In Memoriam

Rating:
Summary: Helped Heal My Heart
Review: After my mother's death, I felt the deepest pain of my life. This book helped heal my heart. It is impossible to read without shedding many healing tears.

Rating:
Summary: A Heartfelt Look at Grief and Loss
Review: IN MEMORIAM could be called Henri Nouwen's version of C.S. Lewis' A GRIEF OBSERVED. Just as Lewis looked at the questions of good and evil, faith and loss in his classic work about the death of his beloved wife, Nouwen looks at these same issues in this work about losing his mother. When IN MEMORIAM was first published, there were some critics who believed that Nouwen was too quick to publish this work and that he still had grieving issues to work out, yet very quickly the book found an audience with people who believed that Nouwen was speaking directly to the heart. To be fair, the relationship between Nouwen and his mother is too idealized, and in later writings he speaks more honestly about his relationship with his mother. Yet this idealization is the honest way many of us feel after an immediate loss. When faced with loss, even the worst of sinners becomes an instant saint. It's only later we look at a person's life in a more realistic manner. Some of his answers about life and death may seem to simplistic, yet readers who know Nouwen's writings know that when Nouwen wrote, he was writing for himself as much as for his readers, and the struggles he tries to help readers understand are his own struggles. In the end, what we discover is a person who tries to look at loss in the light of faith and we do so by reading the words of a writer who honestly shares what he is feeling at the moment of loss.

The power of IN MEMORIAM does not come from Nouwen's insights into death, loss, and grief, as profound as these insights happen to be. Rather in Nouwen's work we find someone who is struggling with these questions and invites the reader to struggle as well. In a sense Nouwen becomes a companion with his readers. He offers a sense of hope, which is what Nouwen attempts to do in most of his writings, and judging from the lives he has touched, obviously succeeds in doing.


Rating:
Summary: After reading this book, I knew I was grieving, not crazy!
Review: This book helped me through the darkest days after the death of my mother. I thought, I was prepared for her death and being without her. How surprised I was to feel such a deep sense of loss and longing. I thought I was going crazy. After reading the author's reaction to his mother's death and how one grieves, I realized with a thankful heart that I was not crazy. I began to start to heal my broken heart.