Worst Loss

The Worst Loss helped my husband and I when we lost our 26 year old son, who died at home from a kidney infection. My husband and I performed CPR before EMS arrived. I started reading this book the month after Dyron's death. It helped me to understand why I was having the feelings I was having. It made me feel better to know that I wasn't losing my mind, for I could remember nothing and was terribly disorganized. This book gave me an anchor. It also points out to parents to be aware of the children who have survived. It was truly the only book I needed to read out of the ten I bought.I still have not read the last chapter. I have tried often, but I cry and cannot turn the page. I know I will read it when it is time.

I have read countless numbers of books about the loss of a child.Many of them become repetitious. The books written by grieving parents are often a catharsis and helpful to them, but are not necessarily guides for others.This book is a combination of careful research and parent stories. It is honest and hopeful.It is one of the few books which talks in depth about siblings and how a family can become dysfuntional and gently offers advice.This - and the book, A Broken Heart Still Beats - if you are literary - are the two books which helped me the most, and I would recommend them highly.The Worst Loss is the book which I pass on to parents and families new to their grief and I am careful in my choice because those of us who have lost children know how vunerable we were.It's a five star.

My son died in a dirt bike accident 3 months ago and I am still finding it hard to breathe let alone read. I loved this book. Barbara's chapter on what it's like to lose a sibling helped me to know how to be as present as possible for my other children so they didn't feel like they had lost a mother too. We read the chapter on sibling loss together and individually. The small comforts that I found (when there seems to be no comfort at all)were knowing that others had hurt as deeply and acutely as I and had made it through because the book not only shares others stories of grief but has helpful guides in how to walk through this lonely process knowing that you are not alone.

I read this wonderful treatise in the face of a loss of a beloved nephew. As an Emergency Physician who occasionally encounters death of children, I will recommend (indeed I'll buy the book) for families grieving the loss of a child. It has helped me understand the varied emotions and coping mechanisms that accompany these tragedies. I have read several books dealing with the same topic and this is, on any basis of comparison, the best.

As a bereaved parent I have read dozens of books on the subject over the past ten years. This is the best all-around book I have found! The effects of losing a child on a mother, a father, siblings, the marriage relationship, etc. are covered concisely with great sensitivity and insight from the author's broad experience working with bereaved families. It is a book that can be read immediately following the death and then periodically as one moves through the long and excruciating grief process.