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Shadow child: an apprenticeship in love and loss
By Beth Powning. 2005
Like many young women, Beth Powning faced decisions of whether and when to start a family. At age twenty-four she…
became pregnant, but eleven days past her due date, she delivered a perfect, stillborn son. In this exploration of motherhood and loss, we're taken on a powerful journey into the heart of grief and renewal. National Bestseller. 2005.Chicken soup for the grieving soul: stories about life, death, and overcoming the loss of a loved one (Chicken Soup For The Soul Ser.)
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen. 2003
Accounts of people who have lost a loved one. Each story details the particular death and explains how the author…
dealt with grief and found the courage to go on. Sections include "Final Gifts," "Coping and Healing," "Special Moments," and "Living Again." 2003.The oil of joy for mourning: 365 daily meditations to comfort the widowed
By Jan Sheble. 1997
Comfort, support, and encouragement are offered for the grieving widow or widower. Contains 365 daily meditations to help lead people…
through the mourning process to a healing that only God can provide. 1997.The year of magical thinking
By Joan Didion. 2005
Writer reflects on her emotional response to the unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, after a visit to…
their comatose daughter. Discusses the shock of suddenly facing a crisis, the memory of their time together as a family, and the meaning of marriage. National Book Award. Bestseller. 2005.The immortalization commission: science and the strange quest to cheat death
By John Gray. 2011
For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death, but in the late 19th and…
early 20th centuries new ideas - from psychiatry to evolution to Communism - seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. Gray investigates the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals that there was a non-religious form of life after death. c2011.How to Die: A Book About Being Alive
By Ray Robertson. 2020
“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to…
Die: A Book on Being Alive, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge. Though contemporary society avoids the subject and often values the mere continuation of existence over its quality, Robertson argues that the active and intentional consideration of death is neither morbid nor frivolous, but instead essential to our ability to fully value life. How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.Dead Mom Walking: A Memoir of Miracle Cures and Other Disasters
By Rachel Matlow. 2020
"A hilarious memoir of effervescent misadventures." --Toronto Star"How am I laughing at someone's mother's cancer? How? We think we can't…
laugh about death, about cancer, about our mothers and their suffering . . . and we can't, but we can. And there's so much relief in that. I laughed, I cried, I laughed and laughed and laughed." --Carolyn Taylor, BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOWA traumedy about life and death (and every cosmic joke in between)When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Rachel Matlow is concerned but hopeful. It's Stage 1, so her mom will get surgery and everything will go back to normal. But growing up in Rachel's family, there was no normal. Elaine, an alternative school teacher and self-help junkie, was never a capital M "Mommy"--she spent more time meditating than packing lunches--and Rachel, who played hockey with the boys and refused to ever wear a dress, was no ordinary daughter.When Elaine decides to forgo conventional treatment and heal herself naturally, Rachel is forced to ponder whether the very things that made her mom so special--her independent spirit, her belief in being the author of her own story--are what will ultimately kill her. As the cancer progresses, so does Elaine's conviction in doing things her way. She assembles a dream team of alternative healers, gulps down herbal tinctures with every meal, and talks (with respect) to her cancer cells. Anxious and confused, Rachel is torn between indulging her pie-in-the-sky pursuits (ayahuasca and all) and pleading with the person who's taking her mother away.With irreverence and honesty--and a little help from Elaine's journals and self-published dating guide, plus hours of conversations recorded in her dying days--Matlow brings her inimitable mother to life on the page. Dead Mom Walking is the hilarious and heartfelt story of what happens when two people who've always written their own script go head to head with each other, and with life's least forgiving plot device.Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood
By Emma Hansen. 2020
“Still is one of those rare books that catches you up and does not let you go. With grace, courage,…
and honesty, Emma Hansen adds an important voice to this tragic and too-often silenced subject. I loved this book.” —Beth Powning, author of Shadow Child: An Apprenticeship in Love and Loss A moving, candid account of one woman’s experience with stillbirth.Emma Hansen is 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant when she feels her baby go quiet inside of her. At the hospital, her worst fears are confirmed: doctors explain that her baby has died, and she will need to deliver him, still.Hansen gives birth to her son, Reid, amidst an avalanche of grief. Nine days later, she publishes a candid essay on her website sharing photos from the delivery room. Much to her surprise, her essay goes viral, sparking positive reactions around the world. Still shares what comes next: a struggle with grief and confusion alongside a desire to better understand stillbirth, which is experienced by more than two million women annually, but rarely talked about in public.At once honest, brave, and uplifting, Still is about one woman’s search for her own definition of motherhood, even as she faces one of life’s greatest challenges: learning to live after loss.With many jurisdictions considering whether or not to implement new assisted-death legislation, Choosing to Live, Choosing to Die is a…
timely look at the subject for teen readers who may not yet have had much experience with death and dying. Readers are introduced to the topic of assisted dying through the author's own story. The issue continues to be hotly debated in families, communities and countries around the world, and there are no easy answers. Choosing to Live, Choosing to Die looks at the issue from multiple perspectives and encourages readers to listen with an open mind and a kind heart and reach their own conclusions.On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times
By Michael Ignatieff. 2021
Timely and profound philosophical meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music, and art searched for solace while facing…
tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize-finalist Michael Ignatieff.When someone we love dies, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes--war, famine, pandemic--we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic.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, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross 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. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, movingly contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of our precarious twenty-first century.How to Lose Everything: A Memoir
By Christa Couture. 2020
Three Funerals for My Father: Love, Loss and Escape from Vietnam
By Jolie Phuong Hoang. 2021
What would you risk to save your children? Jolie Phuong Hoang grew up as one of ten children, part of…
a loving, prosperous Vietnamese family. All that changed after the communists took over in 1975. Identified as a potential “bad element,” the family lived in constant fear of being sent to the dreaded new economic zone. Desperate to ensure the family’s safety and to provide a future for his children, Jolie’s father arranged three separate escapes. The first was a failure that cost most of their fortune, but the second was successful—six of his children reached Indonesia and ultimately settled in Canada. He and his youngest daughter drowned during the disastrous third attempt. Told from the author’s perspective and that of her father’s ghost, Three Funerals for My Father is a poignant story of love, grief and resilience that spans three countries and fifty years. In an era when anti-Asian racism is on the rise and the issue of human migration is front-page news, Three Funerals for My Father provides a vivid and timely first-hand account of what it is like to risk everything for a chance at freedom. It is at once an intimate story of one family, a testament to the collective experience of the “boat people” who escaped communist Vietnam, and a plea on behalf of the millions of refugees currently seeking asylum across the globe.Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose
By Tara McGuire. 2022
Holden After and Before is a moving meditation on grief in the same vein as Helen Macdonald's H is for…
Hawk: a stunning book that traces Tara McGuire's excavation and documentation of the life path of her son Holden, a graffiti artist who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of twenty-one. Beginning with Holden's death and leaping through time and space, McGuire employs fact, investigation, memory, fantasy, and even fabrication in her search for understanding not only of her son's tragic death, but also of his beautiful life. She navigates and writes across the many blank spaces to form a story of discovery and humanity, examining themes of grief, pain, mental illness, trauma, creative expression, identity, and deep, unending love inside just one of the thousands of deaths that have occurred as a result of the opioid crisis. With poignant honesty and a heart laid bare, Holden After and Before is a beautiful and moving elegy to a son lost to overdose.Be with (New Directions Paperbook #1408)
By Forrest Gander. 2018
Collection of eighteen poems exploring the themes of loss, grief, regret, and intimacy. In "Ruth," the author reflects on communicating…
with and caring for his mother as her Alzheimer's disease symptoms worsen. Strong language. 2018Monument: poems : new and selected
By Natasha D. Trethewey. 2018
Collection of poems--some previously published--by the former US poet laureate and author of Native Guard (DB 65666) and Thrall (DB…
75891). Highlights the voices and experiences of working-class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, black Civil War fighters, and Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina. 2018A tour of bones: facing fear and looking for life
By Denise Inge. 2014
Academic recounts her experience living in a home that was located above an ancient charnel house--a vault where skeletal remains…
are stored. Describes using the opportunity to confront fears of death as she dealt with cancer, and discusses her travels to other charnel houses in Europe. 2014Good mourning: A Memoir
By Elizabeth Meyer, Caitlin Moscatello. 2015
A funeral director shares her journey to involvement in the industry. She begins with the death of her father from…
cancer and her first job at the elite funeral home where his service was held. She describes funerals she has helped plan, workplace issues, family reactions, and more. Strong language. 2015Gabriel: a poem
By Edward Hirsch. 2014
Author of How to Read a Poem (DB 48477) reflects on the life of his son Gabriel, who died at…
twenty-two from a drug overdose. Explores the feelings of joy, frustration, and pride while raising the child, and devastating grief at his early death.ALA Notable Book. 2014Advice on expressing sympathy to someone who has suffered a loss, including the death of a parent, spouse, child, sibling,…
or pet. Offers guidelines for diverse situations and provides funeral etiquette and sample eulogies. 2000A Dog Called Homeless
By Sarah Lean. 2012
Praised by Newbery Medal–winning author Katherine Applegate as "graceful" and "miraculous," this Schneider Family Book Award–winning novel tells how one…
girl's friendship with a homeless dog mends a family's heart.Cally Fisher knows she can see her dead mother, but the only other living soul who does is a mysterious wolfhound who always seems to be there when her mom appears. How can Cally convince anyone that her mom is still with the family, or persuade her dad that the huge silver-gray dog belongs with them?With beautiful, spare writing and adorable animals, A Dog Called Homeless is perfect for readers of favorite middle-grade novels starring dogs, such as Because of Winn-Dixie and Shiloh.