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Book Reviews
Re-membering Lives
Ever since Michael White (1989) introduced, "Saying Hullo Again: The incorporation of the lost relationship in the resolution of grief," we have been eager for a more comprehensive articulation of Narrative remembering conversational practices with the bereaved and dying for our clinical and academic instructional work as well as for our learning videotape productions. At last, Lorraine Hedtke and John Winslade (2004) have provided more than anticipated in their extrodinary book, Re-membering Lives: Conversations with the Dying and Bereaved. Their work has already been heralded by Ken Gergen and others as an uplifting gift that reconstructs the realities of death. We agree with Robert Neimeyer who describes their work as a compassionate and conceptually sophisticated new perspective on the challenges and possibilities of bereavement that is both revolutionary and readable. The reader will be provided numerous examples of inspiring stories of this fresh approach to the negotiation of death and grief. For some it may be an introduction of ideas founded in principles of constructive conversations with respectful listening and reflecting discourses that focus on anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff's ideas of "re-membering" and "dis-membering lives. There work boldly stands in contrast with contrast to the popular culturally embedded assumption about thee need to seek closure, complete unfinished business and working through the stages of grief with dominant processes of forgetting with final goodbyes or 'letting-go and moving-on' For the practicing clinician, clergy or other professionals the book offers a spiritual and pragmatic opportunity to provide for a different empowering way of thinking about and doing grief work. The book will also assist some of the dying and bereave. Each reader may have experiences, similar to ours, of keeping those you have loved and loss. Alive as part of the membership of life. We were particularly moved by the stories that reflected personal losses in their own lives. They disclosed how their unique re-membering has touched and extended the life legacies of those they have loved and lost. We are both privileged to know the authors on a personal and professional basis and are aware of how "Re-membering Lives" reflects their relational ethical positions of performing their own love and respect for life. For those more visual learners we would like you to recommend educational videotape, "Grief Takes A Holiday" where Lorraine Hedtke demonstrates an alternative kind of conversation that offers a more positive focus on grief and loss tthrough excerpts of narrative interviews with seven elderly women in their eighties and nineties who share stories about loved ones whom they have lost. Hedtke, L. & Winslade, J. (2004). Re-membering Lives: Conversations with the dying and the bereaved. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. Myerhoff, B. Neimeyer, R. A. (2004). White, M. (1989). Saying Hullo Again: The incorporation of the lost relationship in the resolution of grief. In M. White (ed.) Selected Papers (pp. 29-35). Adlalide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications. |