21 Books and Poems for Grief

Maybe losing a loved one is a part of life for which we can’t fully prepare, but the universality of dying—and grief—is one of the things that connects us as humans. Listening to Dr. Lucy Kalanithi’s conversation with our chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, about what happens in the end, we were reminded that living is different from being alive. Kalanithi is a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford and a general practitioner interested in end-of-life care. She’s also the widow of Dr. Paul Kalanithi, the author of the number one New York Times–bestselling memoir When Breath Becomes Air. They’ve shown us that truly entering into grief requires courage—and that it can be a beautiful and powerful experience. We asked Lucy Kalanithi to share the books that she and Paul loved, the ones they leaned on to get there.

Poems paul loved

• “The Waste Land”
  by T.S. Eliot
• “The Glories of Our Blood and State”
  by James Shirley
• “To Earthward”
  by Robert Frost
• “Elegy for Philip Sidney”
  by Fulke Greville

Books Paul loved

• Singing School
  by Robert Pinsky
• Being and Time
  by Martin Heidegger
• Cancer Ward
  by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
  by Annie Dillard
• Lament for a Son
  by Nicholas Wolterstorff
• The Unfortunates
  by B.S. Johnson

Poems Lucy loves

• “Good Bones”
  by Maggie Smith
• “Kindness”
  by Naomi Shihab Nye
• “Married”
  by Jack Gilbert
• “Hold Out Your Arms”
  by Helen Dunmore
• “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”
  by Adam Zagajewski

Books Lucy loves

• Being Mortal
  by Atul Gawande
• The Bright Hour
  by Nina Riggs
• Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved
  by Kate Bowler
• Lincoln in the Bardo
  by George Saunders
• Healing a Spouse’s Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas After Your Husband or Wife Dies
  by Alan Wolfelt
• Grieving Mindfully
  by Sameet Kumar