Book aims to help people cope with losing a loved one

ALL of us are amateurs at grief and all of us must go through it, Senator Mary O’Rourke said last night at the launch of a book to help the 300,000 people affected by death each year.

Launching the Irish Hospice Foundation book, the senator recalled the death of her beloved husband Enda - her best friend and confidant, in 2001.

“Grief at the loss of a loved one is one of the most intense experiences that a person can endure. Everyone has their own way of coping. There simply is no model to follow,” she said.

About 300,000 people are directly affected by bereavement every year in Ireland. For each death, it is conservatively estimated that as many as 10 people are directly affected.

The book, Grieving: a Beginner’s Guide, offers people who have lost a loved one practical strategies for finding their own path to a new life.

It was written by Dr Jerusha Hull McCormack, whose husband, Dara, died suddenly 10 years ago.

The American-born academic, now retired after 30 years as a lecturer in English in University College Dublin, said she wanted to draw on her experience to help people who have also lost a loved one to imagine the path before them.

“It is a path of suffering. But it is also a path that may lead to unexpected discoveries and to peace.

“I kept the book short because I found that when Dara died I could not read for several months, and it was really frightening.

Dr Hull McCormack, currently a visiting Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University in China, said grief was a very absorbing and passionate experience and we all had to go through it.

“It is an experience you have to allow to happen and it is painful, but the pain is not necessarily bad. It is like the pain in childbirth - a new life can be born out of it.”

She said the book was designed to be handed to people at a funeral, or shortly afterwards, to help them have some sort of map of what lies ahead and not be lulled into a false sense of security.

“You are ambushed all the time by grief in the early stages and people are very shocked and surprised by that,” she said.

“One of the myths is that you get over a bereavement within a year. I actually believed that only to find I felt worse during the second year and wondered why I was not getting better.

“It takes years to get over the loss of a loved one but it can be done by drawing on the resources you have left. And for me, they are my family, my friends, my vocation and Ireland.”

Ms O’Rourke said it was an honest book she found both insightful and reassuring.

The foundation’s chief executive, Eugene Murray, described the book as a valuable support for people who are grieving.