Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50156 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Library Journal
The death of one's parents is "the ultimate equal-opportunity" experience; becoming an orphan as an adult happens to nearly everybody. Yet despite the flood of self-help books on death and the grieving process, very little (with the exception of Hope Edleman's Motherless Daughters) has been written on parental loss. Incorporating his own personal experience with the accounts of others who have lost their parents, psychologist Levy examines this profound life-changing event with compassion and understanding. Since our parents "project an illusion of permanence," writes Levy, their death forces us to confront our own mortality (we are next in line to die) and to adjust to our new identities as orphaned adults. Indeed, he argues that this stripping of our childish beliefs is the first step toward true adulthood: "Perhaps only after parents have died can people find out what they are going to be when they grow up." This wise and caring book is recommended for all collections.AWilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rabbi Earl Grollmanm, D.H.L., D.D., author of Living When a Loved One Has Died
"I have never been more moved than by reading this extraordinarily personal, inspirational, and helpful book....Levy makes the old new and roots the new in the timeless. A gem to be treasured, a truly life-affirming accomplishment."

About the Author
Alexander Levy has been a psychologist in private practice for over twenty years. He lives on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Instant Angst
I picked up this book twice since my mother died 2 months ago. Both times it made me feel worse! I do not recommend this book for people in the early stages of grief.

Tender, understanding and especially supportive of orphaned adults of Eastern European descent.
Even though I finished reading this book almost three months ago, I have been waiting to write a review on it. My Lithuanian born father passed away in his home almost nine months ago. Like the author I grew up in a home where languages other than English--Lithuanian and German--were spoken and played on the radio. As described: "The vapors of richly flavored cabbage soups and exotically spiced stews so permeated the wallpaper and woodwork that the odors filled the house on sweltering summer days regardless of what was on the stove. Homes were shrines to foreign lands, walls draped in faded tapestries and bookshelves lined with illegibly embossed and brittle book bindings." How true! My father almost to his dying day enjoyed the food of his homeland still cooked by my mother. (How he loved saltibarscius--or cold beet soup!) I miss those days of childhood and could never truly recreate what they meant to me growing up in suburban Detroit. However the author reassures me that we are never entirely free of our attachment there: "Who we knew, who we loved, and who we have been loved by are enduring facts that provide continuity in our otherwise changing lives." Likewise it is my father's memory and the memory of my mother with him that endures in my heart--memories left that are so endearing, so precious and worthy to be "preserved as carefully as if they were brittle snapshots displayed in ornate frames, on a table covered with the finest linen or lace." I know that my mother will be joining my father in the not-to-distant future but I know that her memory, as his, will never die. I truly believe that in loving and preserving the gifts of a heritage our parents gave us that we are given the strength to endure and go on. The Lithuanian people, a culture that has existed for over 700 years, from a country often occupied by its enemies, in the past not even noted on some western maps, can attest to that.

The Orphaned Adult
Most everyone outlives their parents. It doesn't matter at what age you lose them, once they are both gone, you are an orphan. My husband of 65 has just lost his 96 year old mother and he feels as abandoned as a child. This book is a great comfort because it addresses this very common but still emotionally serious subject. As Levy points out, there are volumes dedicated to the loss of spouse, child, siblings, etc but nothing to comfort us all who lose our parents. I have given this book to many friends who have lost their final parent - in fact this order was for two friends. I recommend it highly.