Customer Reviews

Grieving the Death of a Mother

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book for a relative after the death of my mother-in-law. I found that I was so drawn into the book that I had a hard time putting it down each night. The author wrote the book after the loss of his mother who died in her eighties. His experience mirrored my relative's experience very closely. The author shares the experiences of those who lost their mothers at all ages thus appealing to everyone who has lost their mother. I found it to be a comforting book for anyone who has lost a parent. It is a book that will be re-read many times.

I bought two copies of this book one for myself and one for my sister following the death of our mother on 3-14-06. Our mom got suddenly ill and passed away very quickly and suddenly. We were left saddened and lost and looking for something to read to help us through this awful time.

We both felt this book was amazing. We wern't alone in our feeling and the insight is amazing. I am now ordering 4 additional copies for my other siblings-this truly is a MUST READ.

The line in the book that has stuck with me day in and day out is "my mom taught me everything-except how to live without her"-Dacie Sims. This is exactly how I feel. If you or someone you care for is grieving the death of their mother-get this book.

This book helped me to understand that so many of the feelings I had were "normal"....our mother, too, passed away very unexpectedly on March 26, 2006 after just having turned 69...it has been so difficult understanding how a seemingly very healthy woman could just be gone so quickly....

Be prepared for a lot of emotions while reading....it was very helpful during those days I was feeling particularly lost...

My mom died on April 18, 2007. I have had a very hard time dealing with her death. I bought this book hoping it would help me to somehow actually believe that my mom died and to help me move on. This book expressed many different peoples feelings, concerns, issues, and emotions that they dealt with after their mother died. I can not remember how many times I read something in the book and thought "Wow, that is exactly how I feel/felt". I would recommend this book to anybody that has lost their mother - no matter how long it has been since you lost her.

After my mother died suddenly in July, I purchased every book on motherloss that I could find. This was one of the better ones, and Harold Ivan Smith writes with sensitivity. I cried through most of it, but it's helping the grieving process immensely. I also bought a copy for my sister, and she treasures it as well. I would recommend it if you are in our situation.

I am well aquainted with death, having worked in the field of oncology for many years. I cared for my grandmother and mother father until their last breath. So I thought after years of illness, and knowing full well my mother was living on borrowed time, that the transition to becoming motherless would not cause the tectonic shifts in my world, my heart, and my sanity that it has. This book was the first one I stumbled across and I consider myself fortunate, for it addressed so many things that came out of nowhere and was written in a way that could be understood and helpful to someone who is not is the most healthy state of mind.
I will be keeping it around and rereading it for quite sometime. I won't even make predictions for how long, since I was so mistaken about so many things surrounding losing your mother.

Although it started out interesting and did have some interesting things to say, overall it felt more like a way the author was working through his own elderly mother's death. Far better a choice is "When Parents Die" which I bought at the same time and was far more insightful and explored the rationale behind various reactions and how death of one parent can affect you differently depending on some very identifiable factors. I would highly recommend that one instead and plan on sharing it with my sister as our mother recently died in an accident.

My father died 17 years before my mother and I mourned him as I felt MY parent died. I was closer to him than my mother. Then when my mother died I felt as if a piece of me had died. I don't know if that is because you physically are a part of them and they give birth to you or what, it was just very different than when my father died. I found "Grieving The Death Of A Mother" by Harold Ivan Smith and from the description thought it might help. I couldn't put the book down. I experienced every emotion while reading this book and truly feel it has helped me. I still mourn my loss, it just seems like someone understands what I am going through and that it is okay to go through what I'm going through at my own pace. You can truly tell who has and hasn't lost their mother to death. This book reinforced that fact.

As stated in the title of my review, I do not read. I can count the number of books I've read in my lifetime on one hand and I couldn't put this book down, it was that good and helped me through, hopefully what will be the worst part of the mourning that I will have with my mother's death.

I too feel that if your mother died today or 40 years ago this book will help you and make you feel better about the fact we are all mortal.

Despite finding quite a lot to relate to in the first quarter of this book, I was rather disappointed on the whole - it just didn't feel like it had much substance. The author includes lots of self-penned poems or creative musings about his experiences which I think are far too personal (and verging on cringe-worthy) to be of much - if any - value to the reader. He also includes a lot of quotations from everyday folk and famous people on the subject of 'motherloss', and while some are interesting, helpful and/or meaningful, many aren't. The sheer number of poems and quotations struck me as a page filling device in what is a fairly slight book. However, it's obviously popular with many reviewers, so perhaps it just wasn't what I was hoping for as a tool to help me deal with the loss of my mother.

I did not find this book helpful at all. It contained many stories by the author and others of sentimental value and about the decline of their mother's health. Many of us know what it is like sitting at the bedside in a hospital waiting for that moment of death yet hoping and praying it doesn't happen. What I would have found more useful is to know what I could expect in the days and weeks and months to follow. In fairness to the author, grieving is such a personal experience there could be no real way to convey the process in a manner that you could emotionally relate to it. Each one of us experiences grief differently.