss Laurel Burnett, a bereavement counselor from Hospice of the Chesapeake, will present "Growing Strength in the Seasons of Life: The Journey of Grief," from 11:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. at the Pascal Senior Center, 125 Dorsey Road, Glen Burnie, on the following dates: Today: Recognizing and Honoring Loss in Our Daily Lives. Aug. 15: Cumulative Loss. Aug. 22: The Power of Reminiscing. Take a bag lunch or get a meal at the center. Registration. 410-222-6680.

The lilting, jazz-kissed melody, dedicated to the survivors of the massacre at Virginia Tech, has been downloaded more than 380,000 times in the past three weeks - a frequency typically generated by a Top 10 hit single. The song was not written by a polished performer but by a British amateur artist named Kojo Best. He wrote the tune, then played it on an electric piano and posted his performance on YouTube. Even as professional artists such as platinum-selling Texas rapper Lil' Flip and R&B-pop star R. Kelly release their versions of songs dedicated to the survivors of the Virginia Tech killings, homemade musical tributes such as Best's have been mushrooming in the online video universe.

ENTERPRISE, Ala. --After the sudden pitch-black darkness, there was chaos, then screaming. And when that subsided, the still-jittery students of Enterprise High School recalled yesterday, young men and women they had grown up with were nowhere to be found, even as everyone else was climbing shakily to their feet. Eight students were killed Thursday afternoon, victims of a powerful tornado that tore apart their school soon after students were told to hit the floor. Concrete from a collapsed interior wall rained down on them, even as they huddled together for safety, authorities said.

CHICAGO -- When a loved one dies, people go through five stages of grieving, according to accepted wisdom: disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance. Now the first large-scale study to examine the five stages shows that not only are they accurate but also if a person has not reached the acceptance stage after six months, he or she might need professional help dealing with bereavement. The study, published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that, contrary to common belief, yearning or missing a loved one is far more prevalent than depression - meaning mental health experts might need to refocus their attention on the feeling of loss when someone experiences prolonged grief.

Standing in line,waiting to check in for jury duty, I wondered which of the three people behind the counter I would rather handle this. The announcement had said they would confirm my address, employment and marital status. I got the middle-aged man. We went through the form on the computer screen. The address was correct. So was the employer. Marital status? "My wife has died," I said. The cursor moved. The M was changed to W. It moved again to the name of spouse. "Nancy" disappeared.