While walking my dog, I passed a box of books by the curbside. As is my habit, I paused to scan the titles and three caught my attention, not because I want to read them, but because my heart goes out to anyone who needs to. All three concern bereavement for the death of an infant. I looked up from the box to the solid brick face of the house behind the box. As is typical in suburbia, I don’t know the occupants of this house and can’t remember ever having seen them. I looked down the street, past a hundred other houses just like this one, and I wondered at all the private pain and grief these brick walls must hide. Then I wondered: What does it mean that these books have been discarded? Have the parents “gotten past” the grieving and no longer need the books? Or have the books have given them no support? Or maybe they’ve moved on to a whole new list of titles.
Here are the book titles:
Still to be Born, by Schwiebert & Kirk
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of your Baby, by Deborah L. Davis
The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science Of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss, by George A. Bonanno
Related posts:
Tue, Jan 17, 2012
From the Drainpipe