After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss Through the Years

by Ann Finkbeiner

Book Overview

Named one of the 25 top-rated autobiographies in mental health by Independent Practitioner Magazine

After a child dies, the parent's world changes entirely. Years later, this new world has changed the parents. The exact nature of this change--the long-term effects of the death--illuminates the nature of the bond between parents and children.

Ann Finkbeiner lost her son in a train accident when he was 18. Several years later,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080185914X
• ISBN13: 9780801859144
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Loss of a child after several years

I would recommend this book only to those who lost a child a few years before. For those who just lost a child, it may be too difficult to realize right away how long this will affect your life. Also, that you never "get over it", as long as you live. It was well written and honest, by an author who experienced the loss of a child.

Best book for bereaved parents I read after the death of my son

This was by far the best book I read after my son died. It gave me a roadmap of grief to help me know what to expect down the road at the earliest stage to many years out. I give it to anyone in my community who has lost a child recently.

Excellent work on a difficult subject.

This was one of the most helpful books I have read on the death of a child over the past ten years. My son died sixteen years ago and I was very interested to read a book dealing with the long term results of the loss of a child. This book dealt with many topics which are covered in the majority of books on grief but dealt with them from the view of parents who have moved several years away from the loss. After all, when a child dies you are still dealing with that death five years later, ten years later and throughout the remainder of your lifeCfs

One of the finest books for bereaved parents I've ever read.

This extraordinary book is both guide and friend to those of us who have had a child die. I know of no other book which covers the ground this one does, looking at the ongoing effects of a child's death on a bereaved parent's life and suggesting, through a multitude of personal stories, ways to continue on in a forever-altered existence. Only a bereaved parent could have written this book. I am grateful from the depths of my heart to Ann Finkbeiner for doing so.

No one should have to read this book

This book contains some of the most painful, and at the same time the most helpful writing I have read since the death of my own son. Those who will choose to read it will do so because they have experienced the most devastating loss imaginable - the death of a child. Ann Finkbeiner is right when she says her book is not for the newly bereaved. There are no comforting platitudes, no 12 steps, no meditations. No words of wisdom, no instructions for "getting over it", since, as she says, and everyone who has been there knows - there IS no getting over it. There's just learning a different way to live the rest of your life, learning to live with the pain. You'll only read it if you have the need to, and if you have need to, please know that I'm very sorry.