The poet Emily Dickinson wrote about it:
I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes; I wonder if it weighs like mine, Or has an easier size. So did C.S. Lewis and Joan Didion, both famously and well. Now, an LMU professor has published his take on death and loss. It is called simply:About Grief. Six years ago, Ron Marasco, professor of theatre arts, and research assistant Brian Shuff had no inkling that a course they created to help young actors get at their emotions would blossom into a book they would co-author on this most universal of experiences. In a mere 198 pages, it unpacks this most universal of events, evoking deep emotions as it takes the reader on a tour of the literature of loss while offering straightforward observations, stories from life (what Marasco calls “these gems”) and practical advice on coping with the death of a loved one. So far, the book tour has included a half dozen signings and readings from New York to Arizona, as well as television interviews. They will do a book signing early in the new year at the Borders in Century City. The experience opens up a new vein. “When people talk about it they really bring very great self to the subject,” said Marasco. “There is an emotional depth that makes people more poetic than they would ever be.” The Tempe, Ariz., reading was particularly poignant. Shuff was born there and his family came, including his grandparents, to hear the reading. Shuff, 25, is no stranger to loss. On his eighth birthday in 1993, his mother, Jill, died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Jill’s lifelong friend Terri came to the reading. She stood in line to get her copy signed. A cascade of emotions crested when Brian looked up and recognized her. It had been a dozen years since they had seen each other. They hugged and held on. “I didn’t want to let go of her,” he recalled. “I don’t know what that was. She is a very strong connection to my mother that I don’t have anymore. She is her age, the age my mother would be now. It was an odd, weird feeling. I felt it was the closest I ever was going to get to my mother again.” “About Grief” is full of stories like that. The course, “Observing Grief,” was first taught in 2005. Brian’s father, psychologist David Shuff, spoke to the class, focusing on his expertise in helping patients cope with the immediate and long-term emotional responses to death. “It was at that time that I began to talk about doing a book and collaborating with Brian,” said Marasco, who credits the supportive and innovative teaching practices at the College of Communication and Fine Arts with making possible both the course and the book. The course’s main assignment was to interview someone who has suffered a major loss — someone the student didn’t already know. “I wanted them to have the experience of approaching a grieving person,” said Marasco. The idea was to get beyond acting theory and books about exercises. Acting calls “for empathy, for understanding what someone else is going through,” said Shuff. “Talking to someone right in front of you makes it something concrete” and requires the student to be present and react. Next up for Marasco is a course called “The Drama of Addiction,” which will be taught this spring. As was true with “Observing Grief,” he will use plays, films, music and books to explore the literature and the reality of the material. Marasco explains that addiction is a common theme in many plays and novels, and also brings with it substantial drama due to its effects on people and their relationships. Marasco freely tells folks that he stopped drinking 18 years ago. “A particular interest I want to explore in this course is looking at … what I would call low-grade addiction,” he said. “This is an addiction that rarely rises to the level of hardcore addictions, such as no DWI’s, medical cataclysms, etc., but is insidious in the way it zaps people’s creative and intellectual powers. It is not that bad things happen, it’s that good things don’t!” |