Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals, edited by Matthew Loscalzo and Marshall Forstein, coedited by Linda A. Klein. Oxford University Press, 2022. 243 pp.
While each of us experiences loss and grief uniquely and permanently, its universality should bind us. This premise is the guiding light of Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals. The 20 authors, ranging from doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists to social workers, pharmaceutical representatives, and attorneys, argue their own professional expertise did not adequately prepare, support, or console them during their own tragedies, and their colleagues’ help during their ordeal was marginal at best and nonexistent at worst. Therein lies the power of this book: Even the most apparently objective, calculating medical professional is human with all the frailties and limitations that go with it. Emotional and mental pain is impossible to eradicate from the memory, indeed from our everyday conduct, but we are not alone in our suffering.
The riveting accounts in this volume reveal the storytellers’ reactions to their personal tragedies at every stage of the grief spectrum. Some lost a parent, others a brother, and others a spouse. Some struggled with their own battle against cancer. One lost two sons in their childhood to a rare neurologic disorder. Another’s loss was his childhood at the hands of an abusive stepfather and complicit by beloved mother. Some shared these moments with significant others and adult children, and some were too young or geographically removed to fully understand what was occurring during their life-changing event. Some stories start in childhood, some at the beginning of an illustrious career, some at their professional peak, and others in their dotage. But no time seems opportune to brace oneself against the ravages of losing an important part of one’s life.
What we read over and again throughout these well-written tales is that any life, regardless how damaged or successful, is forever altered by loss, and the grieving process shapes the survivor’s identity. Indeed, moving through the chapters of Loss and Grief will compel readers to reflect about their own losses. Painful though they are and impossible to ultimately transcend, they offer a powerful reminder to cherish life, family, and friendship. This book helps us to better understand ourselves.
