Welcome to Litsy!

This small book is a profound memoir about grief, how we allow ourselves to feel…and how we don‘t.
Written gently but deeply. Recommended.

Sitting in my car waiting for run club to start assembling so I‘m starting Memorial Days. Found it fascinating to read the (unfortunately necessary) addition to the legalese. This is the first book I‘ve noticed it in but I‘m sure not the last.

There is a chapter in which the author describes seeing a dead bird, and she comes back to its different phases of decomposition over the next few days. On the final day, she sees it and says: It should be a repulsive image, yet I find it consoling: this bird, who met its unforeseen ending with a meal half – consumed, now devoured in a riotous jitterbug. May my own death be just as sudden. Spare me the crematorium. Put me straight into the soil.⬇️

Everybody wants to die naturally, you know.

But not so soon. Not so soon.

People die. On the descent to JFK airport one day after Tony‘s death, I stared from my airplane window at the closed-pressed houses of the Queens borough: I have this in common with every single one of all the thousands of people down there, living their varied, vivid lives. We might have not one other single thing in common, but we‘ve got this. We will all die. We will all grieve.

I expected this book to be sad, and it was, but it was also honest and open and cathartic, both for the author and for the reader. Geraldine Brooks generously shares her experience of the loss of her husband and her delayed period and method of mourning. It‘s an inevitability that we will all experience in our own unique ways. This is a lovely book. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brooks‘ response to her husband‘s unexpected, untimely death is poignant, raw, searing,lamentable,heartrending. #storygraph #nonfiction

It‘s Wednesday but…
1)
quiet silence in bed; rest
Sit on porch & listen to birds‘ song
Walk, in nature, in my community with other walkers
Face in sun
Garden
Family; sisters
Breezes

2) poetry, cozy mysteries, memoirs like Geraldine Brooks‘ Memorial Days

The purpose of Brooks‘ immersion in the raw nature of Flinders Island is to finally,after 4 years, release her howling grief at the sudden death of her husband. These geese = Tony.

https://australian.museum/learn/animals/birds/cape-barren-goose/

Tonight‘s hot cinnamon milk & a book.

Heartbreaking. Geraldine Brooks is one of my favorite authors and I met her once at a book festival, so this felt more personal.

While Brooks is writing her book Horse at home on the Vineyard she gets a call that her husband Tony Horwitz has died suddenly in DC. This book walks you through that time frame/experience and then intermingles her process of finally fully grieving three years later while staying in a remote location in Tasmania. In telling her story you meet a unique couple. A four star read.

Though this book is centered on Brooks‘s processing the death of her husband, the aftermath and trying to grieve, she really gives the reader a guide of how to enjoy and savor the moments that one has now as we really don‘t know how long we all have to enjoy our relationships which make our lives worth living. I loved this.

Yes, I loved MEMORIAL DAYS by Geraldine Brooks. You will, too.

Got this yesterday, finished a minute ago. Her words and sentences flow and make it an easy read in that sense. However not an easy read emotionally for me. The last chapter I found very relatable. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
I don‘t want to say anymore but I do recommend it especially if you are a fan of hers. And even if you haven‘t read anything of hers this might start you off.