Life After Loss:
Dealing...Feeling...Healing
C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed. HarCol, 1994, 1961.
[242.4 Lewis]
“There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don't really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man's life. I was happy before I ever met H. I've plenty of what are called "resources." People get over these things. Come, I shan't do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden job of red-hot memory and all this "commonsense" vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.”
58-year-old author and Oxford Don, C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, etc.), was a confirmed bachelor when in 1956, married Helen Joy Davidman, an American poet with two small children. After four brief, intensely happy years, Lewis found himself alone again, and inconsolable. To defend himself against the loss of belief in God many feel in times of great loss, Lewis wrote this journal in which he confesses his doubts, his rage, and his awareness of human frailty. In it he finds again the way back to life.
Cindy Adams
The Gift of Jazzy. St. Martin’s, 2003.
[070.444 Adams]
“For too long I had known only an ailing, aging spouse…I could not have been less prepared for what happened that day. I wasn’t used to any live thing growing in my house. No kids, no plants, no dogs. Definitely not some squirming, squiggling, squwaling Yorkie who weighed two pounds, two ounces, and was the size of a rat’s ass.”
After New York Post columnist Adams lost her beloved husband Joey after a long illness, finding a new companion was the last thing on her mind. But one day, a little Yorkshire terrier named Jazzy arrived unannounced into her life and gave her a new leash on life, allowing her to redirect her love and find a new path to happiness. By the same author: Living a Dog’s Life: Jazzy, Juicy, and Me (2006).
Ann Hood
Comfort : A Journey through Grief. Norton, 2008.
[155.9 Hood]
“Time heals. She is in a better place. She is still with you. You should walk every day; you should write this down; you should go to church, to therapy, to the cemetery. These things will help you. There is a heaven and you will see her again…”
In 2002, author (The Knitting Circle) Ann Hood's five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep throat. In this moving memoir she documents her family's journey of grief. Unable concentrate on her work, it was only after a friend suggested she learn to knit that Hood was able to think of something else besides her crushing loss. Her family’s recovery culminates in an unexpected and joyous way.
Melody Beattie
Lessons of Love: Rediscovering Our Passion for Life when it All Seems Too Hard to Take. HarperSF, 1994.
[158.1 Beattie]
“I go home, lie down, and wonder where people go when they die. I am about to learn. Two years later, I realize that it isn’t my son Shane who needs raising from the dead, as Jesus raised Lazarus. By then I will conclude that Shane is safe on the other side. It’s me that needs resurrection.”
After the death of her son Shane in a skiing accident in 1991, Beattie, the author of Codependent No More found herself unable to work for two years. But with the help of family, friends and her own inner resources, she was finally able to put her life back together. In a series of reflective essays, she shares her methods of finding both the true joy in life and a passion for living during times of tragedy and despair. By the same author: The Grief Club: The Secret to Getting through All Kinds of Change (2006).
Anne Roiphe
Epilogue : A Memoir. Harper,c2008.
[B 813.54 Roiphe R]
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life…Although the division of the two parts is not a line, a wall or a chasm. Think of grief as a river that finally runs into the ocean where it is absorbed but not dissolved, pebbles, moss, fish, twigs from the smallest upland stream run with it and finally float in the salt sea from which life emerged.”
Traces the author's sudden loss of her husband of 39 years, her experiences with the thoughts, emotion, confusion, and uncertainty of widowhood, of trying to perform the many mundane tasks her husband always dealt (she had never had to hail a cab by herself in her life) with and get on with her life by visiting with friends, spending time with family, and going to the theater, when all she really wanted to do was stay at home and wallow in her grief. But she finds that life does go on.
Tom Crider
Give Sorrow Words. Algonquin, 1996.
[155.973 Crider]
“A person is a vast thing, much bigger than the physical body. When a person dies, so much more is gone than the form you once could photograph or touch with your hand….What is it that makes her absence so big. Everything she would have said, thought, felt, and been? All I imagine she was and would be. The effect she had on me and everyone she met. The feelings I had for her when she sat beside me and the ones that stayed with me when she left…All this, so much more than her relativity small presence, has vanished, leaving a hole in the universe, and wisps of memory.”
When Tom Crider's only child died in an apartment fire at the age of 21, he could find no answers to his questions, no solace for his grief. In order to help others in his situation, he wrote a book for those who could find no consolation in prayer or other forms of spirituality, but in the wisdom of literature, friendship, nature, and family members.
June Cerza Kolf
When Will I stop Hurting? Dealing with a Recent Death. Baker Books, 2001.
[248.866 Kolf]
“The death of a loved one is a mortal wound, difficult to grasp and impossible to understand. It is unasked for, unplanned for, and unwanted. It is one of the few human events that is beyond human control. Because of the depth of the wound, even one’s own self becomes unfamiliar. Time assumes a different meaning, and nothing that was once important matters any longer. One woman told me, ‘It may be six months since the death of my child, but to me it has been one long, ghastly day with no beginning and no end.’ The ‘ghastly days’ must somehow be survived, with little help and no past frame of reference. Grief seems to be a process that cannot be understood or explained unless one has personally experienced it.”
Kolf, a hospice worker, leads the reader through the stages of grief, explaining what to expect as time goes on and pointing out potential pitfalls such as feeling anger or guilt, dealing with holidays, and experiencing physical distress. This gentle guide lead those suffering loss through the stages of grief and eventually the healing process.
Joan Didion
The Year of Magical Thinking. Knopf, 2005.
[B 813.54 Didion D]
“This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed ideas I ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people deal and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”
Didion, whose fiction often deals with themes of loss and bereavement, writes about a terrible time in her life when fate dealt her a double blow: the near-fatal illness of her daughter and the fatal coronary of her husband of 40 years—and fellow author--John Gregory Dunne, The result is an intensely personal yet universal experience of love and loss.
OTHER TITLES OF INTEREST
Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, by Allison Gilbert with Christina Baker Kline. Seal, 2006. [155.937 Always]
As Much Time as it Takes : A Guide for the Bereaved, Their Family, and Friends, by Martin J. Keogh.
Hampton Roads, 2005. [155-937 Keogh]
Awakening From Grief : Finding the Way Back to Joy, by John E. Welshons. Inner Ocean, 2003. [155.937 Welshons]
A Decembered Grief: Living with Loss While Others are Celebrating, by Harold Ivan Smith. Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1999. [248.866 Smith]
Grief Dreams: How They Heal Us After the death of a Loved One, by T.J. Wray and Ann Back Price. Jossey-Bass, 2005. [154.632 Wray]
A Grief Like No Other: Surviving the Violent Death of Someone You Love, by Kathleen O'Hara. Marlowe, 2006. [155.937 O’Hara]
The Grief Recovery handbook: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and other Losses Including Health, Career, and Faith, by John W. James and Russell Friedman. Collins, 2009. [155.93 James]
Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss, by Sameet M. Kumar. New Harbinger, 2005. [155.937 Kumar]
Happy at Last: The Thinking Person's Guide to Finding Joy, by Richard O'Connor. St. Martin's, 2008. [158 Oconnor]
Healing Grief: Reclaiming Life after any Loss, by James Van Praagh. Dutton, 2000. [155.937 Van Praagh]
Healing Your Holiday Grief : 100 Practical Ideas for Blending Mourning and Celebration during the Holiday Season, by Alan D. Wolfelt. Campanion Press, 2005. [155.937 Wolfelt] By the same author: Living in the Shadow of the Ghosts of Grief : Step into the Light (2007).
Life After Loss: Conquering Greif and Finding Hope, by Raymond A. Moody. HarperSF, 2001. [155.973 Moody]
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Warner, 1995. [158.12 Ban]
Unattended Sorrow: Recovering from Loss and Reviving the Heart, by Stephen Levine. Rodale,c2005. [155.937 Levine]
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