Book Review: How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies

By ABCN Book Review

Last Updated: Apr 5, 2005
Articles & News : Articles : Death & Dying

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We have all been touched by losing someone dear to us.  Our grief for each person varies and sadly, sometimes it even refuses to go away.  We  struggle with how we can be there for someone going through grief and we struggle with our own grief.  Grief is nearby or touching most of us.  What is often not there is help to get us through our grief. 

When I found this book, How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies by Therese A. Rando, Ph.D., bereavement specialist, I knew it was an important book to have and share. This book covers everything about grief like a big umbrella.  There are five parts to the book:

• Learning about Grief;
• Grieving Different Forms of Death;
• Grieving and Your Family;
• Resolving Your Grief;
• Getting Additional Help.

Under Part III:  Grieving and Your Family, grief is broken down into:  Loss of a Spouse, Adult Loss of a Parent, Adult Loss of a Sibling, Loss of a Child, and Helping Children Cope with Death and Mourning. 

Author, Dr. Rando, provides the griever with information and expectations.  She says, "You probably are not prepared for the intensity of your emotional reactions and do not fully understand the importance of accepting and expressing them.  You probably do not expect to have to work so hard to accommodate yourself to your loved one's absence or to build a new identity and world for yourself." (p.16)

Dr. Rando sums things up by saying,

     "And in the end, this moving forward with that scar is the very best that we could hope for.  You would not want to forget your loved one, as if she had never existed or not been an important part of your life.  Those things that are important to you in your life are remembered and kept in the very special places of your heart and mind.  This is no less true with regard to the loss of a beloved person.  Keep this loss, treasure what you have learned from it, take the memories that you have from the person and the relationsohip and, in a healthy fashion, remember what should be remembered, hold on to what should be retained, and let go of that which must be relinquished.  And then, as you continue on to invest emotionally in other people, goals, and pursuits, appropriately take your loved one with you, along with your new sense of self and new way of relating to the world, to enrich your present and future life without forgetting your important past." (p. 287) 

What Dr. Rando offers is a healthy way through grief while still treasuring a past relationship. 

ISBN:  0-553-35269-5
Author:  Therese A. Rando, Ph.D.
Bantam Books

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