The gentleness, kindness and empathy extended to me was so reassuring

A unique collection of poems that sheds a great deal of engaging light on the difficult, universal issue of coping with the loss of loved ones. Hilary…who has a PhD in Practical Theology…is very experienced in pastoral care. It is not a religious book. Anyone who has faced grief will find much in this book to relate to. Hilary is very honest in what she reveals and this is what makes this book so special…(it) is an inspirational, healing resource for any grieving community.

It takes courage for a writer to present her intensely personal reflections about grief and loss. Hilary…has with courage and generosity offered her poems in the hope that they will resonate with others in their own journey of grief, loss and healing. In these poems, the rawness and disruption of grief are threaded with love – the love of place, love of friends and family, and most of all the close and loving relationship between father and daughter – these poems are both a unique experience of the writer and a reflection of the commonalities that are to be found on the pathways of grief and loss and healing.

This book is a precious gift of poetry and story, embodying warmth, kindness and spirit. Hilary has wrapped her soulful expressions of love, grief and mourning after the death of her father into this very accessible work of art. She reminds us of the importance of honoring and trusting our pain, because when tenderly embraced, it may teach us about our depth of loving, the importance of remembering and the re-discovery of joy. Hilary…gives expression to the very human experience of love and loss with the kind of courage that inspires hope. It will become one of those books you carry with you amid your own “earthquakes” of loss – to remind you that someone out there, on some level, possibly understands your pain and anguish.

Hilary Smith’s Grief’s Shadowed Path tracks her journey of mourning after the death of her father. Her poems, quiet and direct, are for the prose reader; helpful and consolatory.

Grief is the most private of emotions. To share it demands a vulnerability beyond most of us, and a risk of seeming mawkish or self indulgent. Hilary Smith, a Scottish pastor, theologian, writer and retreat leader offers a masterclass in mourning.

Her new book takes us on the journey through her father Joe’s dying, her grieving and finally moving on. But not before we’ve learnt to navigate the clutter of guilt and regrets, the condolences and the platitudes, the people who don’t know what to say to you, so talk instead about the “rain and the price of fish”.

It is written as poetry but reads more like the prose of everyday conversation interspersed with signs from the natural world that tell Hilary her father’s life goes on. “He was a beautiful Dad. He still is”, she writes. The book is about the chemistry of enduring presence, which tells the most personal of stories in a way that lets outsiders observe without intruding.

If you have lost someone you love and wonder whether death needs to have the last word, this is a book worth reading.

Hilary’s poetry reveals the vulnerability of self-realisation when death of a loved one threatens to swamp personal response…this courageous book, offers means for personal reflection and meditation. Hilary reveals her heart, broken, yet in her loss, finding a legacy of renewal and strength.

I read this book in one sitting. It drew me right into Hilary’s journey and undid me” too, so that I spent the weekend watching the rain and letting her words sink in. I collected some of her words like shells on the beach. I found the poems very comforting and they also helped me to see my own pathway a little more clearly. I still have a way to go on my journey and maybe that’s why her image of the cottage by the sea and the invitation to “come and see” resonated so much for me, the stirrings to begin to see a new way of living and keep trusting that. Her book spoke to me again about the need for stories to be told…and shared.

This collection of poetry comes with a backstory. Uncovering this story is as engaging as the poems themselves and enhances the uniqueness of the collection. Subtitled ‘Poems of Loss and Healing’, it is an account of Hilary Smith’s journey over the period leading up to and following the death of her father, Joe, in 2007.

The collection opens with the poet recounting how there was an expectation among friends and colleagues that with her father now dead her life would ‘get back to normal’ because she no longer had to worry about him. The very opposite was true. Grief is more than just sadness; anger, frustration and a feeling of having let a loved-one down can be dominating emotions as we discover in the opening poems.

The health system is taken to task, exacerbating grief in the way it adds stress upon stress to loved ones ill-equipped to provide the level of care they so wish to offer. Precisely at a time Hilary wishes to be a daughter she becomes a carer while also continuing her role as bread winner. And there you were / another pawn in the chess game of healthcare / the patient patient / discharged from hospital so many times when you weren’t well. / We need the beds, the junior doctor said.

And then there is the moment of death itself. The mobile phone rings / your life / ebbing away / I run … run … run. Death, as we all know, comes with its red tape and protocols. There are forms to fill in, the funeral, the wake, catering, condolences to acknowledge. All these make demands at a time we are low in spirit and at our most vulnerable. Hilary Smith uses her skill as a poet to unpack and explore these experiences and their attendant emotions.

Joe, it seems, had his quirky ways and a sense of humour to match. Amongst the emotional turmoil surrounding his passing is the feeling of astonishment when our poet finds his much-loved French grammar book open and lying on the floor underneath her desk. Well, he was a Scot and a seafarer at that. Can’t rationalise it / didn’t imagine it / know that it happened.

Memories, dreams, flashbacks, the first Christmas with Joe and the problem of forgetfulness which is one of grief’s most common symptoms are explored. And the aptly named Ambushed cuts to the heart of how grief can so easily catch us out. Strange the way / triggers return me to the shadows.

All of us will encounter grief at some time in our life, and often more than once. It is, after all, the price of love. It also generates many books, most of which are of a psychological or self-help nature. Grief’s Shadowed Path is different and not because it is a collection of beautifully crafted verse. Hilary Smith has used her journey to capture grief’s rawness and unpredictability. She also offers hope and a heart-centred guidebook to people lost in grief’s emotional maze.

Hilary writes from her heart, in a chronicle of her last months with her beloved father, his death, and the time that has passed since then. Because Grief’s Shadowed Path is very specific, very personal — the story of one daughter’s loss of a father — it invites readers into dialogue with their own losses. I alternated between reading her beautiful poetry and reflecting on experiences in my own life and the lives of my parishioners. A wonderful book for personal grief work and for caregivers.

There is something quite rare about this book. Hilary Smith’s writing does not leave me focussed on her story. Her poems were borne out of her own stories of loss, but as I read them, I hear my own stories and know that I am not alone. I also hear the stories of those I journey with.

The words Hilary chooses are seemingly simple, yet they express the complexity of grief – the inner chaos, the contradictions, tension and struggles that we experience in the wake of loss and bereavement. The book contains profound insights and deep wisdom. This is undoubtedly enabled by Hilary’s experience as an ordained minister. Hilary’s father encouraged her to be courageous when preaching the gospel and to ‘tell it as it is.’ She has followed her father’s advice and told grief and loss as it is. In so doing, she is a herald of hope. Grief’s Shadowed Path is a taonga.

This book is beautiful in so many ways. The poems are very moving, reminding me that the personal is also universal. Her poetry is a double blessing, helping to integrate her deep loss, and at the same time a gift of recognition and hope for others who experience grief and perhaps may not have the words to express it. Beautiful photography too, and the closing poem, “Fragments of Light” is exquisite.