A Long Letting Go: Meditations on Losing Someone You Love

by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Wise, nurturing reflections for caregivers letting go of loved ones This beautiful volume of reflections by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is for family members and friends who are doing the life-changing work of accompanying someone on the final stretch of his or her journey. In quiet counterpoint to our hurried lives, A Long Letting Go invites caregivers to slow down for reflection and prayer as they prepare to say good-bye to a beloved friend or family member and grieve that loss. Based on McEntyre's personal and professional experience with the dying, these gentle meditations — each consisting of a short opening quote, a reflection, and a prayer — offer comfort, direction, hope, and respite to caregivers during a difficult season of their lives.

Genres: Grief, Christian

137 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 20, 2015

About the author

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is a fellow of the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, and she teaches at UC Berkeley. Her other books include Drawn to the Light: Poems on Rembrandt's Religious Paintings, In Quiet Light: Poems on Vermeer's Women, and Patient Poets: Illness from Inside Out.

Reviews

[Carol Bakker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marilyn McEntyre has much experience keeping vigil at death beds. The book has short meditations, infused with personal observations, ending with prayer.

The prayers (except I am saddened her prayers, though Trinitarian, never address Our Father) were comforting and encouraging, especially when death often leaves us incapable of articulating our soul's cry.

Help my grief to melt into gratitude in due time,
and teach me complete reliance on your holy will.

McEntyre knows her Bible; she also quotes Denise Levertov, Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis. One section of the book is devoted to mourning, a discipline that makes our sorrow hospitable to those who are willing to enter into it.

But as surely as we have to let go of the one we loved and walk away, finally, from the bedside, we have to let go of that part of ourselves that was shaped and animated by his or her presence, and let ourselves be bent by the wind of the Spirit to new and modified purposes.

While she writes about the agony of a lingering death, she passes over many other difficult death scenarios, ones that, for various reasons, could never be called good or satisfying.

My perception is that, these days, more people are dying from wasting diseases. A Long Letting Go offers guidance and prayers for those supporting and caring for the ill, and words which could be encouraging to send in a note.

[Jodie Pine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetic, prayerful, and practical. This book would be helpful for someone preparing for their own death or for the death of a loved one. As one who feels drawn toward hospital or hospice chaplaincy, I found the author's insights, personal experience, and prayers to be especially compelling and inspiring.

[Jill Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound and beautifully written. All stuff without sap.

[E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A series of meditations and prayers that could be helpful to someone coping with the terminal illness and death of a loved one.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book 5 stars because of the second half; the section titled Mourning. It is priceless. It is helpful when walking with others as they mourn and in our own mourning. It is beautiful and grace-filled.
The first part of the book is about being with someone as they are dying. It has a very narrow focus on those who are in hospice care and know they are at the end of their life. This section could be comforting for some but it felt unrealistic. So many people do die on their own terms. They do not have a choice or time to come to peace.
This book was written by a women with hospice experience and so that is her focus. I will use the second half as a valuable resource for a long time.

[Timothy Hoiland · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What we know about grace is that it often emerges in darkness, flowers in dry places, and takes us by surprise. A momentary lifting of the weight of grief, a dream in which all is well, a line in the day’s lectionary, an old hymn we find ourselves humming that offers new awareness, a phone call from one who knows how to listen from their heart, an acute awareness of the kingdom of heaven that is ‘near at hand’ – these are just some of the ways answers come – not to answer the question of why, but to meet our great need.”