Navigating Grief Through Words: Ellie Hanhart's Powerful Essay The Choice

On June 5, 2024, EJ Hanhart’s wife, Wendy, passed away after a long battle with cancer. Over the following five months, I checked in regularly with EJ and his three children: Jules, 22; Eddie, 20; and Ellie, 17. EJ was struggling deeply with his grief. I suggested he write an essay to help process his feelings, but he kept putting it off. Then I asked if I could invite his children to write essays instead. EJ agreed.

The Hanhart Family

Ellie was the first to respond. At the time, she was a senior in high school. She wrote and submitted an essay titled The Choice as a homework assignment for her English class before sharing it with me for this project. Her words offer a raw, honest glimpse into how grief can be navigated through writing. After Ellie submitted her essay, EJ, Jules and Eddie followed suit. I will share their essays in future blog posts.

The Importance of Choice in Grief

The title The Choice reflects a central theme in Ellie’s essay: the power to choose how to respond to grief. She writes about the moments when she felt powerless, but also about the moments when she realized she could choose her attitude and actions.

Ellie Hanhart

The Choice by Ellie Hanhart

In the book The Choice, by Edith Eger, the primary themes that stood out to me were: living a life free of past trauma, grief, and how we can overcome fear by facing our pain. The theme that impacted me the most was grief.

I feel like I read this book at the perfect time in my life, the time I lost my mother. This book gave me a small piece of perspective about death, grief, and everything in between at a time when I needed it the most.

Death is a part of life, the end of your time with the people you love, but the beginning of your time with the one and only Heavenly Father. The people left behind are happy that their loved one is not in pain anymore, but it still is devastating to be the one left behind.

Everyone processes grief differently. For me personally, the realization, and learning how to live without my beautiful momma will be the most difficult to manage as I move forward with my life.

What I experienced first was shock. Getting a call from my dad that I needed to head to the hospital because my mom was not doing well was my first example of shock. Walking into the emergency room and seeing her being covered with a Bair Hugger Blanket because her body temperature was dropping so rapidly, and an oxygen mask on scared me tremendously.

There was even more shock when the doctor told my sister and I, “your mom’s body is trying to pass away.” I knew my mom was sick, but nothing could have ever prepared me for this moment. Edith Eger said, “We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.”(Edith Eger) Like that quote, I was putting good news in my mind even though I had no idea what was going to happen. I was still in shock, even as my mother’s body was being taken away by the funeral home director.

The first days following the death of my mom were flat out weird. Due to the shock, I spent the majority of my time waiting for her to walk through the door. Although I  knew that she was not going to, because she passed away, I still waited because it did not seem real. Some days, it still does not seem real, as I reach for the phone to call and ask her a question or tell her about my day, but then I remember. I think a small part of me may be in shock forever, but the majority of me knows this is in fact real. Like I said, grief is weird.

The realization did not hit me until five days later at her funeral, when I leaned down to give my mother’s cold, stiff body a kiss goodbye. That realization punched me in the gut. She looked so beautiful, and so peaceful, like she was just taking a nap and would wake up soon, though I knew it was not true.

My mother would not want me to hurt forever, and I won’t, so as Edith Eger said, “We have a choice: to pay attention to what we’ve lost or to pay attention to what we still have.”(Edith Eger) I choose to see this as a glass half full situation. While I did lose my mom, and that will be something I carry with me forever, I still have my dad, brother, sister, boyfriend, and all of my best friends who love me endlessly.

If you would have asked me at the time, I would have told you that the realization phase of grief hurt the most. That first moment of realizing that she was not ever going to walk in the door again, I could not imagine a pain worse at the time. However I now know that was not going to be the phase that hurt the worst, the worst phase is learning to live without her.

I am learning how to live an entirely different way of life, from learning how to sew a button because she’s not here to do it for me to learning how to apply for college without her help. The realization phase was hard, yes, but it was not a phase that lasts.

Learning to live without her will last forever. Edith Eger said, “Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.”(Edith Eger)

This quote inspired me to use whatever time I have left on this earth living life to the fullest. My mom would want me to keep experiencing all the joys of this beautiful life that she built for me, and that is exactly what I plan to do.

The Choice gave me insight that I truly needed this summer. This book reminded me that the things I am feeling are normal, and that it does get better. While I have the best support system that I could ever ask for, words from outside sources benefited me a lot. This book encouraged me to embrace the possible.

My favorite quote in this book is, “We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.”(Edith Eger) This is my favorite because it seemed as though my mother was speaking to me when I read it.

Mom has told me for my entire life that I was her light, that I had a sparkle so bright that it lit up every room I walked in. I choose to trust my mother, as I always have, even in her passing. I am a light. I am a sparkle, and even in my darkest times, I still managed to have that sparkle my mother always told me that I had. She always told me how much she loved my sparkle, and made me promise to never lose it. This is a promise I will keep forever.

Coming up in the next blog, I will share why people fear and struggle to talk about grief.