DEATH'S SINGLE PRIVACY: Grieving and Personal Growth

Passed on,"" ""gone away,"" ""in heaven with God"" -- all the euphemisms are so much bunk in confronting grief and the fact of death -- a word we shun in an attempt to avoid its finality. And becasue of it, everyone -- starting with the doctor who was more thrown at having to break the news than was thirty-year-old Joyce Phipps at hearing of her husband's fatal heart attack, the ministers at the church where she was an active member, her professor husband's Yale colleagues as well as her own parents who instinctively attempted to reassume custodial care -- those closest to this widowed mother of two young sons (ages three and five) ultimately failed -- even with the best intentions in the world -- to provide supportive solace, guidance toward growth or practical suggestions for her new life. Too often, writes Phipps, remarriage -- and the sooner the better -- is seen as the only option available. Not surprisingly, though, it's apt to be the widows who have previously reappraised their individuality -- the year before her husband died Phipps, spurred on by the women's movement, had begun to work toward a library degree -- who are best prepared to get it all together again. A very moving, direct and, like Lynn Caine's Widow (KR, p. 396), -- wise book about a subject we generally prefer to bury.