Learning From Grief

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes, 33 seconds

911 Call to Rabbi Renee

As I walked towards the Pizza House Pizza Chef from the parking lot, my legs felt like lead, and each step took an eternity. The anticipation of savoring a mini pizza made me remember that the restaurant was formerly where my current building stands. Memories of the old establishment flooded my mind as I approached the new one. As I approached my building, I spotted Mike and Jon parking their car and waiting to cross the street. I thought of calling or texting Rabbi Renee, but it was already quite late, so I texted her instead.

Rabbi, do you have time for a quick call?

April 6, 8:45 pm

As we entered the apartment building, my iPhone rang, and it was Rabbi Renee.

Rabbi Renee, how are you? My sons are here. Can I put you on speakerphone?”

Despite my physical and emotional weakness, I explained what Dr. Strair had revealed to us.

She’s coming home soon for hospice, and she only has a few weeks left to live.

The news shocked the Rabbi. She expressed her disbelief and admiration for Jan’s strength in fighting cancer. Even the boys were shocked by the news.

While they spoke to the Rabbi, I tried to eat, but my taste buds vanished.

We need to discuss how we will tell her tomorrow,” I interjected.

With COVID restrictions, only I can be with her.

“Rabbis are always allowed in the hospital,” the Rabbi reminded me.

Jon added, “Dr. Strair said he would work with Dr. Saksena to allow Mike and me to be there.

I couldn’t recall much of what happened during the phone call after Dr. Strair said hospice was the only option, but I accepted what Jon had said. We all agreed to coordinate with the two doctors to give Jan the support she needed when she heard the news.

“I couldn’t do this without the three of you,” I said.

I love Jan, your sons, and you; we will all be there to help you!” the Rabbi replied.

As the call ended, Mike and Jon left. I tried to sleep, but the news had left me restless. Just three days ago, I was sure Jan was on the road to recovery.

“Her voice was strong and confident, like the day we met,” I thought, wondering what had changed in just seventy-two hours.

I lay in bed, unable to cry, but I repeated to myself that I must be fully present for Jan. I must love her more now than ever.

Honey, You Are Coming Home

As I walked into the hospital to visit with Jan, I knew I had to be strong. I couldn’t reveal to her that she was going into hospice care, as I was not skilled at hiding my emotions, and it would be particularly challenging today. Suppressing my feelings, I greeted her with a smile, though tears flowed.

I’m happy to see you, but I’m tired of the hospital. I can’t wait until I’m home with you,” Jan said, looking at me with a hopeful expression.

I leaned in and kissed her lips, feeling my heart break at the thought of what would come.

The medical team arrived soon after to give Jan another blood transfusion. I stepped aside to make room, but the small hospital room felt overcrowded, with the bed occupying most of the space and limited seating. I wondered how we would fit everyone in when we told Jan about hospice.

I sat beside her as the transfusion began, handing her a milkshake to enjoy. This is so good!” she exclaimed, a faint smile on her lips.

I love you,” I whispered, feeling helpless as I watched her frail body struggle.

After lunch, Jan drifted off to sleep, and I anxiously watched the clock, waiting for 2 pm when we had planned to meet with her sons and Rabbi Renee.

“Did you have a good nap?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

As I stood up to stretch, I saw Jan’s sons Mike and Jon walking down the hallway, and my stomach dropped to my ankles. I had to keep the truth from Jan for a little longer.

It’s my sons!” Jan exclaimed, a spark of joy in her eyes.

I was able to get them in today as a special treat for you,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, even though my heart was heavy.

Jon sat on her right side and Mike on the other. Under different circumstances, this would have been a joyous reunion. Rabbi Renee walked in just as they did.

Jan, how are you feeling?” the Rabbi asked, her warm smile bringing hope to the room.

“This is a real surprise. My sons and my Rabbi!” Jan said, her voice filled with joy.

I stepped towards the doorway, taking a deep breath to control my emotions. In a few moments, Jan would hear the news that she had only a few weeks left to live.

Dr. Saksena walked in, interrupting my thoughts. “It looks like you have a full house today! How are you feeling?” she asked, addressing Jan.

Jan smiled weakly, waiting for the news. “Jan, as I said, I consulted with Dr. Strair about the next steps,” Dr. Saksena said, sitting beside her.

Jan nodded, unaware of what was coming.

“What would you like to do if you were cancer-free?” Dr. Saksena asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Finish rebuilding my office, travel, and spend time with my sons and husband,” Jan said, her voice filled with optimism.

As you know, we have done three treatments, and the Lymphoma is still inside you and very aggressive. We cannot treat the Lymphoma because of COVID, and we cannot treat the COVID because of the Lymphoma. Unfortunately, we only have one option left. Our recommendation is hospice care,” Dr. Saksena said, her voice filled with empathy.

Jan looked straight ahead, and I wanted to hold her tightly, but I was sitting at the foot of the bed. “How much time do I have left?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Only a few weeks,” Dr. Saksena replied, her eyes filled with tears.

I tried to move closer to her, to hold her hand, but there wasn’t enough space. “OK. I know an agency that does hospice care,” Jan said, her voice calm.

“You are coming home or to my house,” Mike said, his voice filled with determination.

Is there enough room?” Jan asked, her voice filled with concern.

Mike and I have already started talking to the hospice team in the hospital,” Jon said, trying to reassure her.

“Home is where you need to be, honey. Home with all of us,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

Dr. Saksena left, and we discussed logistics, but my mind was in a haze. All I could think about was how I would live without the love of my life.

After an hour, everyone left except for me. I sat beside Jan, holding her hand, and told her how much I loved her. Jan was serene and had accepted hospice much more quickly than I had.

As I left Jan to go home in the evening, I stood in the parking deck and wept openly. When I looked at my phone, I saw a text message from Dr. Strair.

Please convey my best wishes to Janice and your family. I hope they find peace and comfort during this time.

April 7, 6:05 pm.

“God grant me the strength to love Jan more than ever and help her find peace and comfort,” I screamed as I got into the car, feeling like my heart was breaking into a million pieces.

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Writers and Lovers

Read: October 2021

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Writers and Lovers

by Lily King

Writers and Lovers by Lily King is a page-turner of a book. From page one, I was engaged with Casey and wanted to continue reading to find out how she resolved the crises of her life.

The loss of her mother was a constant reminder of my loss. Although she mourned in a different way than I am, there was much we had in common. The big difference was she was writing a novel about her mother, and I am only doing journal entries and occasional posts.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey–a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist–in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

I very much recommend this book and this writer.

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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

Read: October 2023

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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

by Hannah Stowe

I recently started reading a book called “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” by Hannah Stowe. It’s a captivating book that immerses you in a world of water, whales, storms, and starlight, allowing you to experience what it’s like to sail for weeks and live life to a new rhythm.

Hannah Stowe, a marine biologist and sailor in her mid-twenties, grew up on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, where she fell asleep to the sound of the lighthouse beam. Drawing upon her experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in various seas, including the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean, she explores the human connection to the wild waters. Stowe ponders why she and others are drawn to life at sea and what we can learn from the water around us.

Stowe intertwines her narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures: the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and barnacle. Through these stories, she invites readers to fall in love with the sea and its inhabitants and to discover the majesty, wonder, and fragility of the underwater world.

If you enjoy the works of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, then “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” is a must-read. It’s an inspiring and heartfelt tribute to the sea, a testimony to pursuing and achieving a dream, and an unforgettable introduction to a talented new nature writer.


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The Book of Goose

Read: October 2022

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The Book of Goose: A Novel

by Yiyun Li

The Book of Goose: A Novel by Yiyun Liis a gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End. The Book of Goose: A Novel is a story of disturbing intimacy, obsession, exploitation, and strength of will. I highly recommend this book as it was not only a page-turner but a novel that helped me on my grief journey

The novel focuses on many issues that interest me and intrigue me during my grief journey. Jan was anxious that she was not as successful in her work or personal life. I always reassured her not to be concerned. 

After Jan died, I had similar feelings. Over time, I have heard words of wisdom and regained my self-confidence.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised–the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves–until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.


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Still Life: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel

Read: January 2025

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Still Life: A Novel

by Sarah Winman

I began reading “Still Life,” a GMA Book Club pick by Sarah Winman. This captivating and bighearted novel weaves a rich tapestry of stories about people connected by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E.M. Forster. Kristen V. Brown, in The Atlantic Magazine’s Culture Survey, describes “Still Life” as the best novel she has recently read and considers it the best nonfiction work.

In Tuscany in 1944, as Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of an abandoned villa. There, he encounters Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’s life for the next four decades.

As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot—a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics—he carries his time in Italy. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate and returns to the Tuscan hills.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.



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Lessons in Chemistry

Read: January 2023

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Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel

by Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel by Bonnie Garmus is a must-read book as it reimagines the gender dynamics of the 1950s and early 1960s. Elizabeth Zott, a chemist, struggles in a male-dominated world where her work is not taken seriously until she meets Calvin Evans. She describes their relationship, “Calvin and I were soulmates,” like Jan and I viewed ours.

What underlies their love affair was “a mutual respect for the other’s capabilities.” “Do you know how extraordinary that is?” she said. That a man would treat his lover’s work as seriously as his own?” Of course, every relationship should be based on the same dynamics, but even after seventy years, we still struggle to achieve equality in our society.

I highly recommend this novel. Reading the story, the Zott/Evans relationship reminded me of the love that Jan and I shared. I know that Jan would have loved this book.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist. Like Jan, Elizabeth Zott, the protagonist, would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman.

Although Jan and Elizabeth had much in common, I felt Madeline (aka Mad), Elizabeth’s daughter, was Jan’s alter ego in this novel. Jan was smart and ahead of her classmates, just like Mad was. She was breaking barriers when she was Mad’s age.

I also connected to Six Thirty, the dog. Like Oscar, Six Thirty was more intelligent than the average dog.

Lessons in Chemistry has been the number one best-selling book in the New York Times for thirty-four weeks.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s the early 1960s and Elizabeth Zott’s all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.


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Flight: A Novel

Read: January 2023

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Flight: A Novel

by Lynn Steger Strong

Flight: A Novel by Lynn Steger Strong is a novel about family, ambition, precarity, art, and desire, forming a decisive next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time. The book has been on my to-read list for a few months. A New Yorker Best Books of 2022, it seemed like a good start on my 2023 Goodreads Reading challenge. Flight is the first book I read in 2023. Last year I read seventy-four books, and each helped me with my grief journey.

I recommend this novel as it is a page-turner highlighting the difficulty families experience after a loss. As a culture, we are experiencing declining social connections, including within families. Flight is an excellent effort to define the crisis.

Although several possible resolutions to the conflict became clear by the middle of the novel, Ms. Strong told the story so that until the end, it was unclear how or if it would be resolved. In addition, enough unresolved issues remained so that.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel Want as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends, and strangers can support each other through the gaps


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