Life, Grief and the Kaleidoscope

How do you look at life? How do you look at death? How do you look at grief? In this article, Sherry Williams White, nurse, writer and grief specialist, shares the analogy of grief and a kaleidoscope.  She explaines how the shards of glass inside the kaleidoscope when held toward the light (which represents our hope and beliefs) changes the picture. Your picture becomes something different, not better or worse, just different. Life with a different and new meaning that includes your memories and the desire to make your loved ones life as well as their death have meaning.

by Sherry Williams White

The magic of the kaleidoscope with all the shapes and colors that can be seen through it provides us with a clear picture of life and grief. This became ever so clear to me as I listened to the words of a grieving woman explaining how the imagery of the kaleidoscope had given her a clear understanding about coping with the death of her husband.

As she so eloquently explained, the tube of the kaleidoscope represents us; our body and our mind and how we see the world around us. The glass fragments or pieces represent our life events, good, bad, happy, sad, stressful and some even calming. The light that has to pass through the kaleidoscope in order for us to see; represents the attitudes and choices we make about how we look at life and what happens to us.

As we study the kaleidoscope even further we can see that an important part of life is the way we handle the things that happen to us. This will determine how they are reflected back to us and others. This shinny cylinder that is mirrored on the inside reflects back all of our life experiences as we see them, transforming our life in to a series of patterns, colors and designs.

When we think about our life, it does have a lot of different parts to it, a lot of different pieces of glass. Some of these events or colored pieces are pleasant, some happy, some sad, some good, some bad, some bitter and some sweet some pretty and some ugly, but they all make up the whole of our life.

What is your attitude and how will you choose to see the patterns of your kaleidoscope?

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