Books About Death for Adults and Parents

Books on Death for Adults and Parents

But I Didn’t Say Goodbye: For parents and professionals helping child suicide survivors  - B. Rubel; 85 pages
This book is a great resource to help children deal with the difficult often hidden stigmatizing after effects of suicide.

After A Parent’s Suicide: Helping Children Heal  - M. Requarth, M.A., M.F.T; 254 pages
The premature death of a parent can be devastating for young children- with the consequences far more profound when the parent dies by suicide. Amidst the resulting grief, turmoil and confusion, the surviving parent is faced with the monumental task of tending to the emotional lives of the children left behind. This book is an amazing “how-to” guide for parent survivors: how to manage both the immediate and the long-term implications of the suicide, how to talk to your children, and how to see them through the heart-rendering anguish to a place of acceptance and healing.

The Empty Room: Surviving the Loss of a Brother or Sister at Any Age  - E. DeVita-Raeburn; 240 pages
With an inspired blend of life experience, journalistic acumen, and research training, DeVita-Raeburn draws on interviews of more than two hundred survivors to render a powerful portrait of the range of conditions and emotions, from withdrawal to guilt to rage, that attend such loss.

Name all the Animals  - A. Smith; 352 pages
An engaging storyteller, Smith crafts her memoir to read like a novel, interspersing moving flashbacks of the times she spent with her brother with amusing portraits of the nuns at her parochial school, who sneak out of the infirmary to play cards and make autumnal visits to a secret swimming pool.

A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies  - McCracken & Semel; 328 pages
Organized by a journalist and a psychotherapist, each of whom has lost a child, A Broken Heart Still Beats is a remarkable compilation of poetry, fiction, and essays about the pain, stages of grief, and the coping and healing process that follows the death of one’s child.
Never the Same: Coming to Terms with the Death of a Parent  - D. Schuurman; 256 pages
Children and teens who experience the death of a parent are never the same. Only in the last decade have counselors acknowledged that children grieve too, and that unresolved issues can negatively impact children into adulthood.

Healing a Child’s Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas for Families, Friends, & Caregivers  - A. Wolfelt; 128 pages
A compassionate resource for friends, parents, relatives, teachers, volunteers, and caregivers, this series offers suggestions to help the grieving cope with the loss of a loved one.

I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can  - L. Feinbergg; 190 pages
I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can sensitively guides young widows and widowers through the normal grieving process while highlighting the special circumstances of facing an untimely death. Hundreds of young widows and widowers, with whom the author has worked with for more than a decade as a counselor, share their thoughts and dilemmas about the
situations that arise as a result of losing a loved one, among them what to tell young children experiencing a parent’s death, returning to work, and dealing with in-laws and other relatives.

The Private Worlds of Dying Children  - M. Bluebond-Langner; 304 pages
In a moving drama, constructed by her own observations of leukemic children, aged 3-9, in a hospital ward, the author shows how the children come to know that they are dying, how and why they attempt to conceal this knowledge from their parents and the medical staff,and how these adults, in turn, attempt to conceal from the children their awareness of the child’s impending death.

Healing the Bereaved Child  - A. D. Wolfelt; 316 pages
This inspiring and heartfelt book is designed for caregivers, friends and families of bereaved children. By comparing grief counseling to gardening, Dr. Wolfelt frees us of the traditional medical model of bereavement care, which implies that grief is an illness that must be cured. He suggests that caregivers instead embrace a more holistic view of the normal, natural and necessary process that is grief.

Help for the Hard Times: Getting through Loss  - E. Hipp; 316 pages
The author discusses young people’s experiences with loss and helps them figure out ways to continue functioning after loss.

Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family  - M. McGoldrick & F. Walsh; 350 pages
Family reactions to death/helping families with anticipatory loss/rituals & the healing process/etc.

On Children and Death  - E. Kubler-Ross; 288 pages
Based on a decade of working with dying children, this compassionate book offers the families of dead and dying children the help — and hope — they need to survive.

The Year of Magical Thinking  - Joan Didion; 240 pages
This memoir won the National Book Award in 2005. It is an account of the year following the death of the author’s husband, John Gregory Dunne.

Grieving a Suicide; A Loved One’s Search for Comfort, Answers and Hope  - Albert Y. Hsu; 180 pages
For those who have lost a loved one to suicide and for their pastors and counselors, this book is an essential companion for the journey toward healing.

Parenting a Grieving Child, Helping Children Find Faith, Hope and Healing after the Loss of a Loved One  - Mary DeTurris Poust; 237 pages
This is a practical, faith based guide for parents of grieving children.

How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies  - Therese Rando, Ph.D.;338 pages
Dr. Rando leads you gently through the painful but necessary process of grieving and helps you find the best way for yourself.

Living with Grief After Sudden Loss (Suicide, Homicide, Accident, Heart Attack, Stroke)  - Edited by Kenneth Doka, Ph.D; 261 pages
This book was produced as a companion to the Hospice Foundation of America’s third annual teleconference.

Lee’s Place Grief and Loss Counseling Center
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Tallahassee, 32303
850-841-7733