My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle is a good, quick read. It is an "unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny." The protagonist Dannie Kohan is a Type A lawyer who has her life planned out by the numbers.
Can time heal the wounds of grief? If that was true, why am I not feeling slightly better after twenty-one weeks?
The harsh reality is that the deep lacerations from losing Jan may never heal, and Band-Aids and first aid cream do not help.
My only option is to give her love away. By sharing her passion, I can and will inspire and empower others to repair the world. As they mend mother earth, Jan’s love will rebound to me. The love returned to me will grant me the strength to complete my journey to the Community of Love.
Reading Breathe reminded me of why I stopped crying when Jan faced a life-threatening illness, even though I have always been the one in our family that weeps.
During her illness, as well as now, I cry alone.
Sometimes I wish we could have a good cry together
Would it have helped us manage our fears? Or would it have frightened us?
Since Jan died twenty weeks ago, my tears have flowed like a flooded river.
At times it seems as if the downpour will never end.
But then the faucet shuts off, and I remember how much love.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Reading Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates was a book I knew I needed to read once Jan was diagnosed. Despite the possibility that the book would trigger negative memories, I finally read Breathe. It was what I needed to read at this point in my journey. Ms. Oates wrote the book in 2019 after her husband, Charlie Gross, died. The novel is a story of love, loss, and loneliness. These are topics that I write about on this blog.
Jan and I knew that none of our accomplishments were solely the result of our efforts. Whatever I achieve now will only be because of the love we shared, which I now share by giving her love away. I will be forever grateful to her!
“That no matter where you stand, no matter how much popularity you have, no matter how much education you have, no matter how much money you have, you have it because somebody in this universe helped you to get it. And when you see that, you can’t be arrogant, you can’t be supercilious. You discover that you have your position because of the events of history and because of individuals in the background making it possible for you to stand there.” — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Conquering Self-Centeredness” (1957)
Twenty weeks ago today, Jan died. When asked how long it has been, I always answer with the number of weeks. Many people in my bereavement groups respond in months. When should I transition to months?
The math is confusing. If I divide 20 weeks by 4, the answer is five months. But there are still ten days in September. If I convert 20 weeks into days and divide the 140 days by 30, I get 4.67 months.
It might be easier after 26 weeks, but I may wait until I get to a year.
Ms. Cummins writes passionately about the plight of migrants and the difficulties they face as they seek a new life in the US. This book highlighted this to me in ways that I understood intellectually but not emotionally.
Life’s enduring algorithm is simple: the more you love, the more you will grieve. Jan and I loved each other so much that, at times, the grief felt as if it was higher than Mt. Everest. Despite this mountain of despair, the love Jan and I shared helped me sail from the Island of Grief back to the Community of Love.
Whenever doubts, fears, or waves of grief threaten to sink my Sunfish, Jan’s love helps me find the strength to hold the tiller steady and proceed on my journey.
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by Rebecca Serle
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle is a good, quick read. It is an “unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.”
The protagonist Dannie Kohan is a Type A lawyer who has her life planned out by the numbers. Everything she believes will happen according to her plan. But life sometimes throws us a curveball.
She applies for the job she has always wanted, and her boyfriend proposes to her. Everything is going according to her plan. She returns home believing that life is going as planned and falls asleep.
But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.
There are twists and turns, including her best friend introducing her new boyfriend, who happens to be the man she was with briefly in 2025. Her friends’ struggle with and eventual death from Ovarian cancer forces Dannie to confront life as is. Her friend reminds her that she has never truly experienced love and needs to stop controlling her life and those around her.
In five years is a question I am asking myself. Where will I be five years after Jan’s death?
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by Joyce Carol Oates
Reading Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates was a book I knew I needed to read once Jan was diagnosed. Although the book might trigger negative memories, I finally read Breathe. It was what I needed to read at this point in my journey.
Ms. Oates wrote the book in 2019 after her husband, Charlie Gross, died. The novel is a story of love, loss, and loneliness, topics that I write about on this blog. I needed to read the book both for my mental health and for the readers of Sharing Jan’s Love.
The protagonist, Michaela, loses her husband while they are on a sabbatical in New Mexico. Her husband, Gerard, writes a book and teaches a class on memories. Jan and I never considered relocating before her illness, but this book convinced me that it would have aggravated my grief journey.
One of the parallels I observed while reading the novel is the similarity between Gerard’s reluctance to let family, friends, and co-workers know of his illness. Jan shared that reluctance in the early days, but I convinced her that the only chance of beating cancer was with the help of family and friends.
This dialogue could easily be one that Jan and I had.
Of course you want to summon his family—his (adult) children—but quickly, he says no.
Still waiting.
But – When?
Just not yet.
He is not an alarmist. (You are the alarmist.)
The novel is written in two parts – The Vigil and the Post-Mortem.
The opening paragraphs set the tone.
A Hand is gripping yours. Warm, dry hand gripping your slippery, humid hand.
Whoever it is urging you – Breathe!
Leaning over you begging you – Breathe!
As one mourning the death of the love of his life, I found several phrases in the book helpful in understanding what I have gone through and will continue to confront.
Among them is grief-vise, which I have written about in this stream.
In the grip of the grief vise, all that you will do, all that you even imagine doing, will require many times more effort.. Hardly daring to breathe for the grief-vise will tighten around your chest, squeezing the very air out of your lungs.
In the early stages of grief, the vise was strangling me. Breathing was impossible, and weeping was constant at times.
Michaela struggles with her grief. Seeing her husband every time she sees a man alone, even if they are older or younger than he was. I know I have felt Jan’s presence and still expect her to walk into our apartment.
Her struggles with a grief counselor and overly helpful friends are an experience I have not had but are familiar to those suffering from losing a loved one.
The last chapters are ones in which time becomes confusing and chaotic. At times, I was uncertain about which were real or imagined. The end, like all good novels, was ambiguous.
These are some of the other phrases I have found useful and will include in posts.
What you love most, that you will lose. The price of your love is your loss.
I recommend this book to all readers, even those struggling with grief.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Jeanine Cummins
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is one of the best books I have read this year.
American Dirt is a “cross-genre novel that combines elements of a commercial thriller, literary fiction, suspense, and romance.” American Dirt refers to the land that is the United States of America and to the difficulty undocumented migrants face both before and after crossing the border.
According to SuperSummary,
Lydia Quixano Pérez, a bookstore owner in Acapulco, saves her son Luca from a massacre that wipes out their entire family at a quinceañera cookout. The perpetrators are three sicarios, killers for Los Jardineros, a violent local cartel. Javier Crespo Fuentes, Lydia’s close friend and the jefe of Los Jardineros, ordered the hit in retaliation for an exposé written by Lydia’s husband, a journalist named Sebastián Pérez Delgado. Javier’s murderous rage stems not from the article itself, but from the impact it has on his daughter, Marta, who commits suicide when she learns of her father’s true identity. Lydia and Luca spend the rest of the novel running from Javier’s men, encountering a diverse cast of migrants along the road to the US.
I read the book at the same time that Haitian migrants were being deported at the border. Ms. Cummins writes passionately about the plight of migrants and the difficulties they face as they seek a new life in the US. This book highlighted this to me in ways that I understood intellectually but not emotionally.
Ms. Cummins refers to a sign she saw in Spanish in Tijuana while she was researching this book:
También de este lado hay sueños.
On this side, too, there are dreams.
All of our ancestors were migrants, and they all had dreams of a better life. We need to find a better way to help those who now have goals find a home so that their hopes for a better future can come true.
by Megan Angelo
Followers by Megan Angelo is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. Goodreads describes this as an electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make, and the stunning moment that changes the world as we know it forever.
Followers is a novel, but it could easily be read as history with all that has occurred with technology and social media. With the increased discussion of the Metaverse, how close are we to a significant spill of personal information? With the focus on followers defining our culture, how close are we to being manipulated by social media?
As a wannabe blogger, I am impressed by a handful of likes on social media and two comments on my posts. Although I can understand the temptation of Orla and Floss to manipulate the system for their benefit, it is something I know I would not do even if I had the skills.
The spill of personal information is described in a very plausible way. It is not just credit card data but private conversations, photos, and secrets that are spilled and alter the world as we know it. Is this possible? Hopefully not, but without adequate privacy regulations, we may all wake up one day to know that our most private secrets become known by everyone.
Marlow, the daughter of two mothers, along with Orla, provides an option of how we might all leave with less reliance on blue screens. As a secessionist nation in NJ, Atlantis was an interesting alternate reality.
Goodreads provides this overview if you are not convinced to read this book.
Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss ― a striving wannabe A-lister ― who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss’s methods are a little shady and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can’t be wrong.
Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity ― twelve million loyal followers ― Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.
Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we crave is genuine human connection.
I recommend Followers as not only a good read but an allegory of our technology-dominated culture.
by Edited by Joanne B. Freeman
The Essential Hamilton: Letters & Other Writings, edited by Joanne B. Freeman, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, is a must-read in our times when a constitutional crisis is the watchword of our day. Compared to reading all 27 volumes of Hamilton’s writings, this book provides the essential texts that offer a clear understanding of both the revolutionary era, the debates over the constitution, Hamilton’s impact as Secretary of the Treasury, and his downfall and eventual downfall death in Weehawken.
Professor Freeman’s introductions and chronology help place the writings into a historical context.
The Essential Hamilton is one of four books that I purchased after my first One Day University class.
by Deborah Willis
I began reading “Girlfriend on Mars: A Novel” by Deborah Willis today. It’s a humorous, touching, and captivating debut novel that satirizes the idea of space travel funded by billionaires and tells a love story that spans across planets. Alic Munro, one of my preferred authors, praised the book’s emotional depth and range, as well as the author’s exceptional clarity and skill in writing.
Amber Kivinen is vying for a chance to join MarsNow and be part of the first human-led mission to Mars. She is one of twenty-three reality TV contestants worldwide, including an attractive Israeli soldier named Adam, a charming Canadian named Pichu, and several science enthusiasts and aspiring influencers. Billionaire Geoff Task is sponsoring the mission; only two seats are available.
Meanwhile, Kevin, Amber’s boyfriend of fourteen years, is left behind as Amber pursues her dream. He spends his days caring for their hydroponic weed business in their expensive basement apartment in Vancouver while wondering why the woman he loves is so determined to leave the planet with someone else.
In a reality TV show similar to Survivor and Star Trek, Amber participates in challenges in various parts of the world. She seems to develop feelings for Adam, but it’s unclear whether it’s genuine or a strategy to avoid getting eliminated. Furthermore, given that the technology to return to Earth from Mars is not yet available, would Amber be willing to abandon everything to become a billionaire’s experimental subject on the red planet? Even though the rainforest is currently ablaze, Geoff Task has purchased New Zealand, and Kevin may be struggling with depression, is there any chance for a brighter future on Earth?
Girlfriend on Mars is an impressive first work from a brilliant and unique writer, as described by Molly Antopol. It presents a satirical critique of our societal desire for fame and fortune amid environmental turmoil. At the same time, it delves into humanity’s fundamental yearning and eternal cliché: love.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Vinson Cunningham
Today, I began reading “Great Expectations: A Novel” by Vinson Cunningham, a staff writer and theatre critic at The New Yorker. David, the protagonist, had seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his. Still, the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.
Upon hearing the Senator from Illinois speak, David experiences conflicting emotions. He is fascinated by the Senator’s idealistic language yet ponders the balance between maintaining solid beliefs and making the necessary compromises to become America’s first Black president.
The book Great Expectations narrates David’s experience working for eighteen months on a Senator’s presidential campaign. During his journey, David encounters diverse individuals who raise questions about history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood. These inquiries prompt David to introspect his life and identity as a young Black man and father living in America.
Meditating on politics, religion, family, and coming-of-age, Great Expectations is a novel of ideas and emotional resonance, introducing a prominent new writer.
by Toni Morrison
Today, I started reading “A Mercy” by Toni Morrison. The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner explores the complexities of slavery in this novel. Like “Beloved,” it tells the poignant story of a mother and her daughter—a mother who abandons her child to protect her and a daughter who struggles with that abandonment. “A Mercy” is also recognized as one of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
In the 1680s, a tumultuous period in the Americas, the slave trade is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, navigates this harsh landscape with a small holding in the North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. She is Florens, a girl who can read and write and might be helpful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens embarks on a journey for love, first seeking it from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master’s house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
by Leonie Swann
I began reading The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang. The book follows a unique group of senior citizens as they try to solve one murder while hiding another, all with the assistance of an innovative tortoise. The mystery is full of twists and turns and is cleverly written by the same author who wrote Three Bags Full, adding a darkly humorous touch to the plot.
It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house shared by the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility, and gluttonous grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer with some shocking news. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith).
The answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer).
Agnes and her group of elderly friends are eager to begin their plan. They believe that creating a mystery will divert suspicion away from themselves. To investigate, they will venture out of their comfort zone and into the less-than-ideal village of Duck End. Along the way, they will encounter suspicious bakers, malfunctioning stairlifts, incompetent criminals, the local authorities, and their hidden secrets.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
