Forty-four years ago today, my mother drew her last breath.

She wasn’t feeling well and had gone to the doctor, but no one dreamed that she was about to step into eternity. She was only 52.

I was preparing to begin my sophomore year of college, a know-it-all 19-year-old. My sister was barely 13. When Mom gasped and her chest fell still, we were unable to revive her.

“Your mother’s heart stopped,” the doctor said quietly after he examined her.

It was a gentle way to describe a sudden and devastating death that would  shape our lives in countless and profound ways. In a heartbeat, everything changed forever.

This anniversary, always painful, carries an added sting as I mourn the deaths of two journalists in Virginia who were gunned down on live TV this morning as they worked a routine feature story.

The gunman, a self-described “powder keg” who had workplace issues with the two victims, took his own life after writing about the killings on Twitter and posting cellphone video on Facebook. Could anything trivialize human life more than this?

I grieve for Alison Parker and Adam Ward.

I grieve for their loved ones whose lives changed forever on Aug. 26.

I grieve for us all.

(Posted Aug. 26, not 27)

I’ve been slack about updating lately, but not for lack of things to write about. A slew of amazing “God moments” give me much to ponder and be thankful for:

I was a mess of tears when I went for my July color and cut, just lonely, tired and bitchy. My hairdresser, Eric, said he didn’t know what to say except to recommend I check out something called “Grief Share.” What a blessing this has been!

Grief Share is a Christian-based program that has helped me through some rough patches and is drawing me closer to God.

What’s said in our widows’ support group is expected to stay there. But I think it’s safe to disclose that sharing stories with women who also are going through (or have survived) the difficult first year of loss has been a comfort. Each week brings a new idea or two or three that helps. And, hopefully, something I say buoys someone else.

I would not have known about Grief Share without Eric, and I would never have met Eric without God steering me to his off-the-beaten-path salon more than a decade ago.

When I retired in May, I also asked God to help me get going as a freelance writer and editor. He has more than blessed this venture. Since early June, I’ve reported and written a bunch of stories (and enjoyed every minute of it). One piece wound up as a full-blown magazine article that brought in more than 10 times what the original assignment was to have paid! This can only be God’s provision.

Another sign of God’s provision: Since June, I have received three generous and unsolicited assignment offers (two on a single day last week!), including a referral from a former publisher to a novelist seeking an editor for her manuscript. I have decided to follow my heart and take the assignments that make it sing.

One assignment that makes my heart sing is filling in for vacationing editors at a news service run by a longtime mentor. Since the late 1980s, Jeff has never failed to boost my career, and he has come through yet again. When the summer editing bounty slows this fall, I look forward to writing for him, as well.

And so it goes. I am learning that even in hours of deepest grief, there are smiles and successes to be found, and that with God’s help, I will survive.