Grief Science

Texas businessman Mike Fechner had it all. Money. Investments. Prestige. Until he did the unthinkable. He sold his company and poured his life's earnings into a ministry for the poor. With a strong faith in God at his core, this millionaire turned missionary envisioned a long future serving the urban Dallas poor and the people of poverty-stricken Africa.

It's time to invite death out of the closet! The impending or actual death of someone close to you can be devastating. It doesn't matter if you knew it was coming, or if it was a total shock-you'll never be the same. There is no right way to grieve, and no appropriate time frame. It's different for everyone. Author and therapist gone rogue, Becky Aud-Jennison, the creator of The Death Dialogues Project and podcast, has sewn together threads from people's shared personal stories and her own experiences.

There are plenty of self-help books for mourners, but nothing in the way of a modern, approachable and above all useful field guide for the living. And all of us - young, old, sick and well - could use the help. After all, pregnant couples have ample resources available to them as they prepare to bring a new life into the world: Lamaze courses, elaborate birth plans, tons of manuals. Why don't we have a What to Expect When You're Expecting to Die book?

Every year, some two million parents in the US suffer the death of a son or daughter. The unnatural sequence of the child's preceding the parent in death creates a wrenching loss and overwhelming emotional and spiritual disorientation. Most of these bereaved parents find relief from their isolation only in the company of others like themselves. The Grieving Garden offers support, understanding, and, ultimately, comfort and hope from those who have sowed the same tears over the death of a child.

'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, have not solved the puzzle. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is. In Lifescapes, the acclaimed biographer and obituarist Ann Wroe reflects on a career spent pursuing life: a process, as she sees it, not of chronological narration but of trying to seize souls.

A grief-stricken man travels back in time to seek revenge on the woman who murdered his girlfriend but inadvertently falls in love with her. Kane is about to marry the woman he loves. His life is perfect. A few weeks before the wedding, a vindictive woman from his girlfriend’s past mysteriously arrives and kills her. He learns of a traumatic accident that happened five years earlier, which triggers Riley’s hatred for his girlfriend. Distraught over his girlfriend’s death, Kane uses an antique time machine to travel into the past in order to find and destroy the woman responsible. When...

The Change and Odens stand on the verge of executing the most ambitious heist ever attempted within the human sector of the galaxy. Their formidable fusion of technology holds the power to shift the trajectories of hundreds of thousands of worlds, bending them to their will. As 3rd Level Marcus struggles to unravel the intricacies of this grand scheme, he must either decide to remain loyal to the Spire, the faction he once called home, or forge an uneasy alliance with the formidable adversaries known as the Sky Warriors. Complications mount when an enigmatic Oden Oiem ring plummets from the...

There’s a quiet revolution happening in the way we die. More than 1.5 million Americans a year die in hospice care - nearly 44 percent of all deaths - and a vast industry has sprung up to meet the growing demand. Once viewed as a New Age indulgence, hospice is now a $14 billion business and one of the most successful segments in health care. Changing the Way We Die, by award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel, is the first book to take a broad, penetrating look at the hospice landscape.

New York Times best-selling author Jeff Benedict has seen both good and bad in his career as a journalist. Some of the best are the extraordinary people he has met who have made deliberate choices to live happier lives despite the extreme hardship that each of them have faced. Although life will knock us down from time to time, this book is an important reminder that we all can make a choice to get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep pressing forward.

A practical guide to navigating grief and everything that comes with loss. Jeff Brazier has experienced bereavement in many forms: in his childhood; helping his two boys through the devastating death of their mother, Jade Goody; witnessing the anguish of his own mum when she lost both of her parents; and hearing the stories of his coaching clients who are coming to terms with loss. No one can be an expert on grief, but within this book Jeff provides support and guidance from someone who has been there.

What if everything you loved was just a simulation—and you chose to believe in it anyway? In the near future, after the Singularity has blurred the line between human and machine, Josiah Kim lives the perfect life: a loving wife, a brilliant daughter, a home in paradise. Until one morning, everything shatters—and he’s left with nothing but grief and a mysterious device that lets him see them again. Crafted from memory, code, and haunting precision, Prompt Theory is a mind-bending journey through loss, love, and the ethics of artificial resurrection. As Josiah grapples with reality, ...

Evelyn Amdur, a hospice social worker, began to write these stories midway through her career, collaborating with her daughter, Shelley. Many traditional cultures have a custom of "death songs", which rest on the idea that at one's last moment, one somehow sums up the essence of one's life in a phrase or a song. Woven into these stories are instructions on how to die well, not only in what spirit we face death itself, but also through instructions on what is necessary to prepare our families, to ready our estates, and to manage all the players who may be involved in our deaths.

The loss of a child is the most devastating event a parent can face. Sharing her experience about the loss of a desperately loved daughter, and the effects that go beyond what people could ever imagine, Liza Jankowski explores her deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding stillbirth in this moving memoir. As she discusses the impact on her relationships, her subsequent pregnancy and what she ultimately learned, "Changed" weaves a powerful combination of a mother's personal journey with helpful information to offer comfort, hope and understanding.

Life is hard—as the past few years have made painfully clear. From personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world, sometimes simply going on can feel too much. But could there be solace—and even hope—in acknowledging the hardships of the human condition? Might doing so free us from the tyranny of striving for our "best lives" and help us find warmth, humanity and humour in the lives we actually have? Could it inspire in us the desire for a better world? In this profound and personal book, Kieran Setiya shows how philosophy can help us find our way.

Mesmerized, at times unnerved, by his 97-year-old father's nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this exhilarating book - both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion. It's an exploration that paradoxically prompts a renewed and profound appreciation of life.

What if we didn’t consider death the worst possible outcome? What if we discussed it honestly, embraced end-of-life care and prepared for the end of our lives with hope and acceptance? In this empathetic and knowledgeable guide, TikTok star Julie McFadden – known online as ‘Hospice Nurse Julie’ – shares the valuable lessons she’s learned in her fifteen years as a palliative care nurse.

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.

Death and the treatment of the dead body loom large in our collective cultural consciousness. The authors explore the materiality and meaning of the dead body and the living's relationship to it. All the biggest questions facing the planetary human community relate in one way or another to the corpse. Surprisingly, Christian communities are largely missing in the discussion of the dead, having abdicated the historic role in care for the dead to the funeral industry.

Death is a fact of life, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. This timely collection brings together a range of voices to offer reflections on death and dying, from individual losses to large scale catastrophes. Karin Schimke revisits her troubled relationship with her late father, a Second World War survivor ‘whose brain had been broken by violence’. Madeleine Fullard, the head of South Africa’s Missing Persons Task Team, draws us into the search for activists who were ‘disappeared’ or went missing in political circumstances between 1960 and 1994.

Three enhanced audiobooks performed by the stars of the classic BBC television series. These stories are set during series one. 'Promises' by Nigel Fairs. Starring Jan Chappell as Cally and Stephen Greif as Travis. Cally is alone with Travis, Blake's mortal enemy. As they delve into the past, a long-hidden secret that links them both is revealed.