Grief Science

Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world.

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone.

When T. J. Wray lost her 43-year-old brother, her grief was deep and enduring and, she soon discovered, not fully acknowledged. Despite the longevity of adult sibling relationships, surviving siblings are often made to feel as if their grief is somehow unwarranted. After all, when an adult sibling dies, he or she often leaves behind parents, a spouse, and even children - all of whom suffer a more socially recognized type of loss.

In The Wheel of Life, when Kübler-Ross was 71 years old and facing her own death, this world-renowned healer told the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she offered a lesson on how to live well. The Wheel of Life is an adventure of the heart - powerful, controversial, inspirational - a fitting legacy of a powerful life.

When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye toward that which makes life worth living, interfaith minister, mom, and perpetual seeker Barbara Becker recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways.

With global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.

When Kristin Meekhof lost her husband to cancer, she discovered what all widows learn: the moment you lose your partner, you must make crucial decisions that will impact the rest of your life. But where do you begin? This inspiring audiobook shows grieving widows what to expect and how to deal with the challenges of losing a life partner.

With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind. Because in Quartz Creek, there’s a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena’s ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena’s house at night, keeping watch.

Are you afraid of death? What is death? Is it the end, the beginning, or a transition? Why are we so afraid of death? After all, death is inevitable. Overcoming the Fear of Death: Through Each of the 4 Main Belief Systems helps us reduce and overcome our fears without having to change our beliefs about death.

Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol's mother as a maid. She never pictured fleeing her home in El Salvador under threat of death and stealing across the US border as "an illegal", or getting caught. So she's asked to become a grief keeper, taking the grief of another into her own body to save a life. It's a risky, experimental study, but if it means Marisol can keep her sister safe, she will risk anything.

Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter.

Married professors David and Michelle Abrams are on their way home from a party at the university where they worked. It was a rainy night, and they were arguing about a secret Michelle had kept from David about being pregnant with twins. A car accident ensues, and David is pronounced DOA at the hospital. As Michelle struggles to continue life without David, she realizes that David also had secrets he never told Michelle. As she works to unravel his secrets, she learns that the twins are a missing link in the next giant leap in human evolution. Between an insane mother-in-law and evolution ...

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife, or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles's life and work. But when his partner, the Reverend David Coles, died, shortly before Christmas in 2019, much about death took Coles by surprise. For one thing, David's death at the early age of 43 was unexpected. The man that so often assists others to examine life's moral questions now found himself in need of help. He began to look to others for guidance to steer him through his grief.

Rarely does a new theological position emerge to account well for life in the world, including not only goodness and beauty but also tragedy and randomness. The Uncontrolling Love of God provides a clear and powerful answer to the problem of evil, the problem of chance, and how God acts providentially in the world.

In this deeply affecting and uplifting book, Janet Wehr shares the real-life stories of her many years as a hospice nurse. Her first-hand account gives illuminating and comforting insight into the spiritual aspect of what occurs in the transition between life and death, highlighting the importance of the mind-body-spirit connection as it manifests in the dying process. It also gives a candid impression of hospices and hospice nurses and the services they can provide. All of Janet’s 46 personal stories are true, fascinating, heart-felt, and thought-provoking.

When we lose someone we love, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes - war, famine, pandemic - we go in search of consolation. But how do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works - from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi - esteemed writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience.

★★★★★★★★★★WHY WE SLEEP AND DREAM DREAMING★★★★★★★★★★ In the middle of the night, when it’s dark and quiet, do you feel like you’re the only one awake? Do you think there is something mysteriously wrong with you because you cannot sleep? Do you lie in bed waiting for sleep to show up like you’re waiting for a taxi? Do you believe if you forget to do one part of your bedtime routine, or do your routine out of sequence, you won’t sleep that night? Are you anxious and frustrated, wondering each night how long it will take to fall asleep, or if ...

The outbreak tore the US in two. The East remains a safe haven. The West has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other: He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

It's never too late to do the impossible. Meet Ida Keeling, a 104-year-old mother, activist, and world record-holding runner. Her fierce independence and deep faith carried her through the Depression and the civil rights movement--but her greatest trials were yet to come.