How creating remembrance cards brought solace to me

Here's a piece I wrote that was published at the online site I often write for, Writing for Dollars. I hope it'll help those of you with sorrow to produce something meaningful in memory of your loved one.




Create Your Own Line of Cards!
Five Tips to Help You Sell

by Alice J. Wisler

Until I reach the New York Times Bestseller List and get to wallow in cash, I’ll be looking for ways to make extra money. While I have some new ventures going, I wanted to focus on one that has been true to me over the years—my own cards!

Yes, I’m talking about glossy colorful postcards you can mail to a friend, just like the kind you buy in stores.

The idea came to me when I was on my porch thinking about my young son who had recently died. He was only four. Will people remember him in five years? Suddenly, through the autumn leaves and night sky, this verse came to me: “Who will remember those who no longer sing on earth? We, who hear their songs from Heaven.” I liked the verse and wrote it down. Next, came the interest in putting the sentiment into a card. I had a friend who had a whole line of cards on her website and so asked her for some advice.

Coming up with a line of cards to sell both online and during events is a way to generate income as well as add to your creative outlet. Here are five tips for getting started, motivated, and selling.

First you need to come up with a passionate plan. In addition to what you are passionate about (horses, roses or fishing), consider the market out there and potential buyers. Will your cards hold only photos on the front or will you add a short sentiment? Will they be note cards or postcards? Will you sell them with envelopes?


Spend time creating at a card website. I found that Vistaprint—http://www.vistaprint.com—is a great printer to use, offering quality merchandise. They often have specials and their customer service is wonderful.

Don’t rush this process of creating the best card you can. Be sure to spell all your words correctly. Do you want to use the stock photos at the printer’s website or do you want to upload your own pictures? A woman I met at a craft fair where I was selling my novels and cards had a line of folded note cards, each one with a different photo she’d taken in Ireland. There were quaint village pictures as well as those of nature. If you are an avid photographer, think of offering a line of cards with your own photos. Come up with some encouraging verses or a short poem, too.


Order a small amount at first. Make sure the name of your company or your name and website are printed on the back side of the card. Once the cards arrive in your mailbox, check them over. Make any necessary changes for your future orders.


Put on your business hat and set up a website. If you already have a personal website, you could add a page for your cards as I did. Decide the price of your cards (charge enough to make a reasonable profit) and which methods of payment to accept. I used PayPal or ask that a check be sent to my post office box. Will you give a discount if customers order in bulk? Bereavement organizations across the country get discounts because they order two hundred or more cards at a time from me.


Advertise! No one will know about your product until you tell them. Spread the word to family, friends and others in your address book. Send out a “Just Released” email alert to all you know. Social media is a great way to share your cards with others. Promote every chance you get without over doing it and being downright obnoxious. Business cards with information about your card company, links, a phone number, etc. are handy to have, too. To promote business, give some cards away and attach ordering details. Once folks like your cards, they’ll pass the word along to others.

The sky’s the limit! Take your time to create a top-notch product, advertise it, and watch the orders come in!

© 2011 by Alice J. Wisler, reprinted from Writing for Dollars

Alice J. Wisler, author of the Southern novels Rain Song, How Sweet It Is, Hatteras Girl and A Wedding Invitation (Bethany House), lives and writes in Durham, NC. On sunny days, she places her decorative tri-fold poster board with pictures and information about her novels out by her mail box. Email her for more ways to build your sales at wisler@mindspring.com. Visit her website at http://www.alicewisler.com.

How to enter a new year with a broken heart

By Alice J. Wisler

As Dick Clark is about to countdown the hours to a new year, and friends and neighbors are chilling bottles of champagne for midnight toasts, many of us are wondering just what will be so happy about 2012. We recall easier times when we laughed more and enjoyed shouting "Happy New Year!" at the strike of twelve o-clock. We long for days when we had zeal and joy. Now are hearts are broken.

What has broken your heart? Is it the recent death of a loved one? When my four-year-old Daniel died in 1997, I dreaded holidays without him. My family picture was incomplete and I knew that this life I was thrown into without him was how it was going to be from now on.

Heading into your first new year without a loved one can be daunting. You know that this new year will be void of any memories of your special beloved. A new year, yes, but no new antics from your child, mother, or sister. Only recycled memories exist now.

What can you do to get through the ending of an old year when your loved one was with you before his death, and approach another calendar year without him?

Here are twelve suggestions to help with the transition from 2011 into 2012.

1) Bring your loved one into the new year by sharing a happy memory of him with those around you.
2) Speak his name. Again and again.
3) Make a dish in your loved one's memory. If you don't cook, buy a bag of his favorite chips, crackers, or snack food.
4) Think of resolutions for the new year that you want to make for yourself.
5) Consider doing something for someone else at the beginning of the new year, something that symbolizes your loved one's life.
6) Allow yourself tears. Buy a sturdy box of Puffs Tissues.
7) Allow yourself the gift of words. Jot down words that describe your loved one. Create a few lines or a poem about him.
8) Read passages from the Bible or a book that is uplifting and nurtures your soul.
9) Light a candle and keep it burning from the end of the year into the new year.
10) Send a helium balloon into the night sky, a gesture of sending a gift up to Heaven.
11) Know that even though your heart is broken, healing can happen.
12) Look for beauty in each day. Find at least three things to be thankful for. Start with thanksgiving for the love you hold for your deceased loved one. The love is always there, nothing can take it away.

Always.

Carrying Memories

Christmas has ended, and the living room still has that unwrapped look. With the festivities now part of future memories, I anticipate the next hurdle: the start of a new year. The TV commercials romanticize champagne toasts illuminated by glowing candles. People make resolutions, hopeful that this brand-new unblemished year will be the one that fuels their successes.

For the parent who has lost a child to death, a new year can be daunting. The first New Year’s Day after my son Daniel’s death was scary. I wanted to hold onto 1997. Although it was the year he’d lost his battle with cancer and died, it was also the year he’d lived. 1998 would mark the first calendar year without him.

For some reason, the image of an old-fashioned wooden bucket came to me. With this item, I heard the word carry. That’s it, my newly-bereaved mind said. The key with a new year is to carry the old into it.

So here we are, on the brink of another year, a new decade, with fresh hopes and dreams. A clean slate. There are many things about 2009 I wish to forgive and forget, but I don’t want to ever forget my son.

Each year marks a year further from when I last held him, heard his voice, and saw his smile. I yearn to hug him, tell him how much he’s grown, and ask him what he’d like for dinner. My heart feels that distinct hollowness and sorrow that belongs to a mother without her child.

But the bucket I have isn’t hollow. It is brimming with memories and fondness, warmed with love and laughter; I hold it tightly.

Just as I carried Daniel’s four-year-old memories into 1998, now — fourteen years later — I will continue to carry them. And I will do more than just hold them, I’ll let them trickle out, forming their own glow, as I share this special boy with my world. “Wasn’t it funny when Daniel called adults redults? Do you remember how he gave stickers away in the hospital, and once when bored made a collage out of baby lotion and glitter?”

Daniel lived, he loved, and I believe he continues to live in Heaven.

So, get yourself a sturdy bucket and carry. Boldly carry the memories into the new year. Along the way, give yourself permission to forgive. Let the memories you recall be the brightest ones.

Listen. There is nothing to fear. Listen. Your child’s voice can be heard in your heart.

How the Cemetery Became a Place of Peace

There’s the joke about the cemetery. “How many people are dead in there?” The answer: “All of them.” Or, “People are dying to get in there.” It brought a smile to my lips the first time a ten-year-old told me. But after my son died, I was wondering why there are so many jokes about death and being dead. “We joke about what we fear,” Daniel’s pediatric oncologist at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hospital told me.

Well, I don’t fear the cemetery anymore. The movies and TV shows, especially around Halloween, like to depict the graveyard as a scary place with ghosts and goblins. For me, the graveyard is a place of peace. My children have named the one where four-year-old Daniel is buried Daniel’s Place. On cool autumn mornings I like to take a steaming cup of coffee and blanket and visit Daniel’s Place. Beside his marker I have created many poems about longing, laughter, memories, and hope. Beside his marker I have seen life through a misty, but realistic pair of eyes.

On his death date and birth date, we send up colorful helium balloons with attached messages. Often we add stickers of animated characters that he liked. We’ve eaten sweet slices of watermelon, spit the seeds as he used to, had picnics and played softball – all at the cemetery. For a few years after Daniel’s death, his father would go to Daniel’s Place every week to reflect while smoking a cigar. The cemetery is a part of our lives now. We’ve yet to see a goblin.

I travel to other places of rest. In New Bern, North Carolina, we took a trolley tour of the city and one of the stops was the cemetery. The stories of the Union and Confederate soldiers told by our guide were fascinating. But the words on the tombstones of children were what I remember the most. They used to write on the infant graves the exact age of the child who died – “Jeremy Hawthorne, infant son of Zachary and Millie Hawthorne, nine months, two weeks and three days old.”

In the nearby town of Hillsborough, my family and I took a walk through The Old Town Cemetery, by the Presbyterian Church. The city has deemed this place, constructed in 1757, a historical site. I’m sure one of the reasons is because fame has been buried here: the body of William Hooper, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

While that impresses me, I am more taken with the engraving on the creamy white tomb of a young woman. Someone chose to inscribe the following thoughtful words and within the whole cemetery there is no sentiment that compares:

Sacred to the memory of Mary Shaw
24 years
March 9, 1840
She needs no formal record of her virtues on this cold marble. They are deeply graven on the tablets of many warm and loving hearts, in which her memory is tenderly and sacredly cherished.

I wonder what kind of friend, parent or spouse this Mary was. Truly many must have loved her, been devoted to her, and agonized over her early death.

Beauty is written within the walls of cemeteries for beauty was lived on this earth. Graveyards are places of remembrances, love and warmth. Cemeteries are not scary… …unless we fear what others will say about us and place on our stones when we are six feet under – perhaps there lies the anxiety. Will I be remembered lovingly? Will anyone miss me? Will friends and family sacredly cherish who I was to them? What legacy have I left behind?

While no one has been perfect and surely we leave behind those who may not have understood why we did the things we did like own a pit bull or hang our laundry out to dry at 2 a.m., hopefully we aren’t so far despised that one would choose to have inscribed on our tomb the words on the grave of Gussie of Ocanto, Wisconsin: Here lies the body of a girl who died, Nobody mourned and nobody cried. How she lived and how she fared, Nobody knew and nobody cared.

We all get one chance here on this terrestrial ball. Cemeteries speak of that loudly, yet solemnly. Near Daniel’s stone is one of an infant who died only days after he was born. What kind of life did he have? What kind of impact? His epitaph proclaims for all who learn from the words on tombs – in this generation and for those that follow – “We’re so glad you came.” I imagine his parents devastated over the brevity of their son’s life and yet, at the same time, delighted to have known him.

I prefer to take my coffee to the cemeteries. I do learn from the dead. Gone are my days of being ruled by fear and trying to laugh the inevitable off. At the cemeteries I learn how I can best live with each day I am given. Now.

[Written by Alice J. Wisler in 2000]

Surviving the Holidays After the Death of a Child

That holiday-pang hit my stomach the first October after Daniel died. Greeting me at an arts and craft shop were gold and silver stockings, a Christmas tree draped with turquoise balls and a wreath of pinecones and red berries. What was this? And was “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” playing as well? It was only October.

I had anticipated that Christmas and the holidays would be tough. In fact, I’d wake on those cold mornings after Daniel died in February and be grateful that it was still months until his August birthday and even more months until Christmas. I dreaded living both without him. I would have preferred to have been steeped in cow manure. At least then I could take a hot bath with sweet smelling bubbles and be rid of the stench. But bereavement isn’t that way. As those who had gone on before let me know, you have to live through it.

Christmas came. I did live through it. It continues to happen as do the other significant days of the calendar year. Daniel never arrives at any of them although his memory lives on. By incorporating him into these days of festivity, I can cope.

Some of you have your child’s birthday and/or anniversary day within the November through January season. These days, in addition to the holidays everyone else is celebrating, make the season even more complicated and painful, I’m sure.

I offer eleven tips I’ve used to survive the holidays. Some are my own suggestions and some are borrowed from the many who walk the path of grief.

1. Know you will survive. Others have done it and you will, too. Keep in mind that your first Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day will not be easy.

2. Find at least one person you can talk to or meet with during the holiday season. Perhaps this person has gone through a few Thanksgivings and Christmases before and can give you some helpful ideas that have worked for her.

3. Things will be different this holiday season and perhaps for all the rest to come. Don’t think you have to do the “traditional” activities of years past when your child was alive. Your energy level is low. If no one in your household minds, skip putting up the tree. Forget spending hours making your holiday cookies.

4. Spend the holidays with those who will let you talk about your child. You will need to have the freedom to say your child’s name and recall memories, if you choose to do so. Your stories about your child are wonderful legacies. Tell them boldly again and again.

5. If going into the mall or stores brings too much pain, shop for gifts online or through mail-order catalogs. Thinking everyone is happily shopping at the malls with intact lives while your heart is crushed is terribly tough. Go easy on yourself.

6. Getting away from the house is an idea that worked for my family. The first Christmas without Daniel we went to a nearby town and lived in the Embassy Suites. The kids enjoyed the indoor pool and breakfast buffets. Christmases that followed were spent at a rented cottage on the shore and the Christmas we rented the beach house, we were able to invite extended family to join us. We all shared in the cooking.

7. Create something to give to those who have helped you throughout the year. I made some very simple tree ornaments with “In Memory of Daniel” stamped on them and gave them to friends that first Christmas.

8. Decorate the grave. Put up a plastic Christmas tree with lights. Sometimes being busy with decorating the grave gives a feeling of doing something for a child we can no longer hold.

9. Do something in memory of your child. Donate to a charity or fund in his memory. Volunteer. My oldest daughter Rachel and I volunteer at the Hospice Tree of Remembrance each December and share memories of Daniel as we spend this time together.

10. If your bereavement support group has a special candle-lighting service to remember the children in your area who have died, attend it. Doing something in memory of your child with others who understand the pain these holidays hold can be therapeutic.

11. Spend time reflecting on what the season is about. Everyone around you may be frantic with attending parties, services, shopping and visiting relatives. Perhaps you used to be the same way. Now you may want to avoid some of the festivities. Give yourself permission to excuse yourself from them. Light a candle in your favorite scent. Record some thoughts in a journal. This is great therapy, too.

One day you will wake up and it will be January 2. The holidays will have ended. You will have made it. If you are like me, you will find that surviving the tinsel has made you stronger and although you may cry, somewhere within you, you will feel that core of new steel.

[Written by Alice J. Wisler in 2000]

One Brave Cookie

By Alice J. Wisler

In 1996 we had tickets for a three-week trip to Japan. As I packed for our trip, excitement filled me. I couldn’t wait to experience the reactions of my three kids as we flew to Japan where I grew up as a missionary kid. My picnic-plaid journal would record their words and their vacation memories.

My husband and I hoped three-year-old Daniel would be fully recovered from his surgery and back to his energetic self by the date of our June departure. It sure looked promising because the night of his surgery he did cartwheels in our grassy lawn, laughing with friends who stopped by to check in on him.

Right before Memorial Day when people were getting their coolers stocked for picnics, the pediatrician called with news. The lump on Daniel’s neck was not Cat Scratch Fever or TB as earlier presumed. The surgery from the previous day showed that my son had a mass that consisted of small round blue cells.

That weekend I became familiar with a childhood cancer called Neuroblastoma. At UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, NC, Daniel had another surgery, a Broviac catheter inserted through his body—into the right side of his neck and out his back— and the start of his first round of chemotherapy. The catheter was the line used to dispense his chemo. Nurses taught us how to flush the line, clean the area of skin it was near, and tape the catheter to his back for safety purposes. We also learned the names of chemo drugs and found out that the narrow cot placed alongside Daniel’s bed was not as comfortable as it looked. It didn’t really matter; hospitals are not known for places of rest, regardless of the type of bed provided.

Daniel’s prognosis looked good—for a kid with cancer. Over the months of week-long hospital stays, the tumor responded to the harsh medications. He lost his hair, he hated being bald. He made friends with the oncologists and nurses, teasing and laughing with them. He threw up and felt weak and tried to be brave. I recorded each day in my picnic-plaid journal.

In the hospital chapel he asked God to heal him. “Please God, take away my boo-boo.” He liked to hear how people around the world were praying for his health.

But on a balmy day in January after his chemo and radiation treatments ended, he felt weak. I took him to a scheduled check-up at the oncology clinic.

At nine his blood pressure was fine, but there was some concern about his blood counts. His hematocrit was dangerously low. The nurse was ready to take another blood sample to test again when Daniel complained of not being able to breathe. “I just wanna go home,” he told me. The doctor was called in; no pulse could be found.

Daniel was wheeled to the ER. He coded once he arrived, was resuscitated, and coded again. A staph infection was discovered to be the culprit.

Daniel lived on the ventilator in the PICU for five days. When the EEG showed he had no brain activity except for voluntary, I asked for another. But the second results matched the first, so we removed him from the ventilator, saying our good-byes. Yet Daniel’s heart and lungs continued to function.

Since the staff in the PICU could do nothing more for him, his oncologist asked that we consider moving him to a room on the cancer ward. “We want to take care of him and of you,” he said. “Daniel is our patient. We remember when he walked down the corridors swinging off his infusion pole.” I looked at my son, a calm figure with his eyes shut, morphine pumping into him. Surely, God would provide a miracle and Daniel would wake from his comatose state and jump on the bed as he had before.

When Daniel breathed his last in my arms on a cold night at the beginning of February, I was six months pregnant. My baby within kicked with life as my bloated and compromised child ceased to move.

I felt abandoned by God. I didn’t care to live. During the next days, I didn’t want another casserole or vase of flowers brought to my front door. I wanted my son back in my arms—a chance for him to live life outside hospital walls with a new crop of hair as he played with his siblings.

Instead, I would have to learn to survive his death. It would mold me, push me, shape me, and change me. I would feel God’s presence again. In time, I would walk with a new faith, one harbored within a broken heart.

Under the Mesquite: A review

Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall is a small book with a large dose of beauty and poignancy.

Written in a poetic style, Guadalupe takes us through her family life in Mexico and Texas as she deals with a horrifying truth: Her mother has cancer.

I could relate to the foreign feelings Guadalupe has as she skirts between her birth land of Mexico and the less familiar United States to where her large family relocates. I grew up as a missionary kid in Japan, and had to straddle two countries and two cultures---the land of my citizenship (USA) and the land of my childhood memories (Japan). I also know the anguish of a loved one diagnosed with cancer. My son Daniel was three when the malignant tumor was found in his neck.

Of course, I love words that wrap around my heart. And this novel has many scenarios that speak to me, particularly the ones that deal with the emotions Guadalupe experiences from the demise of her mother's health.

"Tears run down my cheeks without my permission,leaving hot trails on my face like rivulets of melting wax from a candle burned much too long. But I don't want to hide my feelings anymore. I'm tired of acting, tired of pretending that everything's all right when it's not."

"Our bare feet cold on the old linoleum, we huddle and cry together, fingers, hands, and arms all intertwined. We are tangled up like three rambling rose vines yet torn apart inside. . . . We know Mami's gone."

Guadalupe's world crumbles when her precious Mami breathes her last, but her wise father encourages her to visit his mother in Mexico for a change of scenery. Reluctantly, Guadalupe goes. Under a mesquite tree, she pens ". . . a whole new batch of poems, poems filled with memories and hope, because that's what Mami would've wanted."

Although Under the Mesquite is slated for young adults, I feel it's a captivating read for adults of any age. Guadalupe finds comfort in writing, something that has always come easily for her. As an advocate for writing from pain and loss, I applaud her for using pen and paper to bring inner healing.

Do yourself a favor and absorb this story of a teen's world and how she grieves her mother's death and manages, somehow, like many of us, to embrace the strength to carry on.

Order from Amazon or from Lee and Low Books.

~ Alice J. Wisler
[I received a copy of Under the Mesquite from the publisher in return for my honest review.]