The best dealing with death books incorporate how we deal with living. Dealing with death and living beyond just coping with loss is the ultimate embodiment of grieving the loss of someone we love and will always love.
Out of the Ashes: Healing in the Afterloss is a book about life. If you have been reading dealing with death books, this book will offer you a perspective that includes dealing with the gift of life within the tragedy of death. It is a story about how life thrives in the midst of dealing with death, within the loss, beyond the loss and into life’s greatest gift – love.
Benjamin’s wife, Lydia, and their two children, Matt and Bryan, lived knowing they were to die. The HIV virus given to Lydia at Matt’s birth was only discovered three years later right after Bryan was born. Bryan died first at eight and a half months old. Matt was only three years old at the time. Lydia died four years later. Matt died three years after that.
Dealing with Death Books
Dealing with a death, dealing with life in the midst of death, is the underlying theme of Benjamin’s account of how death and life mirror each moment. It is the experience of Matt losing his little brother, losing his mother, and then losing his life. It is the unfolding of Lydia losing her infant child, losing her life and losing her ability to be there for her older child in all of his losses. And it is about a husband and father losing everything, living in loss, searching for life and finding life and love in the midst of loss.
There are dealing with death books that focus on the dying. This is not one of them. This is a book about life that goes beyond dealing with a death. Through death, life unfolded in both sorrow and solace. It is a story of going deep within the daily erosion of life and dealing with a death by living each moment to its fullest. It is also one of the most read books for grieving parents.
Don’t think that Out of the Ashes: Healing in the Afterloss is one of your typical dealing with death books. It is a book full of life, full of hope, full of love to help with grief. It is how love lives in the both/and world of life and death.
