The Human Side of Heartbreak

Sooner or later, everyone meets the undertaker---that final contact with the hereafter. His mere mention sends chills up the spine; the image is always there, hidden on the back walls of our minds: a tall, hunkered figure, gaunt and pale of face, cold hands, black suit, deep voice. Stories about him hold a morose sense of fascination, yet aside from this morbid image, pun intended, undertaking has long been a reverent livelihood practiced by gifted people who handle grief by choice, a profession that deals daily with intense emotions surrounded by sorrow.
There is awesome power in our need to ‘story.’ From our stories flows true and abiding love of family and life. As we tell our tales, we heal ourselves. Relating love-filled memories has purpose to our life and death experiences---searching for wholeness among fractured parts, exposing our pasts and gaining direction, learning how a lost love influences the present and the future. The emotional fulfillment of ‘story’ creates awareness that helps heal not only the physical realm, but also the spiritual realm of loss. Funeral directors, the truest of grief counselors, the guardians of our hearts, listen and understand those they serve. Having watched his sons companion the hurting of others makes, Wayne Bethard has compiled a wonderful collection of stories, essays and tales that exemplify this highly respected profession as reported and told by the truest masters of sorrow, the very ones who bridge that disturbing abyss between death and life. The Human Side of Heartbreak is one of those seldom seen pieces of literature that not only puts those who deal with death in a different light; it changes your whole outlook on life.