Central Kansas Library System

The death of a child immerses parents into a life-long challenge of living with one of life's most heartbreaking losses. Pilgrimage through Loss tells the story of one family's journey, along with interviews from thirty other mothers and fathers who add their voices to the silences that often surround suffering in our 'mourning-avoidant' culture. Hunt illuminates the varied pathways parents eventually discover that open their lives to strength and...

Widowed at 40 and left to raise her four-year-old twin sons alone, the author is thrust into confronting an unexpected and traumatic reality. With heart, hope, and a focus on healing, she shares, through 12 lessons, how she successfully navigated the highs and lows of her grief journey to raise her sons as a single mother. With heartfelt emotion and a unique ability to capture the intricacies of life's moments, Franka's insights about the grief journey...

Wolves, swans and French angelfish are among a litany of species which mate forever. If a partner dies, the survivor literally becomes a lost soul and gives up all interest in continuing alone.Humans, too, often embrace the mindset of there being only one true love allotted to each of us per lifetime. In Eve's Diary by Mark Twain, an inconsolable Adam weeps at her grave with the words, "Wheresoever she was, there was Eden." Even if Eve had been the...

The Heavy Bag by Sarah Surgey is a children' s book that looks at the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness and Acceptance. Children can experience grief for a loved one; a pet; or even moving on from a school or area. When all of the emotions build up inside a child' s mind, they can feel like they are carrying around a huge weight with them.‘ The Heavy Bag' follows a little girl called Enid who has...

Who knows the day of trouble and who can tell the outcome? When shall trouble ceases and the difficulty will be end?Our way of life has a question and answer that needs to be solved. Who knows what will happen in the next hour?Who can tell or predict the days ahead and how it shall end? We are like a shadow that goes away without notification. Every human being shall one day drop and will never return again until heavens vanish.This is sad and unnoticed...

Upset, anxious and sad when their Mum dies, Rez learns the importance of being able to talk about how they are feeling during a bedtime conversation with their other parent, Mam. Although she is also feeling very sad and distraught, Mam does her best to comfort Rez and together they realise the need to carry on with and make the most of life, despite experiencing such a devastating loss.

The death of a child is like no other loss. Barbara D. Rosof's The Worst Loss will help families who have experienced this to know what they are facing, understand what they are feeling, and appreciate their own needs and timetables.

The blogger behind Confessions of a Funeral Director-what Time magazine called a "must read"-reflects on mortality and the powerful lessons death holds for every one of us in this compassionate and thoughtful spiritual memoir that combines the humor and insight of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes with the poignancy and brevity of When Breath Becomes Air. We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as...

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God's power or God's nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless...

In life, the one thing we can be certain of is that it will never remain linear for long. One minute, everything is as we know it. Next minute - PLOT TWIST - we find ourselves scrambling for a foothold, trying to make sense of the shifting landscape and the changing tides. Sometimes, these deviations from the course can be the shift we needed to push us into our next chapter of life. Others can throw us off balance, send us spiralling into despair...