Grief Works

Julia Samuel's Grief Works was recommended at the back of With the End in Mind, though it deals with a slightly different angle on death. Samuel is a therapist, and there is possibly no genre of non-fiction writing I relish more than psychological case studies. Each chapter of Grief Works tells the story of one person's grief, divided into sections like death of a partner, death of a parent, death of a sibling, and, most shatteringly, death of a child.

Obviously a handful of individual stories can't possibly cover every facet of the grief experience, but it's nonetheless illuminating to see how different people approach their loss and learn to live with a new reality (while never 'recovering'). I have a Facebook friend who is in absolute anguish after the death of his partner, and another friend whose partner died over a year ago, and even from this tiny sample I can see how different their experiences have been, though the depth of their pain is very similar. The stories in Grief Works, though brief, are very moving. One interesting observation was that it was the generations before ours, who suffered through the immense losses of two world wars, who had to suppress their mass grief to enable society to keep functioning, and it's that suppression that's been transmitted unhealthily down to us.

The books finishes up with helpful advice both for the bereaved themselves and for their friends and family trying to support them. The main thrust of that advice is just to be there, and above all to listen, and to expect grief to last much longer than perhaps we believe it will. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing often paralyses us, and we shouldn't allow it to -- not saying anything is far more hurtful than saying something that's not perfect. Grief Works was a sensitive, fascinating and valuable contribution to my death investigations.