waynegalreads

This is a really beautiful book. I read it one sitting. It is memoir about the sudden death of the author’s husband at age 32, and the two years after as she copes with both the emotional and physical pain she endured (and still endures). I’ve read several books about grief recently. I wasn’t intentionally searching for a book on how to deal with grief, although my family has suffered loss recently. Books about grief resonate with people because it is an emotion that is common to everyone. We all will experience the loss of a loved one- maybe not in the dramatic and sudden way that author, Amy Lin, did, but grief is a universal human emotion. We deal with losses of many different kinds throughout our lives: loss of friendships, loss of jobs, loss of marriages…. Amy Lin’s writing is gorgeous. The story is not linear and moves from stories about her relationship with her husband and then forward to her experience dealing with grief. She points out that grief is not just emotional trauma it’s physical trauma and can affect one’s brain and health for years. She talks about not knowing what was supposed to be normal to experience while grieving. She notes that the 5 stages of grief were not intended to describe the bereavement process. This is something my husband and I learned in our training to become Hospice volunteers. The 5 stages arose from a study about how people deal with their own terminal diagnoses. They were not meant as a roadmap through bereavement. In an interview, Amy Lin says that the best thing to do to help people who are grieving is to witness it- to give them space to express their grief.

This book began as a substack she started almost immediately after her husband’s death. She wrote every week for a couple of years. Her therapist suggested that she write about her experience with the pain of grief because the therapist believed that people don’t survive this kind of pain without allowing other people to know how they feel.

The other books I read this year that have grief as the main theme are:

Grief is For People- Sloane Crosley (memoir)

A Hole in the World- Amanda Held Opelt (memoir)

After Annie- Anna Quindlen (fiction)

The Last Love Note- Emma Grey (fiction)

Even a book about Edgar Allan Poe, A Mystery of Mysteries- the Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak had as a main theme, the despair and physical pain Poe experienced after the death of his wife.

If you are dealing with grief, know someone who is, or just want to read a book that really taps into deep human emotion, give this book a try. Or any of the others listed above. I enjoyed them all!