Customer Reviews

November Mourning

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Counselor Mary Jane Cronin lost her sixteen year old son Jeremy to the sort of senseless, casual gunfire that all parents fear at 1:00 in the morning. She and her family of three boys were devastated. She describes her long labor of understanding and dealing with her grief with an honesty and a clarity of purpose which keeps bringing the reader back to the message of her book, that "Grief must be allowed to happen...Grief cannot be bypassed, hurried or rushed. It always takes longer than one wishes it would...Attempting to shorten the process invariably leads to complications and extended pain."

In the first part of the book, Cronin describes Jeremy and details the intensity of his loss. In the second part of the book, with the assurance of a grief counselor working at Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, she shares the resources she turned to: organizations like hospices and Compassionate Friends; on-line resources, with websites cited; short reviews of books in the field; and a very thorough mourning checklists about the nature of grief and ways to deal positively with memory. This book contains both a great deal of useful information written by a professional grief counselor, including a summation of her research in the field, and a very personal narrative of Cronin's own struggles with grief and bereavement.