Our next book is: Can Anyone Tell Me? Essential Questions about Grief and Loss - Meghan Riordan Jarvis; 2024

We're sticking with grief again this month. From the website of the author:

"Grievers & those trying to support them ask the same questions over and over because fundamental grief education has yet to permeate mainstream culture. 'Can Anyone Tell Me?' offers hopeful lessons on loss informed by rigorous neuroscience and biophysical science, but communicated to readers in manageable, understandable bites and profound real-world stories."

We'll discuss it together if you want to join me in the office or online on Wise Words Wednesday, July 22 @ 6:30. In the meantime, if you want to share thoughts or observations here, please do so (or in the channel for the book).

Our next book from the Death Doula's Bookcase is: Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief.

By: Joanne Cacciatore

Published: 2017

From Amazon listing: When a loved one dies, the pain of loss can feel unbearable—especially in the case of a traumatizing death that leaves us shouting, “NO!” with every fiber of our body. The process of grieving can feel wild and nonlinear—and often lasts for much longer than other people, the nonbereaved, tell us it should.

Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore—bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counselor in the field—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss, and grief. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities—as well as her own experience with loss—Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor our grief.

Not just for the bereaved, Bearing the Unbearable will be required reading for grief counselors, therapists and social workers, clergy of all varieties, educators, academics, and medical professionals. Organized into fifty-two accessible and stand-alone chapters, this book is also perfect for being read aloud in support groups.

Now available as an online course from the Wisdom Academy and as a journal in Bearing the Unbearable: A Guided Journal for Grieving.

Read: Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them)

Sally Tisdale

2019

From Amazon: "From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse), Tisdale leads the reader through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise, and humorous hand. Advice for Future Corpses is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths Tisdale has witnessed in her work and life, as well as stories from cultures, traditions, and literature around the world.

"Tisdale explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying, including:

A Good Death: What does it mean to die “a good death”? Can there be more than one kind of good death? What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good?

Communication: What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more.

Last Months, Weeks, Days, and Hours: What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time.

Bodies: What happens to a body after death? What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose—and make sure my wishes are followed?

Grief: “Grief is the story that must be told over and over...Grief is the breath after the last one.”

Beautifully written and compulsively readable, Advice for Future Corpses offers the resources and reassurance that we all need for planning the ends of our lives, and is essential reading for future corpses everywhere.

We'll meet May 27 @ 6:30 at my office if you want to meet in-person, and I'll go Live in this group, too.