Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief - Hardcover

A father describes his overwhelming grief over the death of his only child, a senior in college, in an apartment fire; his struggle to cope with his loss; and the solace he found in the wisdom of literature, friendship, nature, and family members.

This is a book for any bereaved person who is facing loss without the support of firm religious beliefs. When Tom Crider's only child, Gretchen, died in an apartment fire her junior year in college, there seemed to be no way to assuage his pain or to find meaning in his daughter's sudden death. Now he has written the book he searched for in his grief and couldn't find, one that offers - without sermons or certainty - companionship in agony and an exploration of spiritual issues related to death. It's a book for readers, people who would, in sorrow, naturally turn to books for shared experience, reflection, wisdom - comfort in words passed down through the ages. Give Sorrow Words begins just after Gretchen's death. It ends a year later as her father begins to accept his loss. With exquisite honesty, Crider describes his struggle with grief's turbulent emotions, a mind unhinged, and an ego intent upon preserving its illusions. By interspersing the narrative with entries from his journal, he documents the inward progress of his search for solace in nature and in children, good friends and beloved family. Most of all, though, he offers what he discovered in literature. Filled with gleanings from the wisdom and text of many cultures - from Socrates to the teachings of Buddha, from the biography of Queen Victoria to the Book of Job, from poets Yeats and Eliot to Holocaust survivors - Tom Crider shares with us the wisdom that helped him find peace.