DAN HOFFMAN: Grief can break your heart. Here’s how to keep it from breaking your life

In an opinion piece, Dan Hoffman reflects on how his family has lived with grief after his wife Kim died of cancer, and draws on the short film “White Room” to argue that sorrow need not prevent people from continuing with life. The story matters because it presents resilience as making room for grief while choosing meaningful ways to honour those who have died.

The film follows Reese, who has avoided confronting the death of his sister Joy; it is based on director JT Rees’s experience of losing his sister Jessie to brain cancer when he was nine. Hoffman says his sons were eight and 11 when their mother died, and that they kept up school, swimming and time with friends, with support including a service dog and art therapy. He also recalls returning to work after a colleague was killed overseas, while continuing to remember him.