Suggested Books for Helping to Deal with Death

Recently, our family experienced a devastating loss. Precious little Gabrielle, only eight months old, slipped away from us in her sleep. She was such a bright light while she was here, and I have come to wonder if such a bright light is destined to burn only a short while. Nonetheless, grappling with this kind of loss is extraordinarily difficult at best.

I never had a chance to meet the baby before she passed away, and yet I was struck by how deeply the loss affected me. I did not have a conceptual place for the baby’s death in the organization of my life. It was so easy to welcome her existence into our lives, and yet I found it nearly impossible to accept her departure. We live in a society that embraces youth, and pushes death away at every corner. It is as if we create a make-believe reality in which the possibility of death does not exist.

I believe that part of our obsession with keeping death at bay, is adaptive, and a matter of survival. As living creatures, we have a basic instinct to stay alive at all costs. When our children are born, that instinct evolves into a desire to keep them alive at all costs. What are we to do when, despite our best efforts, death finds us anyway?

I have begun to see that life, however fleeting, is a blessing. I have long believed that there is a purpose to our existence. I have also long ago stopped pretending that I might have any idea what that greater purpose is. This simple acceptance of the mystery has brought me great peace. I do not need to know what the meaning of life is, in order to appreciate it. I don’t need to know why Gabrielle died, in order to feel the love and the blessing that was her brief existence.

The truth of the matter is, death is a part of life. Acceptance of this can end a deep internal struggle. It does not mean that you are eager to lose those that you love. It does not mean that you are in a hurry to leave yourself. What it does is calm the desperate, fearful animal inside that claws through everyday, thinking it can control life and avoid death. We can’t. What we can control is how we chose to live the life we are given.