If you are looking for a way to remember your deceased Dad this father’s day, consider making an online memorial Web site in his name. It can provide comfort as a place to come back to routinely to post new thoughts or photos of your Dad to celebrate his life and make him an active part of your life even after he’s left this earth. 

A great place to start building your memorial site is Memory-of.com. On the site you can upload video and audio files, create a family tree and provide an area for others to post comments. The hosting is free for two weeks then hosting costs a low monthly or yearly fee.

Full description of Memory-Of is on page 168 of Mom Minus Dad.

This weekend I had the incredible experience of visiting the 30+ year old  educational retreat center Omega in the Hudson Valley in upper New York state. This vacation was intentionally planned around the author Julia Cameron and her teaching of her class “The Artist’s Way” in a group experience.

After the loss of a parent, family dynamics change and you or your parent may change how you did things such as vacations or holidays. I tend to prefer group vacations but after my father died my mother too enjoyed being in more group based vacation experiences than on her own. Here are a few ideas to help you or you parent (a few are for single women only) experience more group based vacations:

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Like President-Elect Obama, many of us face personal parental and grandparent loss as our incredibly busy lives swirl around us and life expects us to move on. I can’t imagine what it was like for Obama to lose his grandmother the day after winning the Presidential election. As a griever, Obama will walk through his grief in both private and public ways. I am sure he will have all the best grief counselors and advisors at his disposal but what books would I recommend to assist him with his journey through grief? I believe the best would be 1) Healing After Loss (a small mediation book) by Martha Hickman; 2) This Thing Called Grief: New Understandings Of Loss by Tom Ellis, 3) and for the upcoming holidays…Healing Your holiday Grief: 100 Practical Ideas for Blending Mourning and Celebration during the Holiday Season by Alan Wolfelt for their ease of reading and usefulness. Please add your ideas of excellent grief resources for Obama during his journey after loss…

When we face difficult parental loss, many people don’t feel like eating. This typical loss of appetite grievers develop can breed unhealthy consequences. If this is something your family faces, read about how hiring a personal chef to assist your widowed parent or your family can help out the first weeks or months after loss.

Below, Tom Steiber, CEO of Big City Chefs, answers my questions regarding hiring Big City Chefs to assist families utilize personal chefs to prepare meals after loss:

Q: Tom, I understand that a recent friend of an employee of Big City Chefs who was newly widowed used your services to help her after the loss of her spouse. Explain why she decided to use Big City Chefs to reduce her food/cooking tasks.
 
A: After a loss, some people find day-to-day tasks very daunting, which exacerbates the stress of the loss.  As a result, many grieving people will neglect their eating habits, which is not healthy.  Having a chef come into the home once a week or every two weeks to cook a batch of meals not only gave that friend some much needed rest, but it also restored her physical and emotional health to give her the strength she needed to cope with her loss.
 
Q: Tom, If an adult child of a newly widowed parent wants to arrange for a personal chef to prepare meals for their parent who may live across the country, what is the process?
 
A: It’s really quite easy.  In a pinch, the person making the arrangement could simply visit our website at www.bigcitychefs.com to order a package for a set number of meals as a gift, which can be purchased on our website anytime.  This would be sent in the form of a gift certificate that the grieving parent could redeem by then calling our office at 1-866-321-CHEF, at which time we set up a consultation with a chef.  If the adult child would like more involvement in the process, calling us to discuss the parent’s needs in greater detail can be done up front so that the parent doesn’t have to handle those matters. 
 
Q:  Tom, What kind of cooking training do your chefs have?
 
A: As a general rule, our chefs are professionally trained graduates of top culinary schools with several years of high volume, high pressure, high-end, fine dining restaurant cuisine.  Once they’ve handled the toughest educational and restaurant situations, they can easily take care of our clients and cover a broad range of individualized needs.  
 
Q: Tom, How do you make sure your chefs are safe to go into people’s homes? What is your screening process? Are you bonded and insured?
 
A very important personal quality that our chefs must have is a high level of trustworthiness, kindness, and effective communication, since they deal so closely with clients.  We take chefs through a rigorous screening process that includes personal interviews, creating menus for mock clients, verifying employment and personal references, and conducting criminal background checks.  We would rather work very closely with small teams of chefs than very loosely with a large network, as this helps create a very consistent customer experience.  And yes, we carry commercial liability insurance with Lloyd’s of London to protect our clients from foodborne illnesses or damage to their premises.
 
Q: Tom, Can a client request all organic or all local food to be used by the chef?
 
A: Absolutely.  We provide a totally personalized experience for the customer, and many customers do choose local, sustainable, and organic product.  In some communities, this might come from local farms or farmer’s markets, while in others, it may come from natural grocers in their neighborhoods.  We can accommodate any requests and can customize a package and price to meet almost any need. 
 
Q: Tom, Can you tell us the price ranges for two weeks of personally cooked food by your chefs by different locations across the country? (i.e. Pacific Coastal states $X-$X), Midwest($X-$X), Southern($X-$X), New England($X-$X)?)
 
We like to provide customers with a package price that includes all groceries and labor.  As a general rule, our pricing is fairly similar across the country, although it is slightly more expensive in the New York City metro area.  Ten nights of dinner entrees, including the cost of food, start at $400 for 2 people and $750 for 4 people, or 20 and 40 large dinner entrees and side dishes, respectively.  Pricing for highly customized packages can vary a bit depending on the type of ingredients used.  In New York, we would typically add about $50-75 to either package.
 
Thanks Tom!

Here are answers to some common questions I am asked about parent loss, my book Mom Minus Dad, or my background:

Q: Why did you write this book?
A: I searched for a book like this to help me balance my life with a newly widowed parent and it wasn’t available. So, I researched and wrote a book that I would have wanted to have available to me when I lost my father. I found that there were plenty of books for widows and widowers but not the adult children that end up assisting their widowed parent with lots of decisions and new situations.

Q: What is the biggest mistake people make after experiencing a loss of a parent?
A: The biggest mistake people make after losing a parent is to continue to do everything they did in their own lives before the loss. You don’t realize the physical effects of grief and the toll it takes on you. After loss, you have limited energy. Ask other people to help you take care of kids, etc. I tell people to only do the essential things such as: learn about your grief/the grief process, research time off work, eat healthy foods/drink lots of water, and exercise or walk daily. You also need to do a lot of nurturing self-care such as take hour long vacations, journal, see a movie or comedy show, go for a walk or hike outdoors, listen to guided meditation cd’s, get a massage, take a hot bath or hit a yoga class.

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Holidays such as Mother’s Day may resurrect old memories of a newly deceased and absent mother or father that lie dormant throughout the rest of the year.  The holiday reminder may unearth tension, emotional anxiety, or grief from past Mother’s Days. The retails ads showcasing the perfect Mother’s Day and the gifts their families give mothers explode in malls, on TV, in magazines and newspapers and serve as daily reminders of our loss. (more…)