#Those who remain book how to#
#Those who remain book full#

Universal and particular, shared and solitary, grief rearranges every aspect of life. From breath prayers and nature walks to the examen and sacred reading, Shelton guides readers through each spiritual practice and its potential for sustaining hope and connecting us to God.Īll who love will eventually grieve. Author Fran Tilton Shelton, a spiritual director and cofounder of the nonprofit Faith & Grief, walks us through the questions that gather in the wake of a loved one's death: Why are we exhausted? What do we do with guilt? How do we take care of ourselves? And when will we get over our grief? Each chapter offers a spiritual practice, emerging from a variety of religious traditions, for those who remain. The Spirituality of Grief honors the complex nature of grief and offers simple comfort: we are not alone, and there is no one right way to grieve.

#Those who remain book how to#

After the death of a loved one, we ask questions about the meaning of life, the whys of death, and how to carry our sorrow. Ruth Crocker remembered that she had delivered Dave to the Eiger: that part of the story was perfect-and perhaps enough.Grief is all-consuming. The uniforms, gown, and letters had dissolved into a soggy clump. Opening the casket produced shock and disappointment along with enlightenment. Encouragement from men at the reunions led her to dig up the gravesite. Since then, she has attended all of the company’s reunions. The men of the company taught her that “fallen friends are ageless, frozen in time.” Their memories of their Captain were as vivid as hers and validated her feelings for him. The story jumps from when she spread the ashes on Eiger to 2006 to when she first attended an Alpha Company, 22nd Infantry reunion.

Her only solace came from her and her husband’s families. The Army’s mismanagement of notification, condolences, and information regarding how he died compounded Ruth Crocker’s confusion and helplessness. Instead, her young husband was gone instantly.

Death was not new to her, except that she had seen it as a process that took time among old people. They even scaled an “easy” level of the Eiger’s west side.ĭave Crocker died two weeks before Ruth was to meet him for R&R in Hawaii. He introduced her to the world at large through travels across the United States for military training and while in Germany as an infantry platoon leader and aide-de-camp. The young couple married the day after he graduated from West Point. Her parents owned and ran a Mystic, Connecticut, nursing home. Prior to meeting Dave, Ruth was part of a family closed to outside influences. “I don’t want to remember how much he loved me.” Ruth Crocker tells of her recovery from losing her husband: basically, she had to overcome suppressing her grief.īurying his letters was a defense mechanism: “I’ll never look back. Ruth Crocker’s story in Those Who Remain: Remembrance and Reunion After War (Elm Grove, 283 pp., $18.95 paper $5.39, Kindle) is a tribute to the power of young love and the depth to which it bonds people.

Forty years later, she had the casket exhumed “to excavate deep love for this young man who transformed world.” After that, as a war widow at the age of twenty-three, Ruth tried to forget Dave.

#Those who remain book full#

Although Dave Crocker’s wife Ruth had his body cremated, she also held a full military burial for a casket filled with her husband’s dress uniforms, her wedding gown, and letters he had written to her during their four years together.Ī few months later, Ruth Crocker went to Switzerland and scattered her husband’s ashes at the foot of the Eiger’s North Face, his favorite spot on earth. On May 17, 1969, a North Vietnamese booby trap killed Army Captain David Rockwell Crocker, Jr., the commander of Alpha Company, 22nd Infantry, and three of his men.