Remembrances and Celebrations - A book of eulogies, elegies, letters and epitaphs, edited by Jill Werman Harris, published by Pantheon Books (1999, ISBN 0 375 40123 7, $25, 308 pages). The following is adapted from an e-mail to the Natural Death Centre by the book's editor, Jill Werman Harris, and from her introduction to the book.
The examples in this book are a direct way of assisting people to write eulogies. When one reads the eulogies, letters and elegies, one is able to embrace a very particular intellectual and spiritual mental climate necessary to create a meaningful tribute.
There are a number of books written by grief counsellors or death educators on how to cope with loss. I have tried to amass a meaningful and graceful collection of work so that such advice and counsel is given by such greats as Byron, Wordsworth, Bronte and others.
It is an innovative book, as it appreciates and praises a very special often overlooked genre of writing that truly touches the soul.
A great eulogist honours the dead uniquely, speaking not only about what everyone treasured most but about what captivated him or her personally. Outstanding tributes illuminate the idiosyncratic essence of an individual and etch the spirit of the deceased upon our minds so that the person remains with us even in death.
Jill Werman Harris (e-mail: Ixjip@aol.com).
The death of a poet is not a death of personality. Poets do not die ... A poet does not die in death; he lives in the heart ... He had once written - for Akhmatova, I think it was: "The word is a commandment, a spell, a charm. The grand design. And it may save."
The second is an excellent suggestion made in 1750 by Samuel Johnson when sending condolences to his publisher friend James Elphinston on the death of his mother:
There is one expedient by which you may in some degree continue her presence. If you write down minutely what you remember of her from your earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet further from you.
And finally I was moved by Wordsworth's letter after the death of his six-year-old son Thomas, writing to his friend Robert Southey:
For myself, dear Southey, I dare not say in what state of mind I am; I loved the Boy with the utmost love of which my soul is capable, and he is taken from me - yet in the agony of my spirit in surrendering such a treasure I feel a thousand times richer than if I had never possessed it.
";
echo $mb_link;
echo "
";
if ( session_is_registered('navigation')) {
echo " Return to Message Board's last display of selected messages";
}
?>