On the bookshelf: By Grief Transformed

 

So I'm knee deep into this book, By Grief Transformed: Dream and the Mourning Process.  It's written by Jungian analyst (and one of my mom's BFF's) Susan Olson. The truth is that I'm not much of a reader--I have a gazillion books, but ever since I got out of seminary, save some trashy mysteries and the weekly need to read commentaries, my literary intake has been minimal. I listen to tons of books (thanks to Audible.com), but in terms of paper books, I'm just not that much of a reader. My mom sent me the book and I got it Wednesday afternoon. I peeked at it just before our Wednesday Night Forum began and got hooked. It's a strange book to be "hooked" on and yet I am having trouble putting it down. In it, Susan writes about the death of her daughter, Elizabeth, who was a vital and vibrant part of my childhood. Susan writes about dreams and archetypes and it is so captivating, that I've had a hard time putting the book down. It's not exactly a "feel good" book--I mean it's all about death, dying and grief. But it is, I think, a book about resurrection, although that's my terminology, not Susan's (at least to the point I've reached).

It is strange, all these years later, to read about Elizabeth's death. I never knew my father's parents. And when my biological grandmother died (on my father's side), I was 7 years old. The funeral and the time around her death are vivid, but I didn't hurt, I didn't experience the loss that death brings with her death. I was, I think, for the most part, unmarked by the sting of death until that March 3rd of my Junior year in High School. My high school pal Dan and I had gone ice skating in Atlanta. It was long before the advent of cell phones. We stopped on the side of the road and watched a KKK rally, horrified and fascinated, hiding at a safe distance. And then we went back to his house, where my mother had been calling and calling, waiting for me to get from Atlanta, urgency in her voice. She wanted me back at home. The horror, the unexpectedness, the capture of death had shaken her, as news of Elizabeth's death moved throughout the town. I remember it as if it was yesterday. And so I read, all these years later, the story, the unimaginable heartbreak of a mother who has lost a child and yet has found, through dreams and myth and the strange weavings of God a place of life and goodness. It is captivating, I know, in part, for me because I knew Elizabeth. But more than the individual knowledge, this book opens a gateway, opens a lens, opens a door, for seeing the transformative power of both dreams and death. It's not an easy read--it is filled with emotion that is real and sometimes raw. But it's a good read. Okay. Enough writing. Back to reading....