Abstract
We are all at our core human beings, and when we are faced with loss we experience grief. It can be hidden and suppressed, guarded and ignored, but grief does not go away. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore's book, Bearing the Unbearable, tells the story of grief from the perspective of bereaved parents. The book pushes past society's urge to suppress the emotional trauma that parents experience. Dr. Cacciatore, or Jojo, argues that despite the feelings of sadness, longing, and pain that may ensue, families are forever asking the world and especially their loved ones to remember their children and to sit in their grief with them.
Dr. Cacciatore, a bereaved parent herself, reflects on her personal experience with grief by threading the story of her daughter's life and death throughout the narrative of her own life. She describes emotions as muddy and complicated blurring the lines between sadness, grief, and love, arguing that they are not mutually exclusive feelings. She proposes this idea in her opening as she writes about the mirror of grief and love saying, “that one is not possible without the other.” Dr. Cacciatore continues to build on this notion as she further describes the dual nature of these emotions, asserting, parents are both grieving and grateful. Christine O'Brien, a bereaved parent educator who collaborated on this review stated that when she read how Dr. Cacciatore describes emotions, she knew that she “gets it.”
Dr. Cacciatore also proposes that the process of working with grief instead of dismissing it or ignoring it is a lifelong battle that does not end with acceptance, but instead it is a journey that can be cushioned by building coping skills. She describes her sessions with parents and how as she builds rapport, she challenges them with difficult exercises. She encourages families to write letters to their children, to think of them at the age they would be now if they were alive, and then to write a letter from their children to them now—a truly metaphysical experience. These exercises appear to help bereaved parents begin to realize that their children are still a part of them. This concept is summarized beautifully in chapter 13 and echoed by Christine: “It is a balance that bereaved parents accept sometimes unknowingly…If we are to want more in this life we are to risk growing and possibly losing…It is contraction and expansion of the heart and its ability to love where most pain and joy is felt by a grieving parent. To remove all pain would in fact erase the child for whom my heart longs to remember—acceptance means I choose to accept the pain.”
Beyond the exercises she guides, Dr. Cacciatore also reflects on the power of artistic expression, poetry, the healing words of siblings and children, and the beautiful complexity of cultural practices and traditions. She describes her process of asking without assumption or judgment. This is exemplified by the unique grieving practices of Native Americans and her role of understanding their cultural rituals and practices around autopsy, familial decision making, spirituality, and burial.
As the book flows with short chapters that are dense with raw unfettered honesty and unconditional love and understanding that could only come from her life dedicated to helping the bereaved, it also symbolically reflects the prolonged aspect of the grief journey. Dr. Cacciatore asserts, “The grief journey can never be rushed—including meaning-seeking and compassionate action.” As Christine puts it, “This is why, in my opinion, so very few human beings really grieve well because it takes too long, and the costs are unknown. It is also why involving bereaved parents is such a great idea—through their ability to help others they can heal and make meaning. No one truly understands as much as someone who has taken a similar journey.”
Bearing the Unbearable was impossible to put down. It quickly becomes obvious that you are reading a book that is rich with imagery blended with emotion and tied into traumatic stories of loss. Woven within the chapters, Dr. Cacciatore also offers extra guidance that may be helpful for palliative and hospice providers as she talks about how she maintains resilience in the face of her magnetism that draws the public to share with her their most vibrant and terrible stories of loss. Bearing the Unbearable is beautiful, and a must read for caregivers, bereaved parents, and learners. It is the closest thing to having a deep unlimited conversation with parents carrying their child forever at their side.