Dying Loss Grief

This helpful and encouraging resource offers support for everyone accompanying someone at the end of life - from the moment we first learn that someone is dying through the time of death and beyond. Kirsten DeLeo shares down-to-earth advice and offers simple practices to help us handle our emotions, deal with difficult relationships, talk about what matters, listen fully, practice self-care, and work through challenging situations with presence and grace.

With sensitivity and insight, this series offers suggestions for healing activities that can help survivors learn to express their grief and mourn naturally. Acknowledging that death is a painful, ongoing part of life, they explain how people need to slow down, turn inward, embrace their feelings of loss, and seek and accept support when a loved one dies. Each book, geared for mourning adults, teens, or children, provides ideas and action-oriented tips that teach the basic principles of grief and healing.

Hailed by Glennon Doyle as 'the Christian Joan Didion', Kate Bowler was 35 when she was diagnosed with stage-IV colon cancer. Before she got sick, she'd accepted the modern idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities, a series of choices that if made correctly would lead to a rewarding existence. But now she has to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: how do we create meaning in our lives as we race against the clock?

Yvonne Caputo is no stranger to death. Before she was thirty, she could list seventeen family members and friends who had passed away. Among them were her uncle Claude and his son Jimmy, both dead by suicide; her cousin Alan, murdered in Central Park; and her brother Mark, killed in a car accident. Each of these deaths left her with many questions, the most important of which was: Why don’t we talk about the end of life before the end of life?

Vanessa's husband, Paul, dies suddenly and tragically on their regular Sunday morning swim. How will she cope with her dilapidated house, her teenage children, the patients who depend on her? Will therapy help? Why do mysterious white feathers start appearing in unexpected places? Beautifully written and honestly relayed, Vanessa uses her professional skills to explore the many questions posed by unanticipated death and to try to find a way forwards.

A stunning blend of the personal and professional, The Archaeology of Loss is Sarah Tarlow’s first memoir. An accomplished archaeologist, much of Sarah’s work is concerned with the ritual and belief behind the practice of grief. In 2012, she was awarded the Chair in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. But in the years that followed this appointment, Sarah’s husband, Mark, would begin to suffer from a progressive but undiagnosed illness, finally resulting in his inability to drive, to walk, to taste or to care for himself.

Mourning: The Day After Loss offers practical advice and insight into the process of coping with grief and bereavement based on extensive experience and research. It leads the listener on a journey through the various stages of bereavement - from the death notification to the formal days of mourning, the burial, and the weeks and months following.

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head-on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death by investigating Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Mayan temples, Colorado cremation pyres, Day of the Dead celebrations, Maori settlements, and tourist-destination graveyards.

A gentle guide for end-of-life care aimed at families and caregivers. Caring for the Dying describes a whole new way to approach death and dying. It explores how the dying and their families can bring deep meaning and great comfort to the care given at the end of a life. Created by Henry Fersko-Weiss, the end-of-life doula model is adapted from the work of birth doulas and helps the dying to find meaning in their life, express that meaning in powerful and beautiful legacies, and plan for the final days.

Mary Artino is a medical social worker with a 15-year career in hospice. She feels that loss is a subject that isn't addressed often enough in American culture and that much more can be done to begin teaching children about loss and death. This book is a collection of short stories that begins with her own experiences with death and loss within her family. The author believes that death is one of our most profound teachers. In writing Lessons on Loss Not Taught, Mary hopes to demystify the end-of-life experience, making it less foreboding and more relatable.

When a brother or sister dies, surviving siblings often receive little support or recognition of their pain. But their grief is real, and there is a way to recover from it. Through intimate, true stories and interviews with brothers and sisters who have lost a sibling, expert on grief Katherine Fair Donnelly provides valuable insight on how to survive this traumatic experience.

Sharing personal stories, Nancy offers guidance on advance care planning, grieving, and forgiveness as well as green burial. Through her own close encounters with the specter of death, the author shows how to follow the ancient wisdom of "learning to die before you die" and find a seaworthy passage to the far shore.

Rachel Wilson’s mother died when Rachel was in her twenties. It felt like the definitive end of childhood, a loss that rewired her perspective on life, death, relationships and who she was as a person. In this book, Rachel brings together other stories of bereavement with her own, encountering people who have lost parents, siblings, partners and friends at a young age. Losing Young draws on psychological research, interviews with titans like Julia Samuel and explorations of grief in history.

Wendy Mitchell doesn’t fear anything anymore. After her diagnosis of young-onset dementia in 2014, all of Wendy’s old fears melted away. What more was there to be afraid of when she faced her worst fear: losing her own mind? While living with her diagnosis and facing the extreme changes that come along with a terminal illness, Wendy wrote two Sunday Times-bestselling books, went skydiving for the first time and supports multiple dementia advocacy groups in the UK. She is known for talking about living with dementia, but now – while she is still able to – she explores dying with it.

Katie Woo's dog, Goldie, was very old. Goldie became sick and died. Katie will miss her friend. She is glad that she has lots of happy memories of Goldie.

After a near fatal stroke in 1995, Robert McCrum has gained an intimate understanding of his own mortality. Twenty-two years on, his friends have joined him in experiencing Prospero's 'every third thought' of death as a dominating theme of life. McCrum asks: can we make peace with what Freud calls 'the necessity of dying'? Searching for answers leads him to brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients and writers for advice and wisdom.

In his mid-40s, aid worker Simon Boas was diagnosed with incurable cancer—it had been caught too late, and spread throughout his body. But he was determined to die as he had learned to live—optimistically, thinking the best of people, and prioritizing what really matters in life. The advice isn't quite “Don't buy any green bananas”—but it's close to “Don't start any long books.”

What happens to you when someone you love dies? Who was that person or animal companion in your life? Loss comes along. First it breaks your heart, then it stays. How do you live with loss without losing yourself? While loss comes along with you for life, grief doesn’t have to be forever. This book is about learning to live with loss and with joy every day.

In this novel for middle listeners, twelve-year-old Evie befriends a boy who is grieving the loss of both his parents.

Death is one thing we cannot control. We will all face the death of a loved one. And many, if not most, people in our culture will be hesitant and unprepared to say goodbye. The Good Goodbye is meant to help those who must say goodbye to a loved one who is dying. In it, listeners will discover how culture affects final conversations, and that often the last interactions may not consist of words but gestures and expressions.