Why are you doing this, the askers ask.

Why a book about grieving, isn't that kind of depressing? Yes, and no.

My experience with my mother's death was a bit different from the average death. She wasn't old enough to die from old age, she didn't die suddenly in a car accident or from a heart attack, and she didn't have a disease like Cancer, where even though a doctor tells you it's terminal, you still think that there might, somehow, be a chance. I knew she was going to die for the fourteen months from when she was diagnosed to the day she died. It was a certainty. I knew because there has never been a person who has survived her disease (other than Stephen Hawking, who they aren't even really sure he has that same disease). I had time to prepare myself, although the question is: how does one prepare for an emotional experience that they have neither been through before nor know anything about?

My first step in the preparation process was to go to my local Barnes and Noble and stand helplessly in the "Self-Help" section staring aimlessly at the books about grieving and loss. There are a lot of helpful books there, but the titles were so specialized that I found myself wondering how there were possibly enough people in the world to warrant the need for that book. There were books about divorce, children of divorce, people with fibromyalgia, books about changing your religion, changing your gender, and tons of books for people that have children that die. I ended up taking home a myriad of books that I thought might help, with titles like "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," and "Coping With the Death of a Loved One." Unfortunately, what I was seeking was just not in any of those books. What is "out there" is mostly advice to either see a psychiatrist, allow yourself to cry all the time, or my favorite, 'let go, and let God.' Those little tidbits of advice are great for people who are either very religious, are able to open up to complete strangers, or have time to devote to crying, but not for me. The fruitless search for a good book to guide me went on like that for fourteen months.

After my mom died and I had to surge through the grieving process and find my way through the immense sense of loss, I found myself thinking that I should write a book about it for other people like me, who needed help during the process but couldn't find it. My book is going to be a guide for people who need to know what to do, how to cope, and how to continue living while keeping the spirit of the lost person alive in your daily life. My book will not be about religion, crying, or seeing a shrink.