Joanne Williams
Editor

(Photo provided – There is no place like Rome, and no time more precious than family time. The Nowlan family, Dawn at the center, and, from left, Samuel, Shea, and Jillian, two years ago.)

 

We don’t handle grief well. Take it from someone who knows and wants to sincerely help.

Dawn Levandusky met and married the love of her life, Shea John Nowlan, a jokester, a philosopher, wine and history connoisseur, a devoted soul. They had two children, Samuel and Jillian, and at age 51, on a quiet July day, Shea died.

Dawn Nowlan, 50, owner of Nowlan Travel By Dream Vacations, volunteer, organizer, mother, wrote her “world split in two.”

The days that followed were awful and filled with people and situations to grasp and acknowledge. Dawn did more than acknowledge the words and gestures, she also began to realize something. People, even friends and regular acquaintances were acting, well “weird,” in Dawn’s words.

“After the fourth person I realized what was going on,” Dawn said, and by the ninth, she had ideas to jot down, which became “Don’t be Weird – Supporting Your Grieving Friends.”

“We don’t handle grief well in our culture,” she said, as time closes in on one year without Shea.

“There needed to be a guide to help people, and being in the middle of it… it was just the right time.”

A self-professed busy person, Dawn saw this as an opportunity to “pour herself into something.”

Dawn said, “I realized it was a book right away. It’s funny, I’ve never been a writer,” except for her senior year in high school, she said, where they needed someone to review movies in the school newspaper, and she loves movies.

This weird unease that greeted her, in the early days after Shea’s passing and still, is “a problem that needed solving,” she said.

First, Dawn tried to find a book out there to say what she had experienced, and she could not find one. It is just like her to fill a need.

So, between her own experiences and research, she wrote 160-pages and published as Professor Shea Press – her husband loved to pontificate with friends, she said, hence “Professor.”

“Grief is the receipt of good love,” Dawn said, reaching for the tissues. Folks who read this book will do the same. Everyone grieves and almost everyone does not know how to respond so such emotion.

Dawn has some pointed suggestions:

-Show up. Some people ghost grieving friends because, well, Dawn writes they may not know how to approach someone or be embarrassed about what they say or don’t say.

Bottomline (as Dawn ends with for each prophetic chapter) is show up. Be present. Acknowledge silence and tears. Say, “I am not sure what to say.” “You don’t need perfect words. You need to show up,” Dawn writes.

-Don’t just say, “Let me know if you need anything.” Be specific about what you can or will do and do it.

-And, as the title infers, “Don’t be Weird.” People don’t usually change. The world around them does, writes Dawn. Be yourself.

The book is an easy read – you can get through it in an afternoon, but the wisdom and suggestions will stay with you. It does not blame, it educates. It does not hold back; it is what it is.

Local funeral home director and owner Joe Pray writes of the book, “Dawn has done an amazing job articulating the simple things we should all know when trying to support someone through loss.”

Friend Dianna Lowry from DeWitt said, “Dawn is an incredibly strong woman,”  and knows about “being there and being present.”

Dawn will be at Cozy Corner Bookstore, 144 S. Cochran in Charlotte, on Saturday, May 30 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to sign her book and answer every weird or  awkward question.