Grief Science

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

Penetrating our hearts and minds, climate grief is not an ailment we have to heal from but a call to change the trajectory of our shared future. The universality, urgency, and inescapable scope of climate change leads to a depth of grief we are not prepared to cope with, and a grief that is still largely unknown and ignored. Climate change and climate grief are inseparable, and coping with the emotional fallout of the climate crisis is our first step toward dealing with the crisis itself and to building resilience.

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.

When he became an undertaker, Rupert Callender undertook to deal with the dead for the sake of the living. This book is his brilliant, unforgettable story—the life and work of the world’s first punk undertaker—but it's also about ordinary, everyday humanity and our capacity to face death with courage and compassion, to say goodbye to the people we love in our own way.

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.

Award-winning journalist J. Malcolm Garcia's essays highlight the struggle, survival, and endurance of average people affected by the injustices of America's remorseless mammoth institutions and public indifference. They include families and small businesses still recovering from the BP oil spill; the man sentenced to life in prison for transporting drugs to save his son's life; the widows of soldiers who died, not in war, but from toxic fumes at their bases; and the Iraqi interpreter who was promised American asylum, only to arrive and be forced to live in poverty.

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...

Too often, the public abortion debate depicts the experience of ending a pregnancy in falsely simplistic terms. Anti-abortion activists falsely contend that abortion is always emotionally damaging for the pregnant person, while pro-choice activists focus on honoring bodily autonomy and personal conscience. In particular, the pro-choice movement fails to acknowledge that some people experience abortion as a kind of loss. A Complicated Choice addresses the fact that abortion stigma is ubiquitous, even among those who identify as pro-choice.

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.

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. In recent years non-religious funerals have become more common, but without an established canon of texts to fall back on, it can be difficult to plan an appropriate service for a loved one who had no religious belief or connections. Texts recommended by secular humanists, especially modern texts, can sometimes sound trite or overly informal.

Young and in love, their lives ahead of them, Tami Oldham and her fiancé, Richard Sharp, set sail from Tahiti under brilliant blue skies, with Tami’s hometown of San Diego as their ultimate destination. But the two free spirits and avid sailors couldn’t anticipate that less than two weeks into their voyage, they would sail directly into one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history. They found themselves battling pounding rain, waves the size of skyscrapers, and 140 knot winds.

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.

When Robert Ryder loses his best friends all in one cruel twist of fate, including the love of his life, it seems almost too good to be true when he finds a book of shadows with a spell to resurrect the dead. When the spell works, the returned want more than just a second chance at life. Their emotions and needs are intensified, the strongest being their desire for revenge. And why are there shadows moving within their eyes? Are they still his friends? Or did something come back in their place? And there are other things seeking to cross over, entities becoming stronger with every use of ...

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.

Losing a parent is a traumatic blow, and the grief can seem unbearable. But you are not alone, and you can get through this. In this first book dedicated to the experience of adults who have lost a parent, expert on grief Katherine Fair Donnelly shares intimate, telling interviews with surviving sons and daughters and presents practical ways in which surviving family members can take steps toward recovering from their devastating loss.