We live in a grief-illiterate society. After the death of a child we often hear “there are no words.” But there are words. Oil for Your Lantern offers the newly bereaved, and those who love them, a gentle introduction to life after the death of a child, sharing words when we don’t yet have them ourselves.

Oil for Your Lantern is a series of thirty essays written by Elizabeth Brady since the sudden death of her son, Mack, from sepsis in 2012. Elizabeth’s essays move both outward and deeply inward, exploring practical, cultural, and spiritual aspects of mourning a beloved child.

“There is no aspect of life that Mack’s death did not touch,” Elizabeth said of the slow unfolding of a new and unwanted identity as a bereaved mom.

Oil for Your Lantern is split into three sections plus resources and further reading. The first section addresses the early, bewildering days and months of grief when everything looks the same but is forever changed. The second section journeys through the calendar of holidays and the enduring absence and presence of beloved children in every recipe, ornament, and song. The third section moves inward to the spiritual life, leaning on the wisdom of contemplative Christian women of old and new.

May this book be a gift of oil to help light the lantern each of us must learn to carry along the shadowy path ahead.