Dying Loss Grief

In the Caverns is about grief and change. While the pain that accompanies both can be a wise teacher, many will not listen. The pressure to get “back to normal” often short-circuits the process, and people miss the opportunity to learn. In 2015, David Achata (MDiv, PCC) was one of the forty-three million caregivers in North America. He provides a rare, transparent, and detailed look into his life as caregiver to his mother and the struggles that follow the loss of a parent. He invites us to think of grief not as an enemy to overcome, but as a friend sent to guide us into a new phase of ...

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.

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.

When NPR's Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother's hospital room in July 2013, he didn't know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon's evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Over the course of a few days, Simon chronicled his mother's death and reminisced about her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating familial love.

At the age of 60, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: She now weighs less than her neighbor's retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience - the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance - of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches.

John Wyatt focuses on the ars moriendi—quite simply the art of dying well and dying faithfully. He offers clear direction, warm reassurance and rock-solid confidence in the One who has conquered death. We cannot choreograph our own death, but we can die well. This is a book for those who are facing death. It is also for their relatives, friends, and caretakers.

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.

In this book, Julie Potter traces back decades the research on understanding and coping with grief, which she describes as a natural human response to loss. Pulling from the work of Worden, the author prescribes four tasks for those in grief to use in managing their grief. She also walks the reader through special situations like tragic loss without warning. A book for those who are grieving and those who are walking with grievers.

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

The pain and shock when a child dies can seem unbearable. But expert-on-grief Katherine Fair Donnelly, who has suffered many personal losses, has gained wisdom and strategies for emotional recovery. By sharing, understanding, and accepting this tragic loss, bereaved parents, siblings, and others can cope with this intense grief.

When a loved one passes unexpectedly, the person left behind can lose their bearings. After the sudden loss of her mother, Chelsea Hanson, a nationally recognized grief educator and founder of With Sympathy Gifts and Keepsakes, didn't know where to turn for help, what to do next, or how to put the pieces of her life back together. Hanson's The Sudden Loss Survival Guide gathers everything that she learned during her own recovery process and provides an indispensable road map to aid those who've experienced a life-changing loss.

Sparked by extraordinary experiences that occurred in her family when her father and her sister both died in 2008, Patricia Pearson was launched on a journey of investigation into what she calls "a curious sort of modern underground - a world beneath the secular world, inhabited by ordinary human beings having extraordinary experiences that they aren't, on the whole, willing to disclose".

After four decades of training volunteers to sit at the bedsides of the dying, psychologist and Shanti founder Charles Garfield has created an essential guide for friends and families who want to offer comfort and ease their loved ones' final days. Life's Last Gift is an indispensable emotional lifeline to hand to the grief-stricken, offering compassionate, practical advice on reaffirming connection and acquiring skills to be of the greatest service to those at the end of life. By focusing on the reciprocal and healing relationship between the living and the dying, which continues until the last breath, Garfield offers a path toward clarity and wholeness, and even growth.

All of us fear death at some level - both our own and the death of those we love. Religion and politics exploit that fear. There are better and more credible ways to confront the anxiety that death causes and even find hope. This audiobook will help you do that. Drawing from science, philosophy, psychology, psychic phenomena, history, and various spiritual traditions, the listener will discover a balanced approach to death that takes into account all the possibilities.

Up until his diagnosis, Lane lived a fairly predictable life. But when he finds himself at a tuberculosis sanatorium called Latham House, he discovers an insular world with paradoxical rules, med sensors, and an eccentric yet utterly compelling confidante named Sadie - and life as Lane knows it will never be the same.

Ten-year-old Comfort Snowberger has attended 247 funerals. But that's not surprising, considering that her family runs the town funeral home. And even though Great-uncle Edisto keeled over with a heart attack and Great-great-aunt Florentine dropped dead, just like that, six months later, Comfort knows how to deal with loss, or so she thinks.

Dying Well is an inspiring love story of how a man celebrated life while facing his death with grace and dignity. His widow guides you through decisions made and actions taken on their nine-month journey from diagnosis through celebrations and goodbyes, to a peaceful death free of fear and regret. She shares lessons learned as their family came to terms with her husband’s impending death and found ways to make this last stage of his life as loving and happy as possible.

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 colour is cancer? Why do some people appear to have made miraculous recoveries? How can you tell when someone is in the final hours of their life? How can we ensure our most vulnerable are treated with the dignity they deserve? In this unprecedented memoir, a palliative medicine pioneer explores the biggest taboo in our society and the only certainty we all share: death. Kathryn Mannix immortalises the thousands of men and women she has seen off.

In this amazing work, Westbrook generously shares with us the tools he has used and created over the last 30 years to bring comfort - physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual - to the dying, the families of the dying, and their professional and lay caregivers. Using the narrative style of Native Americans, Westbrook role-models his tools through a series of powerful, poignant, and moving stand-alone stories which illustrate precisely how to journey and navigate some of the most difficult end-of-life situations, and to do so with grace, equanimity, and deep partnership.