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Traveling Through Grief: Learning to Live Again after the Death of a Loved One
Susan J. Zonnebelt-Smeenge and Robert C. DeVries • Baker • 160 pages • $12.99

"Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers," C. S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed. He complained of the awkwardness many people felt around him. "To some I am worse than an embarrassment. I am a death's head." In the last 50 years, we have made little progress in helping people through their grief. Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge and Robert C. DeVries believe that many modern trends like celebratory funerals, avoidance of the corpse, and attitudes that encourage people to "move on" can prevent people from grieving properly.

Working through the grief caused by the death of a loved one is no easy business. The difficulty is only increased by our culture's abandonment of traditional mourning rituals. Today, we deal with grief mostly in private. "Our society does not like to see people in pain," write the authors. Without mourning attire and corresponding routines, we rebuild our lives alone.

Zonnebelt-Smeenge and DeVries have written a helpful guide through this "detour" in life. The authors, who lost their first spouses before marrying each other, suggest five tasks for the grieving. "Healthy grieving takes deliberate, intentional actions coupled with time," they say.

These actions, which include accepting the reality of death and identifying yourself apart from your deceased spouse, are divided into more specific tasks. For example, they recommend not only viewing the body but also participating in the burial. "Stay at the graveside to watch the casket lowered into the ground, and then shovel dirt on the deceased's casket. This is the beginning of the hundreds of goodbyes you will be saying."

The recent Yale Bereavement Study confirmed the usefulness of such an approach for good mental health. Traveling Through Grief is short, easy to read, and straightforward, well suited for those on the tumultuous detour of grief.

Rob Moll
Associate Editor, CT.

You say that grieving is an intentional, task oriented process.

DeVries: Most therapists now talk about the fact that there are a number of interrelated tasks or goals of grief. That's what this book is based on. If you break a bone in your body, the body needs time to heal. But at the same time you don't just wait for it to get better.

Our work with a young widowed support group here in the Grand Rapids area proves that to be true. This approach gives them some assurance that, as bad as this thing feels, they can get through it. When you have a significant death experience in your life, you can get through the emotional pain and drama. You'll always have the memories. You'll even remember the pain itself. But you won't necessarily have to experience the pain.

Zonnebelt-Smeenge: Coming from a Christian perspective, we think that without God, it's really hard to get through this. It's important to know that God understands and that God can handle your anger at him or your confusion. You're not walking through this alone, though it is a lonely journey. We hope that people will recognize that having faith in God does help their journey. They can grieve with some hope.

Are there issues specific to Christians that may make grieving more difficult?

DeVries: One is our fascination with heaven. We talk a lot about eternal life and about being in heaven, which is legitimate. But a griever should be very careful not to use heaven as a way to deflect the actual grief. We advocate understanding biblical lament and to know that though heaven is a real place, we do lament here. We are not yet perfect, so this brokenness is very, very real.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5