Grief Dying

Short Stories and Flash Fiction This is the fourth anthology of short stories and flash fiction from the Blackwood Writers Group (South Australia). Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy with touches of HorrorYou will see stories that examine how the strings that hold a marriage together are strained in Andrew Loves His Wife, a scientist manages to elevate his discovery above what he’d expected in High Note, a new recruit in a near-Orwellian society is assigned to the effort in War Footing, and a young girl finds that she and her pet kitten share a very close bond that will make...

The death of a child is that unimaginable loss no parent ever expects to face. In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond.

Zilan dreams of becoming a royal alchemist, of providing for her family by making alchemical gold and gems for the wealthy to eat in order to stay young forever. But for now, she’s trapped in her impoverished village in southern China, practicing an illegal form of alchemy to keep food on the table—resurrecting the dead, for a price. When Zilan finally has the chance to complete her imperial exams, she ventures to the capital to compete against the best alchemists in the country in tasks she’ll be lucky to survive, let alone pass.

This helpful and encouraging resource offers support for everyone accompanying someone at the end of life - from the moment we first learn that someone is dying through the time of death and beyond. Kirsten DeLeo shares down-to-earth advice and offers simple practices to help us handle our emotions, deal with difficult relationships, talk about what matters, listen fully, practice self-care, and work through challenging situations with presence and grace.

At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.

The conventional view of grieving - encapsulated by the famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - is defined by a mourning process that we can only hope to accept and endure. In The Other Side of Sadness, psychologist and emotions expert George Bonanno argues otherwise. Our inborn emotions - anger and denial, but also relief and joy - help us deal effectively with loss. To expect or require only grief-stricken behavior from the bereaved does them harm.

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 ...

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.

Bittersweetness recognises that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. As Bittersweet shows, our obsession with happiness is not making us happy, healthy or whole. It's only by embracing our darker emotions—as well as the light—that we discover our deepest meaning and connection, love and joy. It can change the way we work, the way we create and the way we love—for it is the hidden source of our love stories, moonshots and masterpieces.

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.

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents.

What do you say to someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease? How can you help someone who knows they are dying or people who have just said good-bye for the last time to someone they love? You want to help, but how can you be sure you aren't doing more harm than good? What should you say about God, heaven, or prayer? Author Patrick Shawn Riecke answers these questions after 20 years of helping the sick, dying, and grieving. You will encounter the best ways to talk with people in what he calls Phase Three - life's most difficult moments.

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.

As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded.

If you caught a glimpse of heaven, would you choose to comeback to life?

Investigative journalist Judy Bachrach has collected accounts of those who died and then returned to life with lucid, vivid memories of what occurred while they were dead, and the conclusions are astonishing. Clinical death - the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stem activity ceases - is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number of doctors are now beginning to concede.

End-of-life doula Anna Lyons and funeral director Louise Winter have joined forces to share a collection of the heartbreaking, surprising and uplifting stories of the ordinary and extraordinary lives they encounter every single day. From working with the living, the dying, the dead and the grieving, Anna and Louise reveal the lessons they’ve learned about life, death, love and loss. Together they’ve created a profound but practical guide to rethinking the one thing that’s guaranteed to happen to us all.

Nine-year-old David has recently lost his mother to a freak accident, his salesman father is constantly on the road, and he is letting his anger out on his grandmother. Sarcastic and bossy 13-year-old Primrose lives with her childlike, fortuneteller mother, and a framed picture is the only evidence of the father she never knew. Despite their differences, David and Primrose forge a tight yet tumultuous friendship.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

She did everything right. She lost her home, health and business anyway. Be a good person. Be a good worker. Success will follow. Those were the rules author Denise Kawaii lived by. After surviving a childhood fraught with family dysfunction and poverty, she’d finally found the success she’d always sought. She had a little blue suburban house, a baby on her hip, and a rapidly expanding business. Things were, in a word, perfect. But when her best friend died, starting a rapid-fire series of death, ill health and loss, nothing could stop the unravelling of her middle-class life. When ...

The notion of planning for one's death is intrinsically at odds with our human instinct to avoid considering our own mortality. Although we may contemplate the grief that our life's impermanence would cause to our loved ones, we seldom consider the myriad of emotional and legal issues that can arise afterward.