Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times

When the adoption of two foster children fell through and they left our home, I was heartbroken. I said kaddish even though the children were still alive. I sat shiva by myself. Family and friends were sad with us but most found it too uncomfortable to discuss. My rabbi suggested that I read this book, and I'm so glad I did. Rabbi Wolpe soothed my broken heart and helped me to accept what I could not control. His words gave me the courage to have faith in G-d again, because he made me see that I had an important role in the children's lives.We suffer losses more often than we like to admit. Rabbi Wolpe enables us to embrace them and use them to make ours and others lives better.

From the viewpoint of forty years as a liberal Christian minister, reading Rabbi David Wolpe's MAKNG LOSS MATTER was a pleasant journey. Generally speaking, Christians believe in a future existence beyond death, while Jews do not. Wolpe leaves a door open when he writes, "The soft insistent voice of something more whispers in our ear. Can this be all?" Wolpe's open heart and lucid prose touched me time and time again. I have underlined many of his thoughs such as, "I am a rabbi because there is in me, as there is in you, a child, a child that knows that somewhere we not alone, that this world is bathed in miracles, and that for every pain there is beauty, for every loss there is love, and for every waste there is wonder." All members of the human race can be lifted by his beautiful lines such as, "Refusing to succumb to despair is the greatest act of faith. We may despair for a moment. Darkness seems ascendant. We cry out. But stirring is the certainty that the pain of a particuar loss is a sign of having loved. Where the capacity to love has been, it can be again." Not just for Jews, his book speaks to all who suffer or rejoice.

I made two assumptions about this book before reading it: a) that it would be a book about spirituality (since a Rabbi wrote it) and b) that it would be about death and mourning. While there is certainly allusion to both of these, I found it much more compelling as a work of psychology, an archaeology of "loss" as an existential proposition rather than some vacuous "how to cope" cheer. For those that eschew the popular self-help canon, this book is a compelling resource as it grounds its propositions in the wisdom of historical, secular literary figures as well the usual roll call from the Torah and Talmud, and tempers the admixture with sensitivity and common sense. The book's uplifting quality results not just from the reiteration of the sages, but from its baseline humanity, the degree to which it addresses the decent human being coming to terms with mediocrity, foolishness, defects of character, and/or miscarried hopes that drain the optimism from the average life. The reconciliation it ultimately espouses, the "making loss matter" aspect, reinvests the individual with the perspective necessary to manage not just the "big deaths," but the more subtle demises, the death-by-papercut drainage of our happiness, individuality, and sense of connection to something greater than ourselves.

This is a wonderful, realistic book on how to deal with loss in a meaningful way, acknowleding that faith may come and go...and that is OK. Rabbi Wolpe shares his innermost thoughts and fears, drawing upon his own life and it's losses. Having lost my beloved 12 year old son to brain cancer 4 years ago, this book will be a welcome addition to my ever growing library of pieces of literature that will somehow be there to help me make sense of my life---and most importantly, my son's life. Thank you, Rabbi Wolpe.