Grieving After Caregiving: After Death of Her Parents, Daughter Finds Healing Through Puzzling
Growing up in her Northwest Washington, DC, neighborhood, Tisha Lewis’s mother would often call her a Daddy’s girl.
“I was always hanging on to his leg or standing on his feet as he walked,” she recalled fondly in a recent interview. “Even as an adult, up until his passing, he would still greet me with, “Hey Sugar’”.
But as she grew up through her teen rebellion stages, went away to college and ultimately earned a doctorate degree in reading, she grew extraordinarily close to her mother. “She became my very best friend and my confidant…She was so much closer to me than any other woman that she was the matron of honor at my wedding.”
Actually, the loving relationship she had with both of her parents – Mr. and Mrs. Thomas “Tom” and Lucille Lewis - was what any adult daughter would want and admire. That loving relationship is why Dr. Tisha Y. Lewis Ellison, Ph.D. (Tisha) was shattered when her mother, a healthy woman who was the faithful primary caregiver to her sickly father, broke the news to her that she had been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.
Mrs. Lewis had nursed her husband through three bouts of cancer among other illnesses. “Dad had always had health challenges. He was always going to the doctor. And Mom was always by his side,” Tisha recalls.
So, because of her mother’s terminal illness, the next two years were harrowing. Especially heart-rending was when Tisha decided to take a leave of absence from her tenured professorship at the University of Georgia to become a caregiver to both of her parents at the same time.
“They were both admitted to home hospice care in Oct. 2019. I remember that dreaded day when my family removed their king-sized bed so that they could put in two hospital beds. That was so devastating and traumatic. This was going to be our new normal.”
Despite round the clock help from professional caregivers, her aunts and her older brother, Patrick (Issa), Tisha wanted to be sure her parents were getting the very best care. They had also designated her as their power of attorney. Before taking the leave of absence, “I would go back and forth between DC and Atlanta. It was just incredibly difficult.”
With Tisha by her side, Mrs. Lewis died on Nov. 20, 2019, within a year of being diagnosed with the colon cancer. Her father died from artery blockage and Alzheimer’s dementia only 15 months later. They had been married 50 years.
Meanwhile, the community, their church family, loved ones and friends rallied around this couple, known widely for their monumental public service. Mr. Lewis, a retired D.C. police officer, social worker and ordained minister, was founder of The Fishing School, a now 34-year-old non-profit after school program in Northeast D.C., that teaches underserved children how to excel through education. Mrs. Lewis was a seamstress and tailor, who for 29 years ran her tailor shop, Japats, on D.C.’s Georgia Avenue. From her business, Mrs. Lewis contributed the first $1,000 toward her husband’s renovation of a former crack house to start his dream, The Fishing School. The program received a visit and commendations from President George W. Bush in 2001.
It is a painful story that has slowly culminated into an unexpected blessing to Tisha and to anyone grieving after caregiving.
She had purchased a 1,000 piece puzzle during the Covid-19 pandemic. Someone had told her how calming it was and the puzzle business was thriving across the nation because of the national quarantine.
“It helped me to relax. It helped me to focus. I wasn’t thinking about my parents and sometimes I did. Sometimes I cried on those puzzle pieces. I always said if these puzzle pieces could talk, the things that they would say…I would have my hot tea and sometimes I would listen to music while I was puzzling. And sometimes it would be quiet. It just made me feel calm, peaceful.”
That particular puzzle was of a Black woman with a wrap around her head, similar to Nefertiti. Then, one evening, while watching a TV show about entrepreneurship, she began to think of her hobby as a self-taught landscape photographer and all of the pictures she’d taken in her travels.
“And then I thought, I will use the pictures from my landscape photography. I will generate them into puzzles and I will sell them.” With that epiphany, Perfect Peace Puzzles was born. She began selling – not only her landscape photos – but even custom-made puzzles from any submitted photo, even pictures of loved ones who have passed away.
Tisha participated in a Griefshare online group for over two years and received counseling from a private therapist. But it’s been largely her Christian faith and the puzzles that’s comforted her best during her personal and private time, she said.
Grief is inevitable when loved ones pass away. But there are ways to maintain good mental health while going through it. Caregiving experts offer a string of from trauma and grief. They include, expect a range of emotions, be patient with yourself, find a good listener, and don’t blame yourself.
Tisha cautions that, based on her experience, grief therapy is often an ongoing self-care activity, one that may need to be revisited during anniversaries of the death, birthdays, and during family holidays, for example, or even during deaths of other loved ones.
In fact, just as she had made significant progress two years following her parents’ death; she was hit with yet another unexpected tragedy. Her brother, Patrick (Issa), who lived in the home with her parents, died suddenly of a stroke in September of 2023 at the age of 54.
Patrick’s death led her to return to Griefshare even as she continued the puzzling. His death reminded her of the death of her eldest brother, Jason, from colon cancer in 2015 at the age of 47.
Ironically, Tisha came to the end of the Nefertiti puzzle only to discover that the very last piece did not fit. So, it still sits, with a hole in it, a missing piece, just like the empty place left in her life by her deceased loved ones, an empty space she now fills by serving others.
"I have recently accepted a position on the board of my father's Fishing School," she said. "It's somewhat healing to continue my parents' beautiful legacy of community service. Through Perfect Peace Puzzles, we've offered free Grief and Loss webinars and plan to hold one on November 8th. Additionally, by being transparent and vulnerable with my students about grief, loss, and self-care, they have shared their own personal struggles with me, which has enabled me to better serve them pedagogically. In becoming more aware of these feelings and experiences of grief and loss, I’ve also discovered sprinkles of joy – knowing that life continues as I care for my family.”
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