A beautiful but terrible thing that comes with writing about grief is connecting with readers over grief. Those connections come in places obvious—mostly friends who I know have recently experienced a loss. But they also pop up in unexpected ways: A text from a friend who just entered a season of mourning. A professional connection who responds to a coffee meeting request with a note about this project. And conversations with my fellow writers as we wait in line at a book signing.
A few weeks ago, Kerry Madden-Lunsford and I caught up as we waited for Margaret and Billy Renkl to sign our copies of The Weedy Garden. (I must interrupt to shamelessly promote this interview I conducted with the sibling pair.) I told Kerry about The Grief Library and we chatted about various grief writers. But she couldn’t recall the name of a writer she wanted to tell me about.
Days later, I was delighted to see her name pop up in my email with that name: Thomas Lynch. He’s a poet/undertaker whose essay collection The Undertaking is now on my wish list. It’s a series of reflections on his small town, as seen through his experience burying the town’s dead. I have a feeling it won’t be the last Thomas Lynch I read.
Kerry also shared an installment of “Hello, Mortal,” Maura McInerny-Rowley’s newsletter about death. On International Women’s Day, McInerny-Rowley wrote about deathwork and women returning to a responsibility that had long been ours. The essay reminded me of a scene in “Hamnet” in which Agnes prepares her son’s body for burial. It’s tender and painful, both in the book and on screen. Though this is a newsletter about grief, not explicitly about death, I find death rituals fascinating. Reading helps me understand things, and I tore through books such as “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by Caitlin Doughtey after my sister’s death. So yes, please bring on the articles and examinations of the ways we bury (or cremate, or compost, or whatever) our dead.
More directly on the subject of grief: My grad school colleague Kim Cross recently wrote about grieving her mother. Kim and her mom were close. I recall seeing her mom cheering Kim on at a launch event for “What Stands In A Storm,” and her mom joined the family in Idaho when Kim, her son and her husband moved several years back. They’re a family of cyclists, with Kim’s mom picking up mountain biking in her 60s. She was a very cool woman, and her influence is evident in Kim. That’s clear in “Surfing Waves of Grief,” a beautiful retelling of Kim’s past few months without her mother.
And my friend and bookseller Nellie recently sent me a Washington Post essay about how “Anne of Green Gables” helped the writer through her grief. It’s a beautiful ode to this favorite children’s book, and I deeply relate to the experience of searching for a comforting book in hard times. (Nellie was shocked to learn I haven’t read Anne myself. I’ve got homework to do.)
Now, I’ve got a question for you. I’ve amassed a collection of dozens of books about grief, but I need recommendations, too! Have you read a book that has helped you face the demise of a romantic relationship? It could be a divorce or a breakup, and a novel, a memoir, self-help or poetry. I’m also looking for books that deal with infertility issues. Right now the majority of my list is focused on death and addiction, and I want to be equipped with recommendations for a variety of grief causes. Send me your thoughts!
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