“Healing After Loss” by Martha Whitmore Hickman

I was rummaging through a used bookstore in San Francisco when I stumbled upon this great little healing book that is still in print. Beautifully structured, Martha Whitmore Hickman’s Healing After Loss, Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief is a brilliant aid to healing from a death when, as is typical in the beginning, one sequesters alone. This book is a lovely gift to yourself or someone who is healing after a loss.

It’s organized with a year’s worth of page-by-page calendared meditations starting January 1st all the way through to December 31st. Each page provides three offerings each day. First at the top is a famous insightful quote followed by two to four paragraphs of the author’s expanded reflective psychology, indirectly related. Lastly at the bottom of each page is a short (in first person) line or two, suggesting a small step or action forward towards healing. I offer an inserted example of a page:

“The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever lost.”

– Eudora Welty

(top page of March 15th)

It’s a brilliant approach and filled with rich content, thoughts and viewpoints to processing a loss. All the themes related to grieving are present, from vulnerability, neglect, death, art, life, suicide, memories and so forth — with no stone left unturned. There are also some references to God lightly peppered in as well. There are many avenues to take to help one heal: grief support, counseling, art therapy, for example, but this book gives solace in the lonely hours when, as the intro suggests, “the pain and the preoccupation come back, and back — sometimes like the rolling crash of an ocean wave, sometimes like the slow ooze after a piece of driftwood is lifted and water and sand rise to claim their own once more.”

“When we have lost a loved one, we often experience a kind of generalized fear. Our life has been so shaken. Is anything secure? What else could be taken away?

One of the fears may well be, Will we forget? Will the memory of life we have shared also slip away without the reinforcement of the person’s presence, and the shared conversations about past times?

The shock of the loss may for a time take away some of the kinder, more joyous memories — or make them too painful to remember. But as we begin to feel better — not so weighted with grief — the empty spaces in the patchwork quilt of memory will begin to fill in again. It will be like finding a lost treasure –the more valuable because it slipped from sight for a while.”

(Middle page of March 15th)

Credit: xplormor.com

It’s a book to sit with and reach for when the waves hit hard or one is drifting in what feels like endless flat-landed pain. Even though it’s presented as a calendar, it can be approached in a variety of ways. A linear approach begins with page one (no matter the real date), January 1st, or a random approach of leafing through to find the right words each day that engages the essence of one’s feelings. Or an actual date approach to follow through for the full year. No matter what one’s mind may prefer this is a most valuable book.

“Memories of the life I shared with my loved one are stored in my brain. What I need I will find.”

(Bottom page of March 15th)

Sadly my biggest complaint is the poor printing quality combined with small pudgy bold text that bleeds on the page making the reading experience not only difficult but less than restful. What a shame given the research and thought put into this lovely book. More than a handy helper, it’s like a friend with just the right words sitting at one’s bedside.