Reading list

Survival Guide Tips:

One fallout from grief is losing the ability to read.  I don't mean in the literal sense, I can still read ....but to read a book, an article, anything of length, has been stifled.  It's much better now, gladly, but initially I simply couldn't, and not from lack of desire ...I could not comprehend or process the words.  My brain would ache, words would blur, I would feel woozy ...I just could not read like I was accustomed to reading.  That was hard for me, I believed reading could be a distraction ...and yet I couldn't access it like I had hoped.
There were two books I picked my way through early on, literally a page or two at a time ...and that was a struggle.  I wanted to know what was inside, I searched for some magic words, a map, a promise ...anything that would reveal some comfort, some hope ...anything that would ease the pain ...the chronic, piercing raw pain that had come to live in me.  And then, over time, I read some more books ...more pages at a time.  I'm not where I used to be in my ability to read at great lengths (but I haven't had that kind of time for years anyway).  Reading has always been a great comfort and joy for me.  I love to read, it unlocks ideas and thoughts inside of me, often times gives me words to describe my own experiences and will often help me see things differently, consider another perspective.  These are the books I've read that I believe helped me in various ways ...some of them were a lifeline, others were my friends as they revealed the reality of what we all experience when a child dies.  Not everyone finds comfort in books, I do.
The titles are not necessarily in order of reading, except for the first four.
I'm still looking for other books and other themes, and they'll come in time

A Grief Observed:  C.S. Lewis - This is a fairly short book, a chronicle of his early phase of grief over losing his wife to cancer.  Lewis has a deep faith, one he was certainly grounded in and lived out day to day.  From the outside, in an effort to care and guide, people will often encourage us to lean on our faith, to trust, to believe ...to not despair.  And that's a good thing to encourage, but what is often lost there is that the depths of pain, the questions, the struggle to trust and believe ...the fight to hold on is leaning on and living our faith.  What seems contrary to one who believes, is in fact the proof of belief.  I wish having faith meant that life could be tied up in neat, tidy, pretty packages.  And looking out at the world, the surface of it anyway, it appears that does happen for some people.  For most though, it doesn't ...life leaves us lurching, heaving and grasping ....and holding onto the promises of our faith is an enormous fight that we choose.  In our despair, we do not give up on God ...but do we come at Him with questions, pounding and  tears? ...yes, like never before.  Lewis captured this for me, put words of disbelief in place for me, like a lifeboat.  I read his words and knew I wasn't crazy, I wasn't turning my back on God ...I was reaching for Him.  I realized through this book that I was living my faith ...in a very active, real way.  And early on, this gave me some much needed balance ...it was okay to feel like I was losing my mind, my faith, my way.  Each page walked me through the darkness I had come to know. Every once in a while, a glimmer would peak through, just like it does in real life ...the hint of sunrise.  But the clouds move in again, thicker and darker, hovering with no signs of moving ...and miraculously, His light ultimately breaks through even the thickest and darkest of clouds.  This book didn't give me the hope or expectation that things would one day be all bright and cheery, but it did assure me that sometimes the sky would clear ...and that I would survive.  Early on, that's what I needed to know ...that I could survive.

A Grief Unveiled:  One Father's Journey Through the Loss of a Child:  Gregory Floyd- A friend from my mothers group sent this to me, along with another I have yet to read, but most certainly will. I made my way through this book slowly, searching desperately for what to expect, a clue that would tell me the pain would relent.  I found that in this book.  I read about stages long before I arrived there.  And the author shares it all from the experience of choosing to trust God, which is what I had and have done all along.  He loses his young son when he is playing in his yard, and the sun blinds a driver which results in the son being hit and killed.  Another freak accident that leaves an enormous hole in this man and his family.  I like this book a lot because it relied so heavily on faith as a Catholic and the deliberate decision to trust and thank God beyond all reason.  As I read this, just weeks into losing Phoebe, he spoke of a time when he would have moments of smiles and laughter ..and that gave me tremendous hope.  Those times did and do come.  I hung on to the words in this book and if someone is striving to survive the loss of this magnitude, while hanging on to their faith ...I would insist on reading this book. 


No Time to Say Goodbye: Carla Fine - This is the story of suicide.  Several people are interviewed and share their experience of loss from suicide.  I found comfort in reading so many stories, which made me feel less isolated and alone.  The stories echo the disbelief and confusion suicide often leaves behind.  Some people struggle for years with depression, spiraling downward as others watch, helpless.  Others, like us, were so blindsided that life becomes a questionable reality ...we learn to question and suspect everything.  Every smile is examined, every tear is a threat.  You learn to adjust and become more reasonable, but it haunts you.  Whether you watched someone struggle with depression, or it came from nowhere, it is never ever expected ...you are always stunned ...and left with questions that will never be answered.  At the time I read this book, it was more out of curiosity.  I didn't really take anything from it, no gems that cleared the confusion ...just shared experiences that confirmed that suicide happens. I look at things through the lens of faith and that wasn't part of these stories at all, so while I found some common threads, our paths forward are very different.


My Son, My Son: Iris Bolton - Without exception, this was THE most important book I read.  Bolton loses her 21 year old son to suicide on a beautiful Saturday morning, after he has walked in the house, greeted his dad and neighbor in a friendly, regular way, goes to his room and shoots himself in the head.  There was NO warning.  Iris Bolton owned and operated her own family therapy business, oversaw the counseling of hundreds of people, years of experience assessing, evaluating and treating ...and even she was stunned, so unprepared and blindsided by her own son, who lived with her.  I felt better after reading that!  Bolton talks about suicide, the effects on the people left behind, most especially the parents, and the pieces we are left to find and put back together.  She is hopeful and real.  If you want to understand what someone goes through, this would be a good book to read.  If you know anyone who's experienced loss of a child by suicide, recommend this book.
"We give our children the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves ...it's up to them to do with it what they will."  I find great comfort in this line.  I questioned, and still do, my role in Phoebe's death.  That will be lifelong for me ....making peace, losing it, finding it again in some obscure way.  Any parent who loses a child to suicide will search for any way they could have prevented their child's death.
In addition, society loves to point the finger at parents.  If a child excels, we congratulate the parents on doing such a great job.  If a child faulters, we blame the parents and find ways in which they failed.  Children have become a parent's resume.  But the truth is that a child will excel and do well by choice.  Of course, a strong family foundation, involved parenting, love and respect assist a child in all that.  But we can find many who've overcome great odds, poor family environments, abuse, abandonment, and risen above and beyond ...no parent to place it on their resume.  Likewise, there are plenty of kids whose parents have given there all, loved and nurtured ...and their child just doesn't make it.  Does that make us bad parents?  Think about how society answers that question.  And challenge yourself, especially if you are parents of kids who've done it all the 'right' way.  Really examine what you think about parents who lose a child to suicide, or have a child using drugs, or sleeping around, or dropping out of school.  People's lives have stories that aren't all neat and clean.  Many of our kids have experiences we never know about that leave them empty, helpless and hopeless,and we are all so quick to write them off ...consider them a 'bad' influence on the 'good' kids.  I know, I was one of those people who guarded, thought I could control, thought I could prevent, thought I had insulated ourselves enough ...and I was wrong.
This particular book grounded me and helped me keep the negativity at bay and reaffirm the truth ...that suicide makes its way into the most unlikely of places.  It can happen to anyone, anytime.
In losing a child to suicide, there is the loss of the child, but also the painful recognition that we are blamed, that we should have known and should have done something different, or at least better.  My Son, My Son, takes us beyond that and into reality ...that bad things, like good, undeserved things, just happen ...through no one's fault and no one's 'right' action.  Life just happens, and sometimes a beautiful, talented, well loved seventeen year old girl, will be overcome with such despair in a matter of moments that she will, in the blink of an eye, choose to die.  Is that enough to make me stop taking blame?  No, but it is at least an escape, a foothold that will let me rest at times, and renew ....and hope.

Sugar Cookies and a Nightmare: Carol Kearns - I picked up this book for the title ...because it so beautifully captures the life of your child, your sugar cookie, and the nightmare of losing them.  In the author's case her seven year old daughter is swept out to sea by a rogue wave one unsuspecting day.  I read with urgency the first third or so of this book and totally related to her experience.  She captured the sheer horror of loss that happens in an instant.  But ...though I finished the book, I lost my connection with her as she tells her story of coming to terms with her grief after sending her son, her only remaining child, to live with her ex husband.  Believe me, I understand how she could choose that.  You are drowning in the death of your child, you are certain you cannot care for anyone else.  I get that.  But that is not my story.  I didn't go off on months of recovery workshops and alter my life in such a way as to work solely on my grief until I felt strong again.  I'm sure she could not relate to my life either ...the busyness, the distractions, the pull away from a grief you want to wrap yourself and lose yourself in.    She makes some wonderful observations and I think it may be a wonderful book for some, but for me, I probably would not read it again. 

Night Road: Kristin Hannah - Sad.  A sad, sad story of a mother's love and what loss can do to a person's soul ...the sheer shattering, after years of loving and holding.  There's lots of aspects to this story parent's should consider.  The teenage years are risky ...and most kids are really, really good at hiding the shenanigans that pepper their lives.  No parent should consider "my child would never ....I would definitely know, we talk all the time"  Think again.  Tragedy can strike ...even the all stars, the top students, the meek and unpopular.  Teenagers have brains that malfunction, but carry a sophistication to throw all of us off track.  I could relate to the mother in lots of ways.  The book does a good job capturing the havoc of a mom's heart, and the fear she lived with.  The mom spends years in gray, a fear I have, but it does lift, slightly and slowly.

The Knitting Circle:  Ann Hood:  I loved this book and have written about it on this blog.  I simply loved this book ...it was a timely read for me.  My life is far different than the mother in this book who loses her only child.  She is left with a radically altered life.  I have a bounty of children that keep me off the couch, out of bed ...they keep me engaged in day to day, moment to moment living ...and that is a blessing.  But there is an emotional side of me that has indeed languished on the couch, felt the pull of desperation and uncontrolled pain yank me beneath the blankets.  The mother cultivates obscure friendships she wouldn't have otherwise, breaks through some preconceived ideas about people and their lives, their motivations ...she sees through to the pain of  life like she hadn't before.  And truly that is what happens ...you find friendships forming you know would not have had your child lived. You make connections with people who live lives and make choices that would not be yours.  You can recognize right and wrong, but still see to the heart of a person and love them, finding an empathy not there before.  It doesn't happen overnight, but I've experienced it and have listened to countless others share the similar experience of 'bonding' with the most unlikely people.
The book breaks through the painful first few years and finds a new hope rising, life is different, but it grows with possibility while carrying the sorrow of loss ...a sweet sorrow that enhances the joy.

Comfort: Ann Hood - a return to this author, this book is the tale of her real life loss of her daughter at the age of five.  It chronicles the shattering, the disbelief and despair.  It's not a very long book but one that honestly captures the 'free float' of agony we find ourselves living when a child dies ...a despair we learn to hide and keep secret ...sharing only with a few.  Like her other novel, she shares the difficult journey of loss.
And she writes about the promise of good things to come, a life worth living that finds a way to have your child by your side, still very much a part of your every day.

The Red Thread:  Ann Hood - another great book by this author that tells the tale of Americans adopting Chinese baby girls ...the process, the waiting, the struggle that leads people there.  It tells the tale from the Chinese mothers side too, a painful look at what these women lose, not by choice.  Rebuilding life, making life good ...again, carries the reader through a very good story, while revealing the hidden side of the whole process for those who relinquish ....and then those who receive.  I found a lot of hope in this book.
What I've seen so far is the many people on this journey, before me, and the wonderful things they do, often the kinds of things that will save the lives of other children.  Parents will never know their child's life was spared because of the generous outpouring of parents who have lost, taking on a cause that offers a protection not there for their own children.  In this book, the main character opens an agency to unite the empty yearnings of motherhood only after she has lost her own child.  She turns her despair into helping others ...like so many do.

The Lovely Bones:  Alice Sebold - I just finished this novel.  When I shared with friends that I was reading this book, some of them winced. Others gave me a questioning look.  I understand, but really, I found this book to be an unusual comfort.  I've started books in the past with a gruesome assault on a child in the early pages of the book ...and I've stopped reading ...never to pick up again.  I tried those books before Phoebe died, and I have no interest in returning to those discarded books.  But for some reason, this title kept presenting to me, and finally, on a day I had to pick up kids, I left my job and there it was on a counter.  I took it with me in case the pick up time was delayed so that I'd have something to read.  The main character hooked me from the beginning.  It is a terrible story, a parent's worse nightmare of a child's brutal murder.  The girl speaks from 'her' heaven, and she watches her family and others make their way through the trauma and despair of loss ...and its this, the reflection of her mother and father, her sister and brother, and their struggle to survive and make sense of a life without Susie, that kept me reading, that wrapped me in an understanding so often eluding words and description ...the sheer emptiness ...the sheer will to inject meaning back into life. Even while the meaning of other living children is so obvious, it's as if a glass door separates you from them.  Trapped ...in the agony of missing and loss, searching and hoping consume parents like me. The intellect assures you of those still present, but you've disconnected, at least for a time, while the rebuilding slowly ...ever, ever so slowly, makes something new, something that once again can be called 'good.' 
Susie describes 'her' heaven, and that too has given me some comfort.  There is no way we can ever know what Heaven is like from this side of life, but the representations here gave me something to consider, a way to imagine, picture Phoebe, and what her life could be like now.  There are no claims on a religious perspective here, and there are a couple of scenes that are contrary to Catholic teaching, but I was able to see beyond that and find some comfort in the story.

I'll keep reading, keep looking at words that might offer me a clue, a hint, a hope.  Phoebe and I shared books, I'd read one, pass it on and vice versa.  Last  night I pulled one off the shelf, Olive Kitteredge, and remembered our discussion of it.  She had wanted to read it since it was sent to me from my friend Kelly.  Kelly had sent it to me and Cathy.  Our high school trio would have a book club even if we weren't all together.  Phoebe loved that trio, and she was and is loved by them.  We all shared that book ...a last read with Phoebe.  I miss sharing books with her ...miss hearing her thoughts about character development, themes.  I miss her voice and her mind.  But reading now keeps me close to her, it was one of the things we shared.  Books have helped me dig through and make some sense.

Eternal rest grant unto Phoebe and may perpetual light shine upon her.  May she rest in peace. Amen.