A Memoir

      A memoir by a best selling author, Horse, People of the Book, Year of Wonders, and Pulitzer Prize winning March, is likely to be good, and it is. Geraldine Brooks', husband and best selling author, Tony Horwitz,  died instantly of heart failure on a Washington, D.C., sidewalk, at age 60. Her memoir recounts the brutal way she learns of it in the callousness of big city medical response.

     She lists all the ways she was unprepared for his sudden death. Then, too, were the many ways society was unhelpful: e.g., cancelling the family's health insurance, cancelling the credit cards, needing to go to court to prevent a guarding being appointed for their minor child, etc. She knew nothing about the family finances  including the necessity of making a estimated tax payments as self-employed. 

    A significant theme emerges of the societal pressures that do not allow time to grieve. Her comparisons of traditions of other cultures' around grieving are illustrative. Modern America has no helpful pattern. Once I was asked, "How long should I expect my mother to grieve dad's death?" When I replied "Give her a year." The questioner was taken aback. She said "I was thinking two weeks." Brooks, an Australian native, who now lives on Martha's Vineyard, goes for an extended stay on a remote Australian island. Three years after Tony's death she finds the time and space to do the serious grieving that is necessary.  

   Here are a couple of items from the book. '"Grief is praise," writes Martin Pretchtel in his book The Smell Of Rain On Dust, "because it is the natural way loves honors what it misses.'" P. 8. This is new to me and is 'right on'!  "'We print like baby goslings, on a type of horizon. On a type of sky," Barbara Kingsolver told a reporter who asked her what she loved about Appalachia."' P. 18 Brooks relates this to her comfort in Australia. . Yes, and my imprint was prairie sky.  

   In a subsequent blog I'll compare her experience with mine with the death of Joanne. But, one more thing! Do your estate planning. In Minnesota the law is that upon death, any estate valued at $75,000.00 or more must go to probate court, unless there is a trust in place. Joanne and I had a trust which made things simple when she died. The exception is if the assets are covered by designated beneficiaries.

Takk for alt,

Al