#SOL17: A Reading Habit

Forgetful (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

...Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed...
                        - John O’Donohue

I. 

A woman. A new widow.
I am reading her like a movie playing slowly,
remembering as I read and nodding alongside her starts and stops.
I know her words like I know my own hands.
Veined.
Deep.
Necessary.


II.

I amassed so many books in the months following Rob's death and read them all in a gulp. I was mad reading, trying to find a shore. 
A spit of ground to stand on. 
Something to make the unfamiliar waves of widowhood more familiar. 

I was so fucking lost.


III.

Some books I best remember, like Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air. I read this while Rob was at home dying. 
At night as my husband slept fitfully, I read. 
Most days he was mute and I read. 
Kalanithi's words spoke to me--revealed the shrouded silence of my husband as he died.


IV. 

In the months following Rob's death, I found myself trying to make Spicy Red Lentil and Tomato Curry--Elizabeth Alexander's husband's recipe that she included in her stirring memoir The Light of the World: A Memoir. It is a recounting of her young husband's sudden death and their life together. 

It is painful as it is whole. 


V.

And then there was C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. 
I made images with his words. I painted and sketched. 
His words were truths I knew in my bones.


VI. 

Like one reads a treasure map, I studied these books. 
I read them like a mad woman seeking a trail of necessity. 
I wanted direction, knowledge,
a map.


In those early days the world is mostly unformed.

VII.

I have no recipes to pass along here.
No wisdom either.
There are few words I know and none of them heal.

What I do have--is a list.
A list of 50 books that helped me find confidence in words once again.

Sometimes, friends it is that simple.
Reading offered a moment of grace. 

Here's the list (imperfect at that):

1. What the Living Do: Poems (Marie Howe)
2. The Afterlife (not sure of the author. I came home to find this waiting for me from a friend)
3. Daily Meditation book: Healing After Loss
4. The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (Jan Richardson)
5. The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)
6. Love and Living (Thomas Merton)
7. Hello from Heaven (Bill Guggenheim)
8. The Inner Voice of Love (Henri Nouwen)
9. World Made and Unmade (Jane Mead)
10. A Grief Observed (C.S. Lewis I read this over and over..)
11. When Husbands Die (Shirley McNally)
12. The Light of the World: A Memoir (Elizabeth Alexander)
13. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Pauline Boss)
14. Widow to Widow (Genevieve Ginsburg)
15. The Other Side of Sadness (George Bonanno)
16. The Gene: An Intimate History (Siddgarta Mukherjee)
17. Heartbroken: Healing from the Loss (Gary Roe)
18. I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can (Linda Feinberg)
19. On Grief and Grieving (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)
20. The Cancer Journals (Audre Lorde)
21. Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)
22. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
23. Second Firsts: Live, Laugh and Love Again (Christina Rasmussen)
24. Getting to the Other Side of Grief (Susan J. Zonnebelt-Smeenge)
25. Gabriel: A Poem (E.D. Hirsch)
26. Final Payment (Mary Gordon)
27. H is for Hawk (Helen Macdonald)
28. Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope (Anne Lamont)
29. Being Mortal (Atul Gawande)
30. Radical Remissions: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds (Kelly A. Turner)
31. Echoes of Memory (John O'Donohue)
32. Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World
33. New and Selected Poems, Volume I (Mary Oliver)
34. Thirst (Mary Oliver)
35. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
36. Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (David Whyte)
37. Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve (Sandra Gilbert)
38. Patrimony (Philip Roth)
39. Dying, A Memoir (Cory Taylor)
40. Grief Cottage (Gail Godwin)
41. All at Sea (Decca Aitkenhead)
42. After (Jane Hirshfield)
43. Levels of Living (Julian Barnes)
44. Milk and Honey (Rupi Kaur)
45. Sorry for Your Troubles (Padraig O Tuama)
46. Option B:Facing Adversity, Building Resilience (Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant) 
47. Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats (Roger Rosenblatt)
48. Grief and it's Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity (Adele Tutter & Leon Wurmser)
49. The Best of Us (Joyce Maynard) 
50. Heaven's Coast: A Memoir (Mark Doty)