Grief Dying

Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife, or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles's life and work. But when his partner, the Reverend David Coles, died, shortly before Christmas in 2019, much about death took Coles by surprise. For one thing, David's death at the early age of 43 was unexpected. The man that so often assists others to examine life's moral questions now found himself in need of help. He began to look to others for guidance to steer him through his grief.

"When our pets aren't with us anymore, an Invisible Leash connects our hearts to each other. Forever." That's what Zack's friend Emily tells him after his dog dies. Zack doesn't believe it. He only believes in what he can see. But on an enlightening journey through their neighborhood—and through his grief—he comes to feel the comforting tug of the Invisible Leash. And it feels like love. Bestselling author Patrice Karst's gentle story uses the same bonding technique from her classic book The Invisible String to help listeners through the experience of the loss of a beloved animal

What do you say to someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease? How can you help someone who knows they are dying or people who have just said good-bye for the last time to someone they love? You want to help, but how can you be sure you aren't doing more harm than good? What should you say about God, heaven, or prayer? Author Patrick Shawn Riecke answers these questions after 20 years of helping the sick, dying, and grieving. You will encounter the best ways to talk with people in what he calls Phase Three - life's most difficult moments.

What Really Matters chronicles the life transformations experienced by Dr. Karen Wyatt, her patients, and their family members during hospice care. This book of beautiful and uplifting stories about the lessons learned from the dying is also a guidebook for those who are feeling lost or hopeless about their lives in this contemporary world.

When a brother or sister dies, surviving siblings often receive little support or recognition of their pain. But their grief is real, and there is a way to recover from it. Through intimate, true stories and interviews with brothers and sisters who have lost a sibling, expert on grief Katherine Fair Donnelly provides valuable insight on how to survive this traumatic experience.

Eden had her best friend Katie—she didn’t need anyone else. But then there was Truman. Katie’s older brother, the artist. The recluse. The boy with the innocent smile and the dangerous eyes. Eden had never really known Truman—not until the night of Katie’s accident. That was the night they’d finally let each other into their orbits—only to have the sky come crashing down on them.

Some girls call their mother their best friend. Marisol Martin? She could never relate. She and her mom were forever locked in an argument with no beginning and no end. Clothes, church, boys, no matter the topic, Marisol always felt like there was an unbridgeable gap between them that they were perpetually shouting across, one that she longed to close. But when her mother dies suddenly, Marisol is left with no one to fight against, haunted by all the things that she both said and didn’t say.

If you caught a glimpse of heaven, would you choose to comeback to life?

Investigative journalist Judy Bachrach has collected accounts of those who died and then returned to life with lucid, vivid memories of what occurred while they were dead, and the conclusions are astonishing. Clinical death - the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stem activity ceases - is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number of doctors are now beginning to concede.

Vanessa's husband, Paul, dies suddenly and tragically on their regular Sunday morning swim. How will she cope with her dilapidated house, her teenage children, the patients who depend on her? Will therapy help? Why do mysterious white feathers start appearing in unexpected places? Beautifully written and honestly relayed, Vanessa uses her professional skills to explore the many questions posed by unanticipated death and to try to find a way forwards.

Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker.

Shedding light on one of the great mysteries of existence, An Energy Healer’s Book of Dying offers a compact yet comforting guide to support you through this emotional, grief-filled, and exhausting time and help you bring solace to your loved one during the transition back to spirit.

John Wyatt focuses on the ars moriendi—quite simply the art of dying well and dying faithfully. He offers clear direction, warm reassurance and rock-solid confidence in the One who has conquered death. We cannot choreograph our own death, but we can die well. This is a book for those who are facing death. It is also for their relatives, friends, and caretakers.

Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They're the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia's father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It's the perfect way to start off their last summer before college. In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong.

This book is a guide to death and the mysterious world beyond. The rituals, meditations, and exercises are designed to bring you on a journey of discovery through the most profound of all human transitions. Filled with insight and practical guidance, it shows you how to honor family and friends in spirit and discover the life-affirming aspects of every state of existence.

Death is a fact of life, but the experience of grief is unique to each of us. This timely collection brings together a range of voices to offer reflections on death and dying, from individual losses to large scale catastrophes. Karin Schimke revisits her troubled relationship with her late father, a Second World War survivor ‘whose brain had been broken by violence’. Madeleine Fullard, the head of South Africa’s Missing Persons Task Team, draws us into the search for activists who were ‘disappeared’ or went missing in political circumstances between 1960 and 1994.

Seventeen-year-old Katie Price has a rare disease that makes exposure to even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Confined to her house during the day, her company is limited to her widowed father and her best friend. It isn't until after nightfall that Katie's world opens up, when she takes her guitar to the local train station and plays for the people coming and going. Charlie Reed is a former all-star athlete at a crossroads in his life - and the boy Katie has secretly admired from afar for years. When he happens upon her playing guitar one night, fate intervenes and the two embark on a star-crossed romance.

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

We're all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality - something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people. In The End of the Christian Life, J. Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says, following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes.

End-of-life doula Anna Lyons and funeral director Louise Winter have joined forces to share a collection of the heartbreaking, surprising and uplifting stories of the ordinary and extraordinary lives they encounter every single day. From working with the living, the dying, the dead and the grieving, Anna and Louise reveal the lessons they’ve learned about life, death, love and loss. Together they’ve created a profound but practical guide to rethinking the one thing that’s guaranteed to happen to us all.

At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.