Susan, your host, welcomes Kevin O’Connor to today’s episode. Kevin published Two Floors Above Grief in 2022; his prior writings include personal letters, dissertations, articles, and anthologies, and he provides training at universities and professional settings. Kevin resides in Fort Lauderdale with his husband, Leon, and their family includes five sons and seven granddaughters.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Kevin shares his grief story, which started when he lost his father.

• Kevin’s family worked as an undertaker at a funeral home, but that didn’t make it any easier to process his father’s death (even in some way might have made it harder).

• Kevin shares the last conversation he had with his father.

• People often have conversations with those who have passed.

• You figure out your life without the one you lost; it’s like losing a limb in an accident, you will never forget about it, and you will learn to live differently.

• There is always a choice (even when it feels there isn’t any).

• Kevin advises embracing each feeling and making space for the following.

• Kevin shares what motivated him to write Two Floors Above Grief.

• The value of communication today is certainly different from 50 years ago.

• Life and death go on simultaneously.

• Share your stories, there are treasures in them; you don’t have to be an author to transmit them.

• Remember that sometimes what seems like the end is also a beginning.

 

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

 

Meet

Two Floors Above Grief: A Memoir of Two Families in the Unique Place We Called Home, by Kevin O’Connor

Visit Kevin’s Website

Check Kevin’s more recent newsletter