Review of Three Books on Grieving

I’ve been working my way through several books on grief kindly loaned to me by Hospice. And I’ve found them both helpful and thought-provoking enough that I’d like to say something about 3 of these books.

The first book (Life after Loss) I myself found to be very poor for my own purposes, and would not recommend it to anyone who does not embrace a highly reductionistic, functionalist view of the human person. The other two books (When a Man Faces Grief and Praying Our Goodbyes) I found very useful indeed, and recommend them to anyone who embraces a humanistic and personalist view of humanity.

More on each of these three books:

Life after Loss, 4th Edition, by Bob Deits (Lifelong Books: 2004).

This is a thick volume, subtitled “A Practical Guide to Renewing Your Life after Experiencing Major Loss.” Hence it addresses loss in general, not bereavement in particular. The book was recommended to me by a hospice worker. Its 4th edition status and endorsement by a hospice worker may suggest something about its degree of acceptance within the medical community.

However, after poking around in it, despite many good things there, on the whole, I thought (and think) it’s a bad match for me. On the whole, despite frequent use of humanistic language, it seems to take a generally reductionistic, functionalist, utilitarian view of persons and of life. My overall impression from this book is that grief is an obstacle to Function, and needs to be “overcome” in order to restore Function as fully as possible, as soon as possible. Recovery will take time, according to the book; but the overall goal, restoration of Function, is the purpose of “grief work.” And whatever else the book may say, it seems to treat Persons as having value precisely to the extent that they have Utility.

Terms like “effectiveness” and “helpfulness,” used in a utilitarian manner, abound. A whole chapter (11) is devoted to “Beliefs that Help or Hurt.” The clear implication is that whether this or that belief was true, or accurate, was not important; what mattered is if it “helped” one to function or not. It is in this chapter that Religion is examined. Religion is evaluated strictly on the basis of whether it “helps” … again, in a functionalist, utilitarian sense … and is not brought up again, as far as I can see, anywhere else in the book.

"Why" questions are explicitly denounced in favor of "How" questions in a passage I can't locate at the moment. Probably it's in Chapter 11. I myself would think that "Why?" is one of the most natural questions in the world, especially at a time of loss. Apparently questions like this are part of the legacy of humanity ... who does not ask such questions sometime or the other? If St Augustine is right ... that our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee ... then how could a man or woman with a restless heart not ask, sooner or later, Why? I can certainly see why such a difficult question as "Why?" might not be as "functional" as simpler and more practical questions like "How?" But isn't a counsel to ignore the questions that clutch at our souls a sort of counsel to despair? To ignore what is deepest in who we are? To dehumanize ourselves and ignore our own humanity?

In “Back to Work” (p. 23) we are told flatly “If you are employed go back to work as soon as you can.” This dictum appears without explanation. Presumably, though, restoration of Economic Utility is considered so paramount that the recommendation is considered unquestionable. Don’t get me wrong: it might well be a good thing to get back to work ASAP; it might even be economically necessary for most. But surely this can’t be the case for all? Is the author denouncing leaves of absence, furloughs, and the like such as are often used in time of great personal loss? In any event, I don’t myself see this as a clearcut question at all. Unless, again, I were to adopt a functionalist view of the human being; in which case fitting that human being back into the economic system, to function in service of the greater good of the economy, would be indeed a paramount objective. But this entails a very reductionistic, utilitarian view of the human person.

One of the most chilling parts of the book appears on p. 159. An elderly man, we are told, experienced a severe loss in the death of his wife. Then the book says “When his wife died, his family decided he should move into an assisted living facility.” At this point I would expect some indication that there may be at best ethical issues, and possibly legal issues, involved in the compulsory placement of the elderly man against his will The book simply ignores any such considerations at all, and, indeed, tacitly endorses the man’s forced move. Presumably the man was no longer sufficiently “functional” and therefore needed to be forced to move from his home to someplace else where he could be “assisted”: against his will, of course. That our book manages to ignore the violation of the man’s civil rights, and the violation of his dignity as a human person before God, is to me outrageous; and once again emphasizes the utilitarian and anti-humanist, anti-personalist view of the human person.

The book also takes a generally feminized view of the grieving process, dismisses distinctively male grieving (see pp 79f for example) and is directly contradicted by the next book I’d like to review:

When a Man Faces Grief, by Thomas R. Golden and James E. Miller (Willowgreen: 1998).

This book is subtitled “12 Practical Ideas to Help You Heal from Loss,” so it addressed loss in general, not bereavement in particular. This is a very slim volume, but contains enormous wisdom and insights regarding specifically male grieving. Anyone familiar with Robert Bly will find in this book some echoes of “Iron John” and other salient works of the Men’s Movement. And although I realize that Bly and the Men’s Movement have their own reductionisms to deal with, no one, I think, has ever accused them of not being deeply personalist, and deeply humanistic, regarding the nature of humankind in general, and of man, and men, more particularly.

The introduction to this book says, “there are as many ways to heal as there are people who are healing. Unfortunately, our culture tends to embrace and acknowledge only a small portion of these may ways. Often the types of healing our culture endorses are what are considered the traditionally feminine ways which are characterized by talking about the loss, by crying, and by sharing one’s emotions with others. While these are very good ways to heal, they are not the only ways …” (p. 5).

Indeed. But our authors go on to emphasize “that the masculine side of healing is used by both men and women … the truth is that we all use both sides … We need to use caution when it comes to judging anyone about the way they choose to heal.” (p. 6). Males tend in general (but not always) to engage less in what the book does not term, but what others have termed, “experessed emotion” (EE). Males tend to rely more on independence, strength, courage, rituals, and other means of grieving. However, the grieving on the view of the authors is not something to be used strictly functionally, as a means of “overcoming” feelings of loss and helping the man to regain his “functionality” as soon as possible. Rather, grieving, allowed to enter into the being (p. 12) actually helps the man become the person he was meant to be; or actually becomes a part of him. If this sounds like echoes of Robert Bly’s (and previous) myth of the Wounded Healer; if this sounds like a pale but real echo, or ikon, of the Cross, then that won’t be far wrong. Reading this book seems to me to emphasize deep respect for the human person as person, not as functionary or automaton, but as a human person, unique, flawed, beautifully, extraordinary, hurt and hurting … but something that is the echo of the Transcendant.

The echoes of the Transcendant, and the humanistic and personalist approach to persons, and to personal loss, appears as well in the third and last book I would like to review at this time:

Praying Our Goodbyes, by Sr Joyce Rupp, OSM (Ave Maria Press 1988).

The author is a Servite Sister, a Catholic, but one who strives to keep this an ecumenical work, though one that is unapologetically Christian from start to finish.

In fact, as the title suggests, the book is really all about Prayer and all about Goodbyes. A strong sense of connection with the Universe, with God’s Creation, underlies this book full of Autumnal memories, feelings, and wisdom. The book includes a series of prayers to assist in praying our goodbyes in the appendix, and they are all moving, faithful, and accessible.

Alas I’m getting sleepy, time to hit the sack … I may have more to say aobut this wonderful book by Sister Rupp later.