Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief

by Tom Crider

Overview

When Tom Crider's only child, Gretchen, died in an apartment fire at age twenty-one, there seemed to be no answers to his questions. Now Tom Crider 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 good people who've had bad things happen but who can't find consolation in prayer. 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. Filled with gleanings from the wisdom and text of many cultures, Tom Crider shares with us the wisdom that helped him find peace and understanding. GIVE SORROW WORDS is a book for any bereaved person facing the loss of a loved one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565127463
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	01/04/1996
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	299
File size:	2 MB

Editorial Reviews

Following the death of his only child, Gretchen, in an apartment fire, the author found himself unconsoled by the often simplistic responses to death and mourning of both traditional Christianity and New Age spirituality. So he set out, instead, to find more meaningful words in the world's literature, from Shakespeare to Dostoyevski and Eliot. Taking Macbeth's edict to "give sorrow words" for "the grief that does not speak/ Whispers the o'er fraught heart and bids it break," as his credo, Crider began a yearlong journal of recovery in which he sought understanding, consolation and healing in the company of a wide range of stories and poems about death and hope. In simple but elegant prose, he bares his soul and shares his journey eschewing the self-conscious spiritual posing of writers like M. Scott Peck to offer, instead, an excruciatingly honest and textured account of a hard spiritual and emotional journey. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Both authors have lost young adult daughters: Crider's daughter died in a fire, and Cosman's was shot by an acquaintance. Both fathers were prosperous professionals, and both daughters were happily pursuing their dreams when they unexpectedly died. Now the fathers have written very personal narratives of their grieving experiences. Crider, who drew the title for his book from Macbeth, offers the more sophisticated, even occasionally self-indulgent, of the two books. Presented in a journal format, it differs from most narratives of this type in his grappling with the eschatological dilemmas of his nonbelief in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Though the reader will empathize with his grief, Crider's sometimes awkward stylehe frequently shifts from first- to third-personcan be distracting. Cosman's journal also addresses his disbelief in traditional religious explanations of injustice and death. Because he is dealing with a violent loss, he addresses other issues of broad concern today. In addition, he uses biographical information from his own childhood to clarify the evolution of his beliefs, making this telling of his journey through the grieving process far more readable. Similar to Ruth Coughlin's Grieving: A Love Story (Random, 1993), these books are neither instructional nor inspirational but are personal journals meant to provide solace via feelings of solidarity. Libraries with little or nothing on the subject should also consider more practical guides such as Candy Lightner's Giving Sorrow Words: How To Cope with Grief and Get on with Life (Warner, 1991) or Helen Fitzgerald's The Mourning Handbook (LJ 9/15/94).A. Arro Smith, San Marcos P.L., Tex.

Library Journal

A sensitive search for comfort and reason following a daughter's death by fire.

Crider's only child, Gretchen, away at college, died from smoke inhalation and burns when her room caught fire. This is Crider's attempt to come to terms with that tragedy and to bring solace to others who cannot find any in church or other recognized forms of spirituality. His meditation takes the form of a yearlong diary beginning a month after Gretchen's death, which has left him "dazed, hurt, and afraid." Time and again, he reviews the circumstances of her death and the ways in which he might have prevented it. Not religious or even a believer in a supreme being, he tries virtually anything that is recommended, from support groups to New Age therapies, but so consuming and unrelenting is his grief that it may (according to his psychologist) even have triggered multiple sclerosis in him. Questions—why? and why me?—emerge in "the whiny . . . tone of a child" thwarted in its demands. Reading omnivorously, he takes what comfort he can from sources as disparate as Shakespeare (Macbeth is the source of the book's title), Buddhism, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Khalil Gibran, the Mahabharata, and an Oglala Sioux holy man. Seasons pass. Hiking, gardening, and lugging and fitting rocks to build a wall with no practical purpose connect him with both nature's beauty and its disinterest in the concerns of humans. But spurred by memories and daily reminders of his daughter, he still "questions the rightness and reality of Gretchen's death." At last, he no longer fights against "unreason" and says, "This may be defeat, but it feels more like liberation."

A narrative filled with pain, anger, and resentment that, with the help of poets and sages, gradually gives way to sorrowful acceptance—and may teach others how to do the same.

Kirkus Reviews