The Art of Consolation: Giving Others Hope

Have you ever wondered: When someone dies, what happens next?

It’s a mystery, for sure. If you have lost a loved one, I understand how you feel.

If you ask most estate lawyers what happens next, they could give you a step-by-step guide to probate a will or remove estate executors. That doesn’t help with your grief long after a spouse or parent passes.

This book review offers you possible grieving options.

I enjoyed a book called, On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times. This 2021 book of 284 pages by Michael Ignatieff, former head of the Liberal Party of Canada, Harvard professor and President of the Central European University in Budapest, provides a history of hope in times of grief and suffering. Michael Ignatieff suggests that loss and sorrow is now only an illness from which we recover and are no longer part of any religious tradition.

Is this correct?

The book starts with a visit to a friend who had lost his wife. Ignatieff wishes to console him. The friend says, “If only I could believe that I would see her again…”. The author could say nothing to console him if there was no paradise.

Ignatieff’s theory is that the word consolation, once entrenched in religious traditions, has lost its meaning. It is no longer the subject for philosophers that taught us how to live and die.

Places of worship are now empty. People were once consoled in collective mourning rituals. Now, if you seek help in dark times of misery, your suffering is treated like an illness. Professionals help you recover. This book explains how people, since the time of Job, in the Bible, have endured tragedy even when they cannot find meaning in any religious belief.

Ignatieff was invited to lecture in 2017 about the Book of Psalms during a choral festival in Utrech. The author tried to understand how this ancient religious language could create a mysterious spell on nonbelievers and how exactly it consoled.

This book was deeply personal for the author who acknowledged that his parents’ deaths over 30 years ago led to a lengthy period of desolation and grieving.

The book describes a brief history of consolation approaches from Stoics, Hebrews and Christians. Also included are modern ideas that lead Marx, Freud, and others with faith in revolution and therapy. In dark times, the author claims we do not need doctrines but people who keep going, despite everything.

The book is a most enjoyable read. It does not preach. Each chapter contains stories. In a story format, the book covers Cicero’s tears on the death of his daughter, the consolations of philosophy and history, war and the death of children, hospices and the good death. The author provides further reading notes identifying his resources and acknowledges that the language of music in a secular world replaced scripture for some.

The author notes that the religious promise of salvation may not be available, but understanding the religious texts could offer a promise of hope. Hope is the essential part of consolation. When we suffer major losses, we must question a larger purpose of our lives. If life makes sense to us, then hope is possible.

I particularly enjoyed reading that Cicero consoled himself by writing. He claimed it was the best way to achieve consolation. Now, therapy and psychoanalysis have been replaced by numerous therapeutic approaches to “medicate misery”. Loss and sadness are now treated as illnesses from which we can recover.

The author discovers that there is always someone else who had the experience of pain and loss to share. Ignatieff greets poet Czeslaw Milosz and declares that “Consolation is always a gift… it makes our lives worth living.”

Very well written and immensely enjoyable. I kept reading to learn what happens next.

Are you worried about what to do when someone dies? I offer you a meeting to discuss your needs. Contact me to advantage of this meeting by Zoom or in-person in my Toronto west end office. Arrange your meeting.

I am a Certified Specialist in Estates and Trusts Law. I can give you expert tips to end your worries.