Lauren here. I am the lawyer in our office who likes to talk about feelings, and engage people about the hard stuff that motivates them to call our office, which is often loss and grief. Why would I do that? Why would I enjoy talking about loss and hardship with strangers, other lawyers? Well, because I think loss is real, universal, and I still don’t think we talk about the hard stuff enough. Also, because I think that talking about our individual and or collective loss, our grief, often helps us heal at least a small amount. 
This morning I was reading one of my favorite authors Kate Bowler, and in her devotional – Have a Beautiful Terrible Day, she makes mention of an idea that sometimes we endure “everyday funerals” or “tiny funerals” referring to the small, daily moments of loss.
Even at the end of my work day as I write this, I am still drawn to that idea – the concept that one’s life, an experience, a loss, a trauma, isn’t summed up in one large gathering of remembrance, but maybe in unending tiny funerals that pull us back into the loss.
And the loss doesn’t have to be a death. It can be the loss of a job, health, a relationship, independence, stability.
In my personal experience with death and grief, I have moments that feel very real, very heavy in remembering my Mother’s life. These tiny funerals are triggered by the most mundane. This weekend, I made cookies in my Mother’s cookie bowl – I asked my daughter if she had many first hand memories of her grandmother – I heard a song she loved – and sat alone in a chair she once admired. In the remembering and retelling of my Mother’s love, I have experienced a million tiny funerals and the more they occur, the less they sting. Had I been counting the moments this weekend, the count would have been significant. Life itself is always one where memory pulls us into loops of doubt, joy, grief, hope.
A tiny funeral is a reminder that loss can most acutely be felt in the daily observations of living without, not just events reserved for death where black suits and dresses are worn.
And today I think of clients who have lost children and the millions of tiny funerals they endure as anniversaries approach, photographs are found, songs are replayed. What must it feel like to drive past that hospital again? Or box up the clothes your precious child once wore, or didn’t get to wear?
Not all loss is caused by medical negligence but right now I am holding past and future clients in my heart as I think about this truth – there is nothing worse than losing a child but that pain can be made more shap if the loss could have been, should have been prevented by a different course of action.
And so, why do I write about this on a law firm website? Well, because I think it is important, and it matters to our cases and our clients.
If you have endured a medical mistake that didn’t cause any profound change in your circumstances – didn’t spark a thousand tiny funerals – the legal system isn’t likely going to help you. The law is written to help those who have been upended by the injury, diagnosis, delay, or death. The law is written to help those mothers who know what it feels like to drive past the hospital, or hold the child’s onesie to their face and weep.
And while I wish no one would know this kind of pain, I consider it a rather sacred calling to walk along side my clients who turn to the legal system when the medical system has caused such harm. I consider it a gift to bear witness to those moments, those tiny funerals where loss and grief slowly – every so slowly – become less painful.
So if you have a Virginia Medical Malpractice Case – and you read this and thought – “yes, that is how it feels” – I would be honored to help you.
Lauren