Showing results for "The Watsons" in Grief & Loss

Sometimes we can’t find help when we’re aching the most. Sometimes the world’s best intentions can leave us feeling alone in our pain; and when that pain comes from the grief of a profound loss, it can be confusing and isolating. Author Watson Jordan dedicates this book to “all the men who needed and wanted to grieve and heal, who looked for help and found none they could recognize....” In sharing his story of loss and eventual healing, he hopes to encourage other men, especially, as they grieve.

The notion of planning for one's death is intrinsically at odds with our human instinct to avoid considering our own mortality. Although we may contemplate the grief that our life's impermanence would cause to our loved ones, we seldom consider the myriad of emotional and legal issues that can arise afterward.

Evelyn Amdur, a hospice social worker, began to write these stories midway through her career, collaborating with her daughter, Shelley. Many traditional cultures have a custom of "death songs", which rest on the idea that at one's last moment, one somehow sums up the essence of one's life in a phrase or a song. Woven into these stories are instructions on how to die well, not only in what spirit we face death itself, but also through instructions on what is necessary to prepare our families, to ready our estates, and to manage all the players who may be involved in our deaths.