Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning

The authors seem to have gleaned many insights about grief and remembrance from their conversations with the bereaved whose inspiring stories are so compassionately presented in this book. The stories illustrate ways people have coped with death through the use of creativity -- crafting commemorative art, personal rituals and stories. Although you can, of course, read the book cover to cover,you can also just pick it up and browse through it and read a story here and there. My favorite stories are: "The Sauna" (in Jesse's Story"); "Liza's Story" "Mourning Quilts: Portrait of a Personality/Sacred Fabric" "Crafting a Vessel for My Father" "Memorial Walls" "Music to Remember Him" and "One Hundred Stones for Grandfather."

I am a hospice worker and I couldn't agree more with the thesis of this book about the importance of creative responses to death -- both for the dying and for the bereaved. And the stories themselves are truly inspiring.

This book has many compelling stories in it. I stayed up reading it until 2AM the first night and finished the whole book the second night. It shows that one way people can endure devastating loss is by using their creativity -- designing commemorative art and personal rituals and even by telling stories.

There are some amazing stories in this book -- really inspiring. Very sad too. I actually cried at some points. The book is mostly based on conversations with the bereaved who tell about how they responded to loss by creating personal rituals, or commemorative art projects, or telling stories. A lot of these creative responses are ways mourners can physically express their grief and are also ways of keeping the dead present in their lives. There's a story about a woman who made her father's coffin out of wood. She tells how it was a very satisfying experience to make a safe space for him that would embrace him. There is another story about a woman who worked with a fabric artist to make a quilt out of pieces from her father's favorite old shirt and other fabrics that represent his life -- when she looks at it she thinks of him and remembers what he was like. And there is another story about a little girl who when she was told that her leukemia was terminal, said to her mother "I know how I want to die" and described, and basically staged, her own death scene. Also, there's a section about an entire community in Cape Cod that created many rituals and commemorative art projects when a local teenager died of cancer. There's also a story about a style of graffiti memorial murals painted in New York that was really touching. It made me think about the inner-city community in a new way.I think it's a book that could help mourners and the dying realize that there are other people going through similar experiences as they are. And it could also give people experiencing loss good ideas about creative ways others have coped.