The Farewell Chronicles: [how We Really Respond to Death]

This book was an interesting read. I was caught by the title and the words below the title--'how we really respond to death' The word really is in italics. Like other books that I have read--memoir--there is some mention of books written by the authors that are quoted in this book..I have made a list of the books and authors--it makes for more reading..which is a good thing right? I am going check into the book "Party of one: The Loners' manifesto' another book the author wrote. :)

An excellent perspective on death and grieving. Fresh views on an old topic. I had actually received this book form a friend when my Mother passed away and had recently purchased it for 3 of my family members.

I got this book for myself after my father died. He had a long illness and I was one of his main caregivers. This book helped my realize that my lack of grief wasn't so weird as I had been led to believe. With everyone telling me of their sympathies and how "it will get better", I wasn't feeling much but a sense of relief. Both he and I had prepared and expected his death, it came as no surprise. I needed this book and plan on giving it to another friend who recently suffered a loss of a loved one. I found a great sense of help from its pages.

Both the editorial reviews to me seem to imply that this book is not about dealing with deep and personal sorrow and it makes me wonder if they actually read it or if my perceptions are really so unique. Over the past two years I have lost people I loved. My mother died suddenly when I was not present, my father had alzheimers and died after a long illness in the hospital. We were on deathwatch for a week before he was removed from life support. This book touched me in ways I cannot explain and yet were so powerful I considered giving a copy of it to everyone who told me "this is for the best" or "it will be okay". As Joan Didion said in her equally powerful book The Year of Magical Thinking, in times of sadness she "turns to the literature" to make sense of it all. This is what I also do and I found The Farewell Chronicles does not deal with "petty" reactions to grief at all. It cuts through the gloss and fat and confronts the reader with difficult situations and emotions, she writes how our culture has erased traditional reactions to grief, the months of public mourning, the dress code, and how for thousands of years a funeral was something attended to by the whole tribe. She writes about how relief contrasts with guilt after years of caring for a chronically ill loved one, about how our apathy as a child turns to grief as we get old enough to understand death's impact. I could go on. This book brought me to tears many times. Perhaps this is because it is still so soon after my parent's death but it is also with a sense of relief that someone has put all these difficult emotions into words so eloquent I couldn't express it better myself. And of course, as my title says, I may just be different and this work is valuable for me in a different way it might be valuable for someone who has not experienced a recent loss. I'm just glad she wrote it and I highly recommend it.