Today, we’re honored to sit down with Mike Bernhardt, editor of Voices of the Grieving Heart—an extraordinary anthology of poetry, essays, and artwork created by 83 individuals from around the world. These aren’t polished poems from literary giants—they are raw, real expressions from people navigating the depths of grief and the slow rise toward healing. Mike isn’t just an editor—he’s lived this loss. After the sudden passing of his first wife over 30 years ago, his life was forever changed. In this deeply moving conversation, Mike opens up about the journey from devastation to transformation, and how writing—his own and others’—can be a light in the darkest of times. Whether your grief is fresh or decades old, this conversation will meet you where you are. Let’s step into this space together.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. 

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.

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Voices Of The Grieving Heart: From Heartbreak To Healing With Mike Bernhardt

Our Guest is Mike Bernhardt. He is the Editor of Voices of the Grieving Heart and anthology of poetry about grieving the death of the people we love. Eighty-three people from around the world contributed poetry, essays, and artwork to share their journey through loss, grief, transformation, and healing. Mike is a Certified Greek Educator and has volunteered as a grief support facilitator.

The poems that he is going to share in this book are going to let you know that you are not alone. There are different ways in which the people that are sharing their stories about their loved ones, but these homes are so heartfelt. Not about being a super great poet, but just being able to express your feelings. You will hear your voice is in these poems. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Mike, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

You say thank you for having me. When you hear welcome to the widowhood, if there was a ticker tape across your head, what am I not seeing that you thought of instantly hearing that?

It’s just good to be here to be able to share my experiences and my book, but just my experience of grief. If that can help somebody, then I’m glad to share it here.

Thank you for that. When you say your experience of grief, what is that predominantly related to?

Mike’s Personal Grief Journey and Its Impact

The most recent experience, was my mother’s death in May 2024. The biggest one for me was my first wife, when she died in 1991 April 7th. We’ve been married for seven years. I was 34 when she died and she was 31 and devastating as anyone who’s lost spouse can probably imagine.

It is. Seemed like that much time is passed when you say those numbers or what does that look like for you?

Yes and no. It is a long time. I was half as old as I am now. In fact, I’m now at the point where pretty much she’s been gone more time than I was alive when she died. Those are weird things to track, but I seem to do that.

When you say weird things to track, for me, I feel like my late husband’s passing is the benchmark, I say, was it before or after Mark’s passing the light that had become a timeline. Can you relate to that?

Yes, because my whole life changed and not just temporarily. They were permanent changes in the way I wanted to live my life after she died. It took time to get there. It’s like the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs. It’s like the whole world changed when my wife died. It was very sudden and she died pretty much overnight. It was a very unexpected thing.

She was born with a congenital heart problem. Strangely, on our first date, she told me all about it. We talked for hours the whole thing. I knew what I was getting into, but she was very vivacious and just live life to the best that she could. It was a pretty serious problem, but it didn’t affect her attitude. We figured she had decades that she wouldn’t live to be an old woman, but we figured she’d lived into her 60s, then she started to have some issues.

She took a new medication to deal with some fibrillation problems. A lot of people, I’m sure know what atrial fibrillation is, but she had a bad reaction to that medication. She had a ventricular fibrillation, which is not good. That’s like cardiac arrest territory. We took her to the hospital. I was there all night. I went home in the morning just to get a little sleep. Some friends of mine stayed with her and soon as I got home, I got a call that she’d passed.

Thank you for sharing that, and you said your life changed dramatically. Someone reading this, they’re going, “That’s a long time ago. It probably wasn’t that bad.” What would you say to them in that statement?

I would say it was that bad. It was like the whole world crashed out from under me. We were close. We loved each other. We thought we had plenty of time and then she was gone. I didn’t know how was I even going to live, let alone find happiness again.

What were those steps for you in finding out how to live again?

It was time, but not just time. It was time combined with letting my grief take me where it was going to take me. I was fortunate. I mentioned to you that I was unemployed at the time. I was self-employed, so I did have work, but I didn’t have a lot. I just didn’t want to work. I had a little bit of savings that lasted me for a while, but not that long. I honored my grief every second. I took walks. I cried a lot. I tried to read books that would help and we’ll get to that.

Maybe that led to the book that I ended up publishing, but it was a lot of not running from the grief, from the pain, and not wallowing in it exactly but letting it take me when it needed to take me and having some faith. I’m not a religious person but I am a spiritual person. Having faith that somehow, I was going to be okay.

In my case, the other thing that helped was I felt her presence with me very strongly. In fact, to the point setting up a memorial service. I could hear her in my head telling me what she wanted and who she wanted sitting next to me. I went to a unitarian church where I wanted to have a celebration of life for her. They had this beautiful room with a big stone fireplace and giant picture windows looking out onto the hills. This little room was gorgeous. It could hold like, 50 people. She said, “It’s not big enough.” I was like, “I don’t know. How many people are going to come?” I asked for the main chapel and we had almost 100 people show up. I didn’t know. I just trusted.

What’s her name?

Susan.

Thank you for sharing that. From your lived experience, what are some misnomers that people have as far as men grieving?

It might be true for some men that men will tough it out. That they won’t feel their feelings. I felt my feelings, and it’s interesting because before she died like before she got sick. I sometimes would imagine because we knew it was more real that she could go than me. Anyone can go but because she had something that could kill her. I would imagine how I would feel if she died and that I’d be okay. That’d be sad, but I’d get used to it. It wasn’t anything like that. It was just devastating.

That part, because people think, “I could imagine.” For me, I attended funeral but I had no comprehension of the depth of that pain, the depth of devastation, and the inability to hear their voice one more time or to have another conversation. I say untethering of my soul from him in trying to exist in his absence. It is devastating.

People say and I would say, when she died, a part of me died and it’s true. It literally is true because there is a part of you that is connected to them. Part of your identity is your relationship with them and that’s gone. You could say in some abstract way your relationship is still there and there’s new aging people that would say, “The body’s gone.” Your body doesn’t care that the spirit still there. Your body feels like there’s a part of me that is gone like somebody cut off my arm.

What was your journey from that devastation to getting to a place to even write a book?

I did a lot of things. I said I took walks but I had already been seeing a therapist about some issues. I kept seeing her and she was good. She understood grief, which not every therapist does. That was helpful. I also attended it a grief support group every week. It was an hour drive, but I went every single week for a year and that was run by, it was called the Center for Attitudinal Healing. I don’t think they’re around anymore, but they were based in this place about an hour for me.

He’s gone now, but Gerald Jampolsky wrote a book called Love Is Letting Go of Fear and the basic framework of that group was about compassion and love. It was a drop-in group. It wasn’t like there was a syllabus or something that you’d go through like a lot of grief support groups have. It tend to be more educational. This was just come, share, and listen to other people. That was it, and sit in community with other people. It wasn’t just spouses a number of people were but there was somebody else who lost their brother or their best friend. It was different kinds of losses, but the thing we all had in common though was we wanted to hear other people’s stories and tell our own.

The Role of Community and Grief Support Groups

There’s something valuable about being a community and hearing other people share not in a trauma bonding negative way. It elicits hope that they’re able to continue on and I can also, by seeing up pattern, and I’m sure there were people there in different timelines of when they’re loved one had passed. You’re hearing from different perspectives. From that group, what was the road to you writing a book?

When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot of poetry. The stuff the teenagers worry or think about, all alone in the world. I wanted to say, the other thing about a grief support group is that when you’re with a group of other people and they’re all sharing their stories. You feel that connection because one of the things with grief, as you well know, is you can feel isolated. Nobody can understand what I’m going through and to some degree maybe people can’t.

You were talking about being at the funeral and not getting the depth of the pain. When you’re in a group like that, everybody that’s there, you’re hearing very experienced in like I’m experiencing it. There’s differences but there’s that shared human experience. It’s great to not feel isolated that way to just know there’s people out there who know exactly what I’m going through.

I would agree with that profound grief. You can feel alone in a crowded room. It’s the lack of connection and it’s very difficult to manage because it seems like it’s lonely all the time.

I remember a couple months after Susan died. I wanted to go see the new Terminator movie. It was out. It was like the second one with the liquid guy. I wanted to see it and some people invited me to come join them, but I don’t think they knew my wife. They didn’t know that my wife had died, and so I went to see it with them. Everybody’s being social and I felt so alone. That memory is still very sharp for me. we’re talking 1991, just how alone I felt with these people because I couldn’t talk about my wife with them. I couldn’t talk about my grief. It was hard. I enjoyed the movie, but I didn’t enjoy being with those people. I would have been better off going alone.

Sometimes, people beside you, being so sociable makes the isolation even more intense.

Writing as a Path to Healing: Mike’s Journey to Publish a Book

You never feel as alone as you do if you’re alone with other people as you said. Your question about how I came to write the book. I was writing poetry and as a teenager, it just seemed like the right thing to start doing. I was keeping a journal but sometimes, I’d start to write poetry because it seemed to be able to help me express what I was feeling in a way that journaling couldn’t. Journaling was like I was explaining to myself what I was feeling but when I was writing poems, it was different. It was like a different part of my brain.

It was almost like the feelings were coming directly out on the paper. Often, in poetry, there might be images. Not always in my poems, but sometimes. It’s a different way of expressing yourself. It was so healing for me to look at a piece of paper with something I written and say, “That’s it.” I can look at it and feel some healing just from being able to see in words what I was experiencing. After a while, I was looking for books that were meaningful to me and a lot of them weren’t.

There’s better books out now, but at the time there weren’t any books. I’d read a few pages. It was like, “Throw it away.” What I wanted was to read other people’s poems, and I couldn’t find anything like that. My therapist said, “Why don’t you make your own?” I started on this project making my own poems but I put ads in the newsletters of several organizations. The unitarian church had a newsletter, a national one. I put ads there in the Elizabeth Cooper Ross Center. They had a newspaper. All these places had paper. America online was the internet at the time.

That’s dialogue on a phone line.

Exactly with the modem. I put ads in these in these things and what I said was I was looking for poems. They didn’t have to be like high literary quality. What I was looking for was did they express what the writer wanted to express? Did they make me feel something? I got 200 responses. Two hundred poems from a bunch of different people from Portugal, England, Canada, all over the US, and Australia. I was shocked.

I started sorting through these comments. I didn’t like all of them, but I ended up settling on 65 poems from 45 different people. Seven of the 65 from my poems. I sorted them accordingly. This all happened starting about a year and a half or so, after my first wife died. I was writing almost from the day she died, but I started to putting this book together. I sorted the poems. I made chapters based on how they related to different aspects of my own experience.

In the first chapter, I ended up calling Someone Died Today. A lot of the chapter headings were either lines or titles of poems that I’d received. Someone Died Today was the name of a poem from a woman I knew whose brother had died from AIDS, which at the time was big. It was a simple poem. She’d never written before. I was the only one she’d it with and she gave it to me for the book. It was simple. No one would call it good poetry, but it was powerful. I included that. I had these different chapters.

It went from Someone Died Today which were poems about the day that someone died all the way through a chapter called the Breath of Great Spirit, which were poems that had to do with what I now know is called it just getting to where you can integrate this loss into your life and begin to feel whole again. There was a hole in between like a chapter called the Raging Storm, which was just about that after someone dies.

There’s just so much intensity. You’re just like in a ship lost at sea in a raging storm and you don’t know if or where you’re going to ever wash up. There was another chapter called But You Allude me, because there was just long period of crave and missing her. Plotting through my life and not caring about anything but just looking for her and not finding her. That experience that many of your readers have probably had of walking down the street and you think you see them, then you realize it wasn’t them. It was somebody else that maybe had the same hair or whatever. There’s that.

I had dreams with her like vivid dreams. One where she told me about her dying from her point of view, which was incredibly healing for me to have that. Not everybody has those experiences, and I should say because I know not everybody has it. Only because you didn’t doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong. I know I’m not the only one that maybe talks about having those kinds of experiences of reconnecting after death in some way. It doesn’t happen to everybody. I can’t say why it happened to me. It just did.

Healing Through Creative Expression

I have a couple of things I’d like to read and I have some poems if you’re interested in reading them in this conversation. “For Susan, whose deathless love inspired this book. Her gift to me and mine to her and for all the contributors, this book only exists because of your voices. Thank you.” What comes to my mind when you hear that now?

There’s two additions to the book. The first one was published in 1993 or 1994 and that one just had the first part of that because that was what it was for me. It was her. This book was my gift to her and her gift to me I felt. The second one, I wanted to thank the contributors to the book as well, so I added to that.

I’m going to read something a note to the reader. “Some of the poems in this book may elicit a strong emotional response. That is one of the goals of this book, to help you identify and express what you are feeling. The authors and artists in this book contributed their work in the hope that they might help you heal as their creative expression help them to heal.” We got into that and I forgot to talk about the title of the book and the artwork that is on here is beautiful, Voices of The Grieving Heart. How did you come about this picture that you have on the book, Mike?

I remarried two and a quarter year or so, after my first wife died and it just happened that way. We can talk more about this later because I want to answer your question. Basically, the woman on married to now was next door neighbors to the best friend of my first wife. Although, I never met her until a few months after Susan had died. I went over to visit the best friend, and I met Yvonne, my now wife. We were just friends for a long time because I couldn’t be in a relationship. We were friends and eventually it became more, so here we are.

There’s a couple of things I’d like to say about that later on when we get to it, but to answer your question. I had this idea of an image of like men around a fire because I’m a guy. This was my image and I had talked to somebody about could they create something like this but nobody could quite get what I wanted. It’s around a fire and there’d be smoke from the fire and the smoke would be forming into a person. Maybe a woman or something. That was my image, but something that look healing up in the smoke.

Yvonne is this amazing researcher. She was looking around on the internet, and she found this image for sale on Etsy. We contacted the artist and she mostly does like divine mother type of images. All different kinds. Some of them look very maybe Mesoamerican and some African but that’s what she does. I can give her a shout out. I know it’s here on the first page. I’ll just do that for her.  Claudia Olivos of OlivosARTstudio.

Yvonne found this image and contacted the artists and we told her. It wasn’t what I was looking for but as soon as we saw it, it was like, “That’s the one.” I just love this nurturing image of this woman stitching a heart back together. What I love about it is, it’s not like that heart is going to be whole again. It’s always going to have the scar but it was just beautiful. We contacted her and she was willing to let me use the image on the cover in return for six copies of the book. It was great. It was within my budget for sure. That was wonderful, so that’s how it ended up there. I had a friend who’s done a lot of cover designs so he took that image and designed the cover for it.

If you don’t mind reading some poems out. Maybe the page number four and then, after you read those, share whatever you would like about that particular poem. Is that okay?

That’s fine.

Let’s go to page number 24 and it’s titled, Etched in My Brain.

I’ll read it first and then we can talk a little. “Face down on the bed, my son, arms outstretched and legs grown cold. One tainted pill, did you in at twenty-four years old. I quickly turned you over and looked deep into your eyes. “He’s gone!” I screamed. “He’s gone! He’s gone!” with anguished, high-pitched cries. I peered into your open mouth with vomit on its side and horror overtook me then as part of me had died. I ran around the kitchen like wounded, helpless prey. I cursed out loud and whimpered some when they took you away. I carry this, etched in my brain and guilt, since last I checked, a father’s job is to love but mostly to protect.” That’s by a man named Ken Slesarik.

What happened was he found his son, dad. He’d taken a fentanyl pill. He was having some back pain at work and a friend gave him a couple of pain pills. They knew that he hadn’t killed himself because there were two pills. There was still one on the nightstand, so he knew that he just taken one for the back pain. They found out later why he taken out. It was an accidental fentanyl overdose, which is so common now.

The Complexity Of Grief

That is why I wanted to read that because sometimes people think you think poetry is going to be lofty and people to know that their story is part of this work that you’re doing here. They can see themself being at identified. That is very important when you think about what I want to help soothe my soul to know that this speaks to cross different people and experience.

The only, I’d say, in general categories of how people die. The only category that’s not in here is, I didn’t have anyone who’s loved one was murdered, but drug overdose, Alzheimer’s, old age, cancer, accidents, and suicide. All kinds of different things. Too many suicides. I’m sorry to say, but 6 or 7 people in here has died of suicide.

Thank you for mentioning that, so people know that it is part of the journey. Could you read after the service this starts on page 34, Mike?

This is by Nori Rost. I will say this one, her brother did die by suicide. She’s a unitarian minister, so she’d attended done a lot of services but she had never done one for her own family member. She was very close with him.

I can relate to that being an ordained minister when my mother-in-law passed. My husband was in their hometown with his brothers and they were making decisions. He called me from the funeral home, and said, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I was at lunch.” He said, “I need to talk to you.” I was like okay. He said, “We’re preparing my mother’s service and we like to know if you can do this service.” I was like, “Excuse me. What? I’m sorry. What did you say, darling?”

He said, “We would think that our mom would want you to do this service.” I said yes. I wanted to say no because I wanted to be this grieving wife next to her husband, but I did have a wonderful relationship with my mother-in-law and preparing for that service was what I thought was going to be the most difficult experience in my life. Preparing that eulogy and sending it to another minister and asking them to read that.

I took the day off and sent the children to school and allowed myself to break down because I knew when I was doing that service, I needed to manage my emotion because that at point I needed to be Minister Tina to the family. It’s quite the shifting in my perspective to have done services for other things, but this was a different experience. There’s so much to give of yourself and sacrifice it now.

I’m about to read it but I know you know this experience yourself, I’m sure. I tend to get very emotional when I’m reading these poems even though I’ve read them 100 times. It still brings out, I can’t say it’s grief exactly, but it just brings out emotion in me. We’ll see what happens as I read this because it is for me. It’s called After the Service.

“Where I stood and nervously, eulogized my brother, my voice not breaking once. Not even once while my mom and sister’s wept so helplessly. A man comes to shake my hand to tell me what a terrific job I had done. He says to me, “I hope you take the time to grieve yourself.” I looked at him dazzly, it is impossible to describe this grief to anyone. I could say I was in mourning, that I was grieving my loss, but what sentence would hold the description of the form grief takes now, the gasping hyperventilating sense of it.”

“The bending over at the waist while simultaneously beating my breast with closed fists, the howling, “Ah! Ah!” That is so loud and fierce even with my head buried in a pillow. That sometimes I’m surprised the neighbor’s haven’t called the police or the way my heart hurts with such an angry desperate pounding cadence that I want to reach inside my chest cavity and rip it out. I smile. I smile blankly at the man, a stranger and assured him that I do.” This moment in particular gets me every single time. It just powerful.

It is very descriptive and to think all those things are happening in the split second in your mind when someone’s coming to listen what they think is the best advice that you need to hear. You’re just trying to get through that moment and be sane with them. The beating of the chest and the howling, I cried so much. I’ve mentioned this before. I thought I was going to dehydrate. I didn’t know I could keep producing tears. I never experienced that level of pain.

I remember once. My wife had a CD that was a new agey thing. It was like the cool new aging music. It was called Glacier Bay. It was all sounds of wildlife in Glacier Bay, Alaska. There’s a point where this music is going and these wolves are howling then I just started. I still remember that. Those wolves just did it to me.

I can see that. We have just a couple more left, Mike. Page 113, what they want to hear.

I like this one too. This is by a woman named Paula Porter, whose husband died from cancer that came from Agent Orange. She was a Vietnam vet. “People say I’m handling it well, coping, adjusting but they don’t know I go to sleep every night hugging a pillow pretending it’s you and praying not to wake up to another morning alone. People want to know how I’m doing, making a new life, going on, and they get a sad smile and say, “It’s rough. Thanks for asking. I managing.” Words they want to hear. People comment how strong and brave I’ve been through it all. Your cancer, your fight for life, your death but they can’t understand that my strength and bravery, and hopes were buried with you.”

How does that relate to your story, Mike, your journey in grief?

I would imagine it’s a common experience for a lot of people. When people ask, “How are you doing?” What do you tell them? All you can say is, “I’m doing okay.” It’s like the previous poem. You just can’t tell most people at least. “I’m screaming every night. I was wailing for an hour this morning because I missed her so much.” You just say, “I’m managing. I’m still breathing.” That’s something.

What impact would make if we tell people exactly how we were doing?

It’s a good question. The fear is that we’ll lose friends and they won’t be able to handle it. In some cases, it might be true. It depends on the friend. I have a couple of people I could talk to you about it but even so, I didn’t want to use them up, so to speak. That’s what was so great about having a support group to go to. I could just dump it all there and not have to have my friends listening to the same thing for months on end, which was, “I miss her. I don’t know what to do. I’ll never be happy again, or at least I’m afraid I’ll never be happy again.” It wasn’t that I didn’t talk to a select few people about it, but I needed to have other ways to take care of myself. For most people, I would just say I’m fine, especially casual people, casual acquaintances.

I understand the casual acquaintances. Do you think we’re doing our friends disservice by not sharing more with them about our grief?

It’s a good question because the best thing that a friend can do for us is to just say, “If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

Open the door.

The Strain Of Answering “How Are You?” & The Importance Of Specificity

None of us want to be a burden on our friends. On the other hand, it goes both ways. Maybe you talk about it and see how it goes.

That was 100% my friends. I didn’t care. They were getting all this work. If they asked, I remember a group of people I would have lunch with. I knew they cared. They had been to my home. These are people I had lunch with every day at work and they said, “How are you doing?” I was like, “Trash. I’m garbage.” It was three months before I came back to work. When they asked, I said, “When you asked me how I’m doing, there’s a whirlwind going on in my head and I’m trying to say, ‘do I tell you I want Mark to come back?’ I don’t know what this looks like.” I just say hi.

I don’t even answer the question anymore. I said, “The best thing you could do because I know you love me is to ask how am I doing this moment? That’s all I can grasp in my mind. The question, how are you doing seems so bad that I cannot even handle it.” When I told them that, they changed the question. They went to ask me, “How are you doing now?” That was palatable.

That was wise of you to say it that way. That is a great question. I’m a grief educator through David Kessler and I haven’t done it the last few months, but I spent probably two and a half years volunteering with him most Mondays. He has a Zoom group and a program called Tender Hearts. On Mondays, they have online grief support. He’s got like twenty breakout rooms for different kinds of deaths or experiences of death of a parent, death by fentanyl, or death by addiction.

They’ve had a death by murder one, too. Death of a spouse and child in different age groups. I volunteered with that, and that is something that we talked about a lot, is to just ask how are you doing now? Not just, how are you doing, because as you said, there’s no way to answer that. I didn’t have that wisdom then. I was just blowing through it as best I could.

You did very well. We’re going to go to 141, to heal, which is appropriate based on where we are in our conversation.

Grief & The Journey Of Healing

As I said, we’re moving through the grief journey here. The first one that I read was about the day that this man’s son died and the next one was from the raging storm. The violent emotions that we feel or the violence of emotion, maybe I should say. This one woman has a few poems in here. When she was sixteen, she found her mother dead from suicide. She’s got another poem in here about that.

“Grief deeply embedded in the soul can twist and turn, can swell and screw poison. “Let it go,” you say. “Move on,” You say. “Vent the tears and anger. Move on,” you say. “Yell at God. Yell at you for leaving me. Move on,” you say. Look again into the sky and see the clouds. Smell the rain. Touch another human in a loving manner. Begin to heal.”

What comes to mind reading that now?

It’s a little more backstory with this woman. She also had a series of miscarriages a little bit later in her life. With this book, when I did the second edition, which was in the fall of 2021. I went back and to contact the original contributors. This one had twice as many contributors and more than twice as many poems. I found out through a series of research projects that she had died but I ended up getting in touch with her little sister. Her little sister had done some writing, too. One of her poems about Monica is in this book because they had been a strange for a long time. She didn’t know what Monica had gone through and her life because they hadn’t talked.

Even when Monica was dying of cancer, she contacted her and said she just didn’t want the sister around. There was nothing specifically happened. It wasn’t like it was bad blood. Anyway, I think a lot about that because this woman had a very challenging life but she died knowing she was loved by people, including her sister even though her sister didn’t get to see her. That’s what about what this because this was a woman who went through so much and yet she found ways to heal of herself.

We do experience a lot of pain in this lifetime. Do you think we have a choice to embrace it or to stay in a place where we never live life full again?

The Choice To Heal & Move Forward

We have that choice. For some people, it maybe takes more work than others to make that choice, but we do have that choice. One of the things that I learned is that it doesn’t mean letting go of the person you allowed to learn how to live again. It just means accepting that there is room for more love. There was a story that I told you. We messaged back and forth on LinkedIn some months ago and there was a story I said I wanted to share with you because I was reminded by whatever it was you posted. Maybe now is a good time to share that story.

Before the last poem?

I’ll share that then we’ll go to the last poem.

Go ahead.

About a year going to those grief support groups every week, a woman came one whatever night of the week it was, and I had met her before. I had met her years before in a completely different context and her husband had died, and had been a couple of years. She remarried a couple of months before she showed up, but she was in the group because she just felt she needed a tune-up. One of the things that she shared about her second husband was that when she knew that he was the right one, when she could cry in his arms for her first husband. I said, “I hope I’ll meet somebody like that.” She said, “You won’t settle for less.”

I can agree to all of that.

That’s when I knew that Ivan was right for me when I could cry in her arms over Susan.

I picked this last poem because it carries the same name as my late husband and it’s spelled the same way. If you would read this, I think this is a thinning transition into where our lives have gone since the passing of our loved ones.

“Dear Mark, son, friend, brother, student of philosophy, artist, dancer, lover, realistic, and dreamer, traveler to exotic places, wishing now to be a UFO. As you prepared fly away, I bow and gratitude. You are a shining light, my teacher, my patient, my student, and my absolver. It was heaven to be forgiven, the blessing of a second chance bestowed. Go then. Take off in your blue and silver rocket. Explore the galaxies and all your splendor, elegant, and bold.”

“Go in peace and safety. You are protected by an awesome golden light. I joined everyone who loves you and wishing you Godspeed.  A part of us goes with you. A part of you remains in our hearts. You have given us so much in the receiving of our love. Your tears of told us all we need to know. Part of hearts, rose quartz pink and silver skies, sea green eyes, dear Mark, goodbye.”

There is so much of that this speaks to me, the sea green eyes. My husband always talked about the UFOs and I’m going to guess take off in your blue and silver rocket is a line from a song that I’m accustomed to hearing but there’s just so much of that when I saw that I had to hear you read that poem. Thank you. We say goodbye but you mentioned earlier, we always keep them with us. In the idea of dating and you talked about being able to cry in your second wife’s arm. What was dating like for you compared to what you thought it would be?

I did date a little bit, but I wasn’t looking initially for any big commitments. I was 34 years old, so I was normal. It was interesting. There was one woman who I dated a couple of times. I liked her and it wasn’t until the second date that I noticed that her arm was a little bit deformed. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to have a relationship with her. Even though that was not a life-threatening thing, she had cerebral palsy or something. Not cerebral palsy but cerebral something.

It was a birth defect, so it wasn’t life threatening but I just felt like I need to start with someone who’s whole physically and healthy. I just don’t want to go through and I don’t know. I felt maybe a little bit of shame around it. I maybe still do, but it was just not right. If I was going to start dating again, I needed to know that at least time starting off with someone who have no medical issues that they have to deal with and what comes, comes. We can’t predict the future.

I’m going to say something right there. What you mentioned is very common to widows and widowers when they’re dating. I spoke with people whose spouses pass of diabetes or high blood pressure. The idea of recoupling with someone that is known not well is frightening. They tend to want someone that’s as active or mobile as they are because we travel that road.

The likelihood of someone passing again is high but we don’t want it. It’s very difficult often for someone who has been whittled to partner with someone that has any type of sickness because it’s very triggering to them. That is more common than not from speaking with hundreds of different people that are widowed and re-entering the dating world and what that landscape looks like. You’re not alone in that concept.

The other thing for me was I didn’t realize how much of a caregiver role I had taken on with my first wife day-to-day. It wasn’t like she was dying of cancer and I needed to be the caregiver. That’s just as hard. When you don’t have that, you missed the person horribly and there’s all so often a relief that you’re not in that role anymore.

I didn’t realize how much I was in that role because she’d been that way from the day I met her. It was just natural. If we were taking a walk and we were going uphill. I put my hand on her back to help push her uphill because she’d get out of breath too quickly otherwise because her heart was only maybe 60% or 70% functional. I just needed to start clean if at least what clean in whatever that meant to me. There was that, but the thing with Yvonne was that we were just friends.

In fact, I knew someone else who’s wife had died from kidney issues. Over that the months that they were going to dialysis, he became friendly with the woman at the bed next door whose husband was on dialysis. Both of their spouses died and they ended up getting married, the two survivors because they’ve been through so much. They’d already become very close.

With Ivan and me, it wasn’t romantic at first. I told her I’m not interested in a relationship and she said, “That’s good, because neither am I,” but we went off camping together and picnics. We did all the stuff that friends might do together and then at a certain point, realized we wanted more. I’ll just share here. Yvonne is always joking about my marriage proposal. There’s a long story behind this that I won’t get into.

What happened was, I was out of Chinese restaurant. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about her, whether I wanted to stay with her or not and I decided that I did. I opened my fortune cookie and it said, “Now is the time to go after what you want.” What I said to her was, and she gives me such a hard time about this. I said, “I’m not ready to get married but when I am, I’d like it to be you.”

She should give you a hard time.

She should, I know. She said, “Are you sure? Why don’t you think about it for three days and come back to me. Tell me whether you’re still serious about that.”

It’s like a contract negotiation.

We got married the next year. That was all I could give her at that point. I just couldn’t commit to more. There were a lot of times earlier on when we’d have something set up. I didn’t say stand you up, but I needed to stand her up because my grief was there and I needed to attend to it. It was hard for her, but she had a close friend who said, “He’s worth waiting for, so just try to be patient.” It was a great advice.

Obviously. If you were able to retain all the information you know now and you were able to talk to yourself the day after Susan passed. What would you tell Mike?

Knowing what I know now and also understanding a lot more about grief because of the training that I did with David Kessler and all. If I were to say to myself then, it’s all going to be okay. You’re going to meet somebody new. It’s going to be great. You’re going to love her. She’ll love you. You’re going to have a long happy marriage. I’d say, “I don’t want any of that. I just want Susan back.” That’s what I would have said at the time. The only thing that I could say to myself understanding now that I needed to go through that journey.

Finding New Happiness Without Forgetting Loved Ones

You will be okay. That’s it. It’s going to be hard but you will get through it. Will I ever be? If I were to ask future me. Will I ever be happy again? I’d probably say, “You will but I can’t tell you how you’re going to find your way there. You just have to find your way there.” People need to go through the hard stuff in order for their heart to crack open enough and eventually be open to new happiness.

The only thing that I would say, the biggest fear that I have and I’ve heard from a lot of other people is that I’m afraid that if I date again or find happiness again, that I’ll forget Susan, or whoever your loved one was. I don’t want to ever forget them. The one thing that I can say is, you will never forget them. You will always love them. You’ll always have that place in your heart for them. You’ll carry them through everything but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy again, have them, that memory and that experience be a part of it.

I would agree. Mike, I enjoyed this conversation and I’ve asked you a lot of questions. Any questions you have for me?

No, I don’t think so. We’ve had a nice conversation. The only thing I’ll say is Voices of the Grieving Heart, you can get it on Amazon. If you hate Amazon, you can order it from your favorite independent bookstore. They’ll get it for you. You’ve heard a few of the poems. There’s 150 poems in there from 80 different people. It’s like sitting in a giant support group and having everybody just share their experience and you just feel loved, I’d say. You feel witnessed. You feel that people know who you are. A lot of the people who contributed to this book told me they were contributing it because they were hoping that what they wrote would help someone else.

Thank you. I’m going to say something to our readers, then I would like you to close this out with any final words or advice or anything you would like to share. Thank you for being a part of this conversation. I am sorry for your loved one that is no longer here that is driven you here but I’m glad you found us. I am so grateful to be able to share Mike’s book with you and the warmth that he shares and the comfort that you’ll find.

What I’ll do is I’ll share the very first poem in this book. It’s my closing statement. It’s called Voices. This poem is what led to the title Voices of the Grieving Heart. It’s by a woman named Merritt. “Poetry born from the pain of grieving, inseparable from the pain of growing, death creating life, a flower blossoms from your fertilizer, muse, brother, one in the same. Your spirit ever present gives me courage to write. We talked in the land of dreams. I rejoice knowing you continue to live. Our poem’s a testimonial to your existence.”

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you. It’s nice talking with you.

Important Links

• Mike Bernhardt
• Voices of the Grieving Heart
• Love Is Letting Go of Fear
• OlivosARTstudio

About Mike Bernhardt

Mike Bernhardt is the editor of Voices of the Grieving Heart, an anthology of poetry about grieving the death of people we loved. 83 people from around the world contributed poetry, essays, and artwork to share their journeys through loss, grief, transformation, and healing. Mike is a Certified Grief Educator and has volunteered as a grief support facilitator.

In addition, his award-winning travel essays have appeared in Deep Travel: Souvenirs from the Inner Journey, DIVER Magazine, Hidden Compass, and other print and online publications. Mike’s story, “The Tides of War,” about retracing the steps of his second wife’s refugee grandparents during World War II, won a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Award in 2024. He is working on a related book.

Mike and his second wife raised a son and live in the San Francisco Bay Area.