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I'm sorry about your grandmothers and your brother.
"A Grief Observed" made me bawl like a baby. It's truly a wonderful book.
Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking", her response to her husband's sudden death, was helpful to me as well after my husband died; I've not read "Blue Nights", a sequel/companion book, written in response to the illness and death of her daughter two years after her husband's death.
Also, "Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief" by Martha Whitmore Hickman. I bought it when I went to our vacation condo the summer after my husband died, and I still read passages from it every night before I go to sleep.
Doug Manning has several books. I just went to hear him speak.
One thing he said that really made so much sense was an analogy of going somewhere to buy watermelons but when you get out of the car and slam your fingers in the door. You are in excruciating pain...and cannot think about anything else but that throbbing....and here is the guy bugging you to buy watermelons, ignoring how you feel. He said you have to deal with the pain first before you go on and many people don't realize that when it comes to the pain of grief.
He also talked about that people want their loved one to be remembered. A cemetery put up a monument for all the babies born who weren't named. One of the first people who saw it was a gentleman in his 70s who wanted a plaque with his baby's name on it. Pretty soon the tall monument was completely full of names....so they added a second. Now they have a whole area just for honoring those babies.
I believe Doug's books are under In-Sight Books Inc
I second A Grief Observed by Lewis. I'm a therapist and have read many, this hits home. I buy used copies and give them out, quick read and gets to the hard places unabashedly. Lewis lost his wife to cancer, he was angry. That's what I liked about it best, his languishing in the anger phase of grief, very validating.
I have been reading posts just to feel like someone else knows what this pain is like so thanks to all who post, I don't feel so alone.
A book that is so helpful to me is 'Healing After Loss' by Martha Whitmore Hickman It is a daily meditations book that has quotes and messages from writers and other notable people throughout history, like Mark Twain, Shakespear, Native Americans, Thomas Merton, etc.
for example Aug 13 entry
" ... you will not be cured but... one day--an idea that will horrify you now--this intolerable misfortune will become a blessed memory of a being who will never again leave you. But you are in a stage of unhappiness where it is impossible for you to have faith in these assurances. Marcel Proust
also a quote from Dean Koons that has been so crystalizingly clear about my grief
“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”
― Dean Koontz, Odd Hours
I have been reading posts just to feel like someone else knows what this pain is like so thanks to all who post, I don't feel so alone.
A book that is so helpful to me is 'Healing After Loss' by Martha Whitmore Hickman It is a daily meditations book that has quotes and messages from writers and other notable people throughout history, like Mark Twain, Shakespear, Native Americans, Thomas Merton, etc.
for example Aug 13 entry
" ... you will not be cured but... one day--an idea that will horrify you now--this intolerable misfortune will become a blessed memory of a being who will never again leave you. But you are in a stage of unhappiness where it is impossible for you to have faith in these assurances. Marcel Proust
also a quote from Dean Koons that has been so crystalizingly clear about my grief
“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”
― Dean Koontz, Odd Hours
Thank you Iris11, my fellow friend and brother's little girl just died Sunday at 19 and he's heading to bring her home, I have a prayer card from St Anthony but I think your idea about the book can be most helpful during this overwhelming time, you could not have posted at a better time, because we and my fellow brother's have no idea what to do or say other then just being there for him at this most tragic time.
"Grieving with the Help of your Catholic Faith" by Lorene Hanley Duquin. It's a short booklet that I found in my church's bookstore after my Mom died. I put off reading it for awhile, thinking it was going to be super-religious. A few months after she died, I went into a real funk and finally started reading the book. Found out my "delayed funk" was completely normal, as well as some of the other phases of grief that I had gone through (e.g., wanting answers on how it happened, wanting to know every detail....I later gave up on that idea because I realized it wouldn't help bring her back or make me feel any better about it). If you're not Catholic, don't let the title turn you off because the advice can be appropriate for all faiths. I've given it to a few of my friends afterward and they found it helpful as well.
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