QUOTES

If you have a quote related to grief or healing that you would like to share, please respond to this post. Please include your first name and the city/state where you live. Thank you for contributing.

• "Grief and pain are the price we humans have to pay for the love and total commitment we have for another person. The more we love, the more we are hurt when we lose the object of our love." C.S. Lewis
• "What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved, we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us." Helen Keller
• "Hope lies not in a way out, but in a way through." Robert Frost
• "This winter of your life will pass, as all seasons do. Stay in your season of winterness as long as need be, for everything you feel is appropriate. There is no right way to grieve. There is just your way. It will take as long as it takes." Rusty Berkins
• "I felt it shelter to speak with you." Emily Dickinson
• "One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world." E.H. Mayo
• "Give yourself permission to feel whatever you feel and to express those feelings." Alan Wolfelt
• "What is this thing that men call death, This quiet passing in the night? 'Tis not the end, but genesis, Of better worlds and greater light. O God, touch Thou my aching heart, And calm my troubled, haunting fears. Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure, Give strength and peace beyond my tears. There is no death, but only change, With recompense for victory won; The gift of Him who loved all men, The son of God, the Holy One." Gordon B. Hinckley
• "Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak, Whispers the overfraught heart, and bids it break." Macbeth
• "If you are going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill
• "To you wonderful sisters who find yourselves as widows, please know that God loves you. You are the choice among the choice. . . . At some period in God's timetable, you will join your eternal companion and serve together, forever, in the great work in the spirit world." Earl C. Tingey
• "[Job] needed friends who would permit him to be angry, to cry, and to scream, much more than he needed friends who would urge him to be an example of patience and piety to others." Harold Kushner
• Broken hearts still beat
• "One of the youngest in the family, I often found myself facing backward in the back of the station wagon. I never got to see where we were going, but I could always see where we'd been. I never got a really good look at where we were until we drove away. So it goes. When I don't understand the here and now, I remember that someday I will move on and maybe looking out the back window, I'll understand." Jay Richards
• "Grief is the rope burns left behind when what we have held to most dearly is pulled out of reach, beyond our grasp." Stephen Levine
• "My husband died and it was hard. But then he stayed dead. That's the part I'm really having trouble with."

BOOKS

What books have been helpful for you?

When my husband died suddenly, I didn't know what to expect from the journey of grief, other than terrible sadness. Now that my mind has cleared enough for me to read, I have found grief books to be helpful in explaining what I am experiencing. Here are the books I have read so far:

• Good Grief: A Faith-Based Guide to Understanding and Healing, Granger E. Westberg. This is the book I started with because it is short. It does a good job of explaining different stages of grief and the emotions that go with them. It is written from a religious perspective, but not a specifically Mormon one.
  
• Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World: Seven Choices, Elizabeth Neeld. This is the book that I most highly recommend. It is longer, and I am actually not yet done with it, but it is really well written. It provides a map for working through grief. I really like all the passages contributed by various widows and widowers. The author's husband died suddenly while out jogging.
  
• When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner. This book is relatively short. It explains that it is perfectly normal to question the nature of God when our loved ones die. It explains, in a sensitive way, that we are subject to natural law and that God, for the most part, allows natural law to run its course. This book changed the way I think about prayer. The author, a Rabbi, had a son die of a degenerative disease.
  
• A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis. This book is also short, but I don't recommend it. It is a jumble of notes that c.s. lewis wrote while grieving the death of his wife. While there were passages that I strongly identified with, it was ultimately hard to follow with my already confused brain.
• Embraced By the Light, Betty J. Eadie. Eadie shares her experience of dying and regaining life while in the hospital. I really liked this book. It helped me feel the reality of the next life. It presents important principles of love and learning.
• Caring Connections: A Hope and Comfort in Grief Program. This book was actually a class manual for a grief support group run by the University of Utah. It is very good at explaining the stages of grief as well as outlining some coping skills. The website for the program (8 weeks, $50) is http://www.nurs.utah.edu/caringconnections/ They also have a really good online newsletter available from the website.

• Embraced By the Light,
  
  Ultimately, the books I have read have been useful in validating my extreme emotions and unusual behaviors. It is comforting to read that what I am experiencing is normal for anyone in these circumstances. I wish all of my acquaintances would read these books so that they could better relate to my situation.
  
  If you have any books you would like to recommend to other widows and widowers, please respond to this post. Please include the author, title, and a brief description of the book and/or an explanation of why you like it. Please also include your first name and the city/state where you live. Thank you for contributing.