On Loss and Living Onward by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

I read Dalton-Bradford's Global Mom a few years ago and just l-o-v-e-d it, so when I learned that she was writing another book a few years ago, I really wanted to read it too. In Global Mom, she writes about her experiences raising her family in eight different countries all over the world, but the most defining experience (and most devastating) of her book was the death of her eldest son in a freak water accident one week after he started college at BYU-Idaho. She writes very openly and beautifully about her experience grieving and responding to his death in that book, but that was only part of the larger story of her family's life abroad. This book is focused specifically on grief and mourning and is less of a memoir (although many of the essays still feel like that) than it is a collection of thoughts about the experience, feeling, and process of grief, particularly for parents who have lost a child. About half of the book is essays that Dalton-Bradford wrote herself about her family and her son Parker, but the other half of the book is collected quotes that she found in her studies about grief that she conducted as she tried to survive her own. The selections of quotes were very good and insightful and beautiful, although less engaging than the essays, which were beautifully written (like I remember about Global Mom).

I read this book because I liked her other book, not necessarily because I wanted to read a book about grief or mourning. But I think this book would be a very useful tool for when the inevitable moment comes that we will be in grief for someone, or when someone we love is in mourning and we want to help them. She gives some specific advice for what to say and what not to say when someone is grieving, and how you can help them if you want to, but most of the book is about helping understand the perspective of what someone is going through. I think this is definitely a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to be a better friend or family member to someone who is in mourning.