Resources

The first weeks and months after someone you love dies is disorienting. You are thrust from one world into another. I have some resources, especially for those who are newly bereaved, and for those who support the newly bereaved, linked below.

Our culture is largely “grief illiterate” as I have heard many describe it. It takes some time to learn a new language and discover the communities, materials, and wisdom that resonates with you in this new world.

— Elizabeth

Support for the Newly Bereaved

The Compassionate Friends is a national peer to peer group that is dedicated to supporting families after a child dies. They have a strong parent, grandparent, and sibling program. If you visit their site they have timely articles, resources to locate local support groups, and Facebook communities. compassionatefriends.org
Open to Hope Foundation is a multi-media website with articles and podcasts that cover all types of loss. Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley host a weekly podcast that explores the ripple effects of grief. opentohope.com
Grief.com is a resource for all types of loss “because love never dies.” David Kessler is the founder and provides articles, books, and online opportunities for continuing education and support for both counselors and peer support groups. grief.com
Everything Happens is Kate Bowler’s website named after her 2017 book “Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.” Her book opened a conversation in the Christian community about the myths of suffering and loss. This conversation continues with subsequent books, a podcast, and resources on katebowler.com.
Refuge in Grief is the online community created by Megan Devine for “grief support that doesn’t suck.” Her book “It’s OK That You’re Not OK” has helped to update the tired language and experience of grief for a new generation. The site has great tools, tips, and groups to join: Refugeingrief.com
Speaking Grief is a documentary produced by Lindsey Whissel Fenton for WPSU that explores the transformative experience of losing a family member in a grief-avoidant society. WPSU also has a free online resource to help support kids and teens navigate loss called Learning Grief.

Resources for further learning

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross created the five stages of grief to help those dying come to terms with their finiteness. I have read a lot of articles that take issue with the ‘5 Stages of Grief’ as if EKR created a tidy linear process of grief for the bereaved.
Center for Loss and Life Transition founded by Alan Wolfelt

Books on Grief & Loss

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, Margaret Renkl, 2019

Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, 2021

So Sorry for Your Loss, Dina Gachman, 2022

Dina lost her mother to cancer in 2018 and her sister to alcoholism a few years later. In this collection of essays she covers many familiar aspects of life after death with good humor and generosity, and how grief rearranges the furniture in every room of our lives. I particularly appreciated her essays on the whispered topics, especially the continued relationship with our loved ones after their death.

A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss, Jerry Sittser, 2004 (expanded edition).

I have read Sittser’s book several times. Sittser’s own wife, daughter, and mother were killed in a car accident in 1991 leaving him and three surviving children. His honest struggle to understand his faith through suffering is rugged, truthful, and challenging and I have been nourished through his writing in attempting to understand my own faith and its new landscape in light of Mack’s death.

A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life, Jerry Sittser, 2012.

A sequel to A Grace Disguised written years later, I haven’t absorbed this one the way I did A Grace Disguised, but I will read it again.

Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief, Martha Whitmore Hickman, 1994.

This purse-size book was first published in 1994 and has daily reflections from classic authors who have experienced loss, with a short reflection from Hickman in relation to the sudden death of her daughter in a horseback riding accident. I carried it around in my purse for two years after I received it in the mail from a stranger. It is coffee stained, tear stained, marked up with notes in the margin and bent pages. Some of the reflections introduced me to other authors and some I enjoyed for a singular quote.

Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son, Richard Lischer, 2013.

Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith, Frederick Buechner, 2004. One of many books from Buechner. frederickbuechner.com also has many resources.

Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair, Anne Lamott, 2013.

I enjoy Lamott’s writing and also follow her on Facebook where she frequently reflects on life, faith and what she calls radical self-love. Her reflection regarding her distaste for Mother’s Day generated a lot of criticism to which she responded directly. The whole exchange was a hoot, particularly the curiously overly-offended!

Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, Elizabeth Lesser, 2008.

Markings, Dag Hammarskjold, 1964.

Several editions have been released over the years. A Swedish diplomat, he was Secretary General of the U.N. and died in a plane crash in Africa negotiating a cease-fire in 1961. Markings is his personal journal, poems, and spiritual reflections that he requested be published upon his death. W.H. Auden wrote the forward of the most recent release.

Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff, 1987.

A renowned philosopher, Wolterstorff’s 24 year old son died in a mountain climbing accident. Where as Sittser’s books (he’s a church historian) wrestle directly with the theological implications of theodicy and the loss of innocents, Wolsterstorff offers a true lament. Short, one-page expressions of anger, sadness, belief, and grief.

On Children and Death: How Children and Their Parents Can and Do Cope With Death, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1983.

Swiss born Kubler-Ross died in 2004 after spending a career researching and understanding the needs of the dying by sitting with them. This book is a companion to her earlier release On Death and Dying which is also helpful. But, because we lost our son in what is termed ‘sudden death’ I found this particular book helpful in thinking about the “passages” from death to new life. Kubler-Ross’ “stages of grief” have come under some scrutiny, but she was referring to the person in the bed who was dying, the reconciling of self to death, not to the surviving family and loved ones standing next to the bed.

One consistent aspect I have found in all my reading is the call to recapture death as a part of life.

On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 1997.

The Cocoon & the Butterfly, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, 2000.

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 2012.

This is written by hospice nurses and echoes the many stories from a variety of sources and times that experience the death moment with another person. It has helped me return to the night Mack died and it is a great resource for those who might have a relative or friend who is terminally ill.

The Death Class: A True Story About Life, Erika Hayaski, 2014.

I heard Hayaski interviewed on NPR regarding this book that documents her participation in a college class on death taught by Norma Bowe. But, really, it’s about life lived in full.

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, Nadia Bolz-Weber, 2013.

Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor at Denver’s House for All Sinners and Saints shares her ministry with broken places and people. It doesn’t really have much to do with grief but the process of peeling away layers of imperfect relationships to wrestle with the person of Jesus ourselves energized me.

Classics

A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis, 1961.

The personal journal of Lewis after the death of his wife Joy Davidman. Interesting to note, Lewis originally published this under a pen name Clerk, it wasn’t until after his death three years after Joy’s that it was released under Lewis’ name.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner, 1981.

Kushner’s son Aaron died in 1977 after years of suffering with progeria, a premature aging disease. Kushner wrestles directly with the question of God’s role, or not, in disease, disaster, and sole survivors of multi-victim car crashes. It helped me to think differently about death.

St. Thomas Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton

A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy.