A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON AND RESOURCES FOR GRIEVING

I thought I would share with you the books I read while writing my memoir on the death of my father (1989), my mother (2001), and my brother (2014).  I found them helpful not just with writing, but with the grieving process itself.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.  (On the death of his wife, which devastated him.  A film called Shadowlands [1993], starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, depicted their late-life romance and her untimely death.)

Samuel Johnson, Consolation in the Face of Death.  (Just a few pages long, written by one of the most brilliant 18th-century English writers.)

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking.  (On the death of her husband.  Was made into a Broadway play with the same name.)

—, Blue Nights.  (On the death of her daughter shortly after her husband died.) 

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying:  What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families. (A classic work outlining the stages we go through when confronted with death.)

Sandra M. Gilbert, Death’s Door:  Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve. (A long, in-depth look at the subject, but well worth the time.) 

Ingmar Bergman, director, The Seventh Seal.  (This classic film produced in 1957 takes place during the Black Plague.  A Swedish medieval knight bets his life on a chess match with the Grim Reaper.)

Yôjirô Takita, director.  Departures.  (This Japanese film won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2009.   An unemployed cellist finds work “putting bodies in coffins” and discovers a whole new world of grieving among families.)  

James Agee, A Death in the Family.  (Fiction, but the drama about an impending death is palpable.)

Philip Roth, Everyman. (Reflections on “what grief can do to you” from one of the most prolific and observant writers of our times.) 

Julian Barnes, The Lemon Tree.  (This Francophile British author writes with great insight and wit about living and dying.  The lemon, we discover, is a symbol of death for the Chinese.) 

—, Nothing to Be Frightened of.  (The author lumps himself with those “up shit creek…who fear death and have no faith.”  He comes to terms with death and his fear of it by approaching the subject from seemingly innumerable angles.)

Art Buchwald, Too Soon to Say Goodbye.  (From one of America’s greatest humorists, who writes: “Dying isn’t hard.  Getting paid by Medicare is.”)

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End. (A clear-eyed view of what awaits us all from a distinguished doctor.)

Hugh Nissenson, The Days of Awe.  (Explores a New York Jewish family’s experience with death with both compassion and humor.) 

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones. (An original fictional narrative told from the point of view of the dead.)

Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh.  (A chronological treatment of his life as a surrealist and an atheist.  I found most satisfying the last few chapters, where I found this jewel: “I can’t help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.”) 

Here are a few more books sitting on my shelves waiting to be read:

Ron Marasco and Brian Shuff, About Grief: Insights, Setbacks, Grace Notes, Taboos. 

Debra Umberson, Death of a Parent. 

David Kessler, The Needs of the Dying:  A Guide for Bringing Hope, Comfort, and Love to Life’s Final Chapter.  (Previously published as The Rights of the Dying.)

Victor Brombert, Musings on Mortality:  From Tolstoy to Primo Levi.

D. T. Siebert, Mortality’s Muse: The Fine Art of Dying.

Cicero on the Emotions. Translated and commentary by Margaret Graver.

Christopher Buckley Losing Mum and Pup. (Written by William F. Buckley’s son.)

Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein, eds.  Mortal Remains:  Death in Early America.

“Death.  La Mort.” A special issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 21 (1): Fall 2008.