After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss Through the Years - Softcover

Finkbeiner, Ann K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080185914X ISBN 13: 9780801859144

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998

Synopsis

After a child dies, the parent's world changes entirely. Years later, this new world has changed the parents. The exact nature of this change-the long-term effects of the death-illuminates the nature of the bond between parents and children.Ann Finkbeiner lost her son in a train accident when he was 18. Several years later, she noticed she was feeling better and wondered whether this feeling was what was meant by "recovery." As a science writer, she read the psychological, sociological, and psychiatric research into parental bereavement. And as a bereaved parent, she asked hard questions of thirty parents whose child had died at least five years before, of all causes and at all ages.In this book, Finkbeiner combines the research and the parents' answers into a description of the parents' new lives. The parents talk about their changed marriages and their changed relationships with their other children, with their friends and relatives. They talk about their attempts to make sense of the death and about their drastically changed priorities. And most important, they talk about how they still love their children, how the child seems to see through their eyes and live through their actions. They move on through their grief, they get on with their lives, but they never let go of their children. Their wisdom is here presented to any in need of it.

About this title

Review:

"[W]ritten with warmth, depth, and sensitivity... it will be a comfort to those some way down the road, helping them understand their sorrow and pain, and affirming their own individual way of grieving."

--June Gooch "Newsletter of the Compassionate Friends "

"The bravery that Ann Finkbeiner must have had to write this book is incredible... By using her own and other parents' experiences, the author makes the issues speakable, and a sense of peace through connectedness with these parents is conveyed to the reader."

--Marceil Bauman-Bork, MD "Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic "

"Find a copy... It will exhaust and replenish you."

--Gary Grant "We Need Not Walk Alone "

"Enriching. One is struck by the mysterious power of attachment and love in the parent-child bond."

--Holly Perkins, M.D. "Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry "

"Like mourning itself, this powerful book, much of it in the words of bereaved parents, evokes a series of reactions... It illustrates the hard fact [of human suffering] but also our resilience."

--New York Times

"The first book to examine the long-term nature of parental grief through the tales of those who suffer it. Although the book includes most current grief research, its authorities are parents."

--Baltimore Sun

Synopsis:

Examines the long-term nature of parental grief through the tales of those who suffer it. For her text, the author, herself a bereaved parent, asked questions of 30 parents whose child had died at least five years before, of all causes and at all ages. She combined the research and the parents answers into a description of the parents' new lives. The parents talk about their changed marriages and their changed relationships with their other children, with their friends and relatives. The text includes their conversations about their attempts to make sense of the death and about their drastically changed priorities. The text concludes with descriptions of how parents move on through their grief, get on with their lives, but never let go of their children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 080185914X
• ISBN 13: 9780801859144
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288