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Good Grief
- Embracing Life at a Time of Death
- Narrated by: Catherine Mayer, Anne Mayer-Bird
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
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Publisher's summary
‘The most life-affirming book ever written about death.’ Sandi Toksvig
‘One of the most powerful and helpful books about grief that you will ever read.’ Anita Anand
‘Grief is more than the price of love. It is love. We must learn not just to live with it, but to make it welcome.’
Mother and daughter Anne Mayer Bird and Catherine Mayer were widowed within 41 days of each other on the eve of the pandemic, then locked down alone. Their profound isolation was broken just once a week, when Catherine visited Anne to care for her, at distance and in a mask. Together they found ways to navigate their loss and the startling questions and challenges that confronted them.
In this memoir, Catherine also investigates the possibility that her husband, renowned musician Andy Gill, contracted Covid-19 when his band, Gang of Four, toured China in late 2019. Her main focus, however, is not on death, but on life and love. This is a captivating account of lives well lived, moving and spiked with black humour. It is interwoven with letters Anne wrote to her husband John to tell him of the astonishing and heartrending events since his death and her small triumphs in living independently.
In sharing their insights and experiences, Catherine and Anne aim to help those who have lost or will lose people or who wish to know how best to support others in such circumstances. They also celebrate love—for John and Andy and each other.
‘We are extraordinarily lucky, my mother and I. We have each other and we have this room.
‘In this living room, we are learning to embrace the things we can’t touch, each other and the lovely dead.’
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Critic reviews
‘One of the most powerful and helpful books about grief that you will ever read.’ Anita Anand
‘A perfect book, specific and personal, but spot on about the universal nature of grief and how we grieve. Every page sings and, though often heart-breaking, it's genuinely an utter pleasure to read.’ Kate Mosse
‘Every life has a start, a middle and an end. Everyone prepares for the first two events, but are we doing what we can to prepare for the end? Catherine and Anne generously share their experience of widowhood knowing that they can help others prepare and cope with grief. An important book on a very important subject.’ June Sarpong
‘Fantastic book, full of beautiful honesty’ Rio Ferdinand
‘Smart, upbeat and brimming with fortitude’ Observer
‘Exceptionally insightful . . . would be very helpful to anyone who has lost someone dear – or who knows someone who has. Which is all of us.’ Maggie Alderson for the Lady
‘A powerful read’ Bella
‘A celebration of life’ i
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Story
The death of a child is that unimaginable loss no parent ever expects to face. In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond.
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Comforting and familiar
- By Jeanne on 01-12-17
By: Carol Barkin, and others
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Modern Loss
- Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
- By: Rebecca Soffer, Gabrielle Birkner
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
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Not What I Was Expecting
- By Bessie Mae on 03-01-23
By: Rebecca Soffer, and others
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Knocking on Heaven's Door
- The Path to a Better Way of Death
- By: Katy Butler
- Narrated by: Katy Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker.
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A better way to narrate a book about death?
- By MAUREEN on 10-21-13
By: Katy Butler
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Nothing Was the Same
- A Memoir
- By: Kay Redfield Jamison
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 5 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison---who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with writerly elegance and passion---could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. In spare and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled severe dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia.
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Liked the story better than the narrator
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-22-11
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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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Women Rowing North
- By: Mary Pipher
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Women growing older contend with ageism, misogyny and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age.
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The narrator is a distraction
- By Amazon Customer on 03-01-19
By: Mary Pipher
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Changing the Way We Die
- Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement
- By: Sheila Himmel, Fran Smith
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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There’s a quiet revolution happening in the way we die. More than 1.5 million Americans a year die in hospice care - nearly 44 percent of all deaths - and a vast industry has sprung up to meet the growing demand. Once viewed as a New Age indulgence, hospice is now a $14 billion business and one of the most successful segments in health care. Changing the Way We Die, by award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel, is the first book to take a broad, penetrating look at the hospice landscape.
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Sadly, not very engaging.
- By Debra S. Long on 06-16-18
By: Sheila Himmel, and others
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Heartwood
- The Art of Living with the End in Mind
- By: Barbara Becker
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye toward that which makes life worth living, interfaith minister, mom, and perpetual seeker Barbara Becker recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways.
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The author’s compassion
- By Amazon Customer on 04-16-24
By: Barbara Becker