After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the YearsNamed one of the 25 top-rated autobiographies in mental health by Independent Practitioner Magazine 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. |
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... wife , Elaine , " people told me , ' You will lose friends , people will leave you . ' We never found that . We found people were just marvelous . Even after Merrill's arm had to be amputated , the people he worked for , a family we ...
... wife and great job ? Why are the friends also distancing themselves ? Maybe the only distance here is time : maybe after sixteen years , Walter's friend has simply forgotten that Merrill , too , would have had a lovely wife and great ...
... wife and the Seasons group , ” he said . Seasons , I know , meets once a month , and Chris's wife was surely as overwhelmed with her own grief as he was with his . Then I asked if in addition to Seasons , had he also been to ...
Contents
AT FIRST | 1 |
MARGE FORDS MARRIAGE | 24 |
FATHERS AND MOTHERS HUSBANDS AND WIVES Changes in the Marriage | 37 |
Copyright | |
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After the Death of a Child: Living with the Loss Through the Years Ann K. Finkbeiner Limited preview - 2012 |