My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!
The Secret Ingredient Makes It the Best!
“Honey, I’m feeling pretty hungry,” Jan said as I handed her the morning medication.
As her loving husband and caregiver, I asked what she had in mind. “I’m really in the mood for some Matzoh Brei,” she replied.
I wasn’t sure how to make it, so I headed downstairs to find a recipe.
“Wait a minute, you’ve never made Matzoh Brei before and you don’t even like it,” she reminded me. Jan quickly jotted down a recipe for me to follow.
In the kitchen, I followed her instructions step by step, with the only change I put in all my love into the Matzoh Brei. After some time, I went back upstairs and served her breakfast. I said, “Here you go, my love. Do you require anything else?”
Jan was in the middle of a call and shook her head negatively, so I quietly left the room and headed downstairs. As I reached the first floor, I overheard Jan exclaiming, “Wow, this is the best Matzoh Brei I’ve ever had!
I smiled as I continued to our living room, remembering my grandmother’s lesson. Following Jan’s directions, I prepared the Matzoh Brei and added the secret ingredient – love!
I received the news that I hoped never to hear two years ago today.
“I’m sorry to say this, but the only option for Janice is hospice,” Dr. Strair said.
Hearing those words, my stomach flipped, and I felt like it had jumped out of the window. The call had been about planning for Jan’s recovery, but now we were discussing her death.
Today, 24 months later, I still can’t eat Matzoh Brei, but my love for Jan remains strong.
I’ve learned that love never dies, and I take it one day at a time. Even though I miss Jan, I strive to share her passion for life and kindle the light from her effervescent smiles to repair the world.
Love is the elusive yet essential ingredient that makes life complete and fulfilling.
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.
My Meandering Mind Helped Me Live Fully!
Since I was a young child, I have been dreaming not at night but during the day.
Most, if not all, of my childhood dreams never came to fruition.
However, since Jan died, my walking has increased in both the distance and the creative dreaming I do.
As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Only ideas won by walking have any value.”
After sleepwalking through the last two weeks of hospice and the first month or so after Jan died, my perambulations have intensified my brain’s default mode of mind wandering.
As Shane O’Mara‘s In Praise of Walking describes, mind wandering is “the repeated interrogation of autobiographical memory and a focus of attention from the immediate environment.”
On my early grief walks, my mind focused on doubts about Jan’s love, not the truth.
Walking sans headphones, I was able over time to accept that Jan’s love was transformative and that my only way forward was to share her passion as Merrit Malloy‘s poem Epitaph commands us,
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
One step at a time, the vision of Jan’s Memorial Garden formed in my mind, and bringing Jan’s spirit with me became a reality.
Neither my thoughts nor my footprints will be long remembered once I am gone.
But if, in some small way, they help keep Jan’s name alive and help repair the world, my meanderings will have been worth the thousands of steps I have taken.
I will always walk daily, and Jan’s love will never die!
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.
A Future Walking With Jan’s Spirit
My sound test on Zoom is a simple chant.
I test the microphone by saying, "I love Jan! I miss Jan!"
The message proves the microphone works and adjusts my frame of mind, so I am ready, willing, and able to host the Zoom call.
Yet, the change in the atmosphere does not fill the gap left in my heart since Jan died.
The OMordy Quotes help me put into perspective my circumstances,
What's destroyed can still be rebuilt, what's lost can still be found, what's broken can still be mended, an end is not always the end, it can also be a basis for a new and better beginning.My life with Jan has been erased, and I cannot simply mend my brokenness.
Apartment 3B is Perfect for Me!
“Wow, your apartment looks so nice,” said Mike as he walked into my new home.
I had not had visitors to my home except when Nick visited me. It was lovely to have my family visiting for a family birthday celebration.
“It is so light and airy. Everything looks like it fits perfectly,” said Elyssa, my daughter-in-law.
I nodded in agreement.
I know you and Mom had to let go of a lot of furniture when you moved, and it looks like you had to allow even more go this time. But you have made this feel like a home.”
Standing before the ceremonial shovel, Nick and I mentioned that a TaskRabbit person had installed it and the photos.
“Hugo and Ana helped me determine what I could keep and helped me find a new home for items I no longer needed,” I explained as my lips began to shake.
“It looks so lovely you could rent it as an AIRBNB.”
I laughed.
“I need a place to live that meets my needs and keeps your mom’s spirit and love with me.”
As we had dinner, I remembered when Jan and I moved to Cranford in May 2018, we expected to live here for two years and then buy a condo.
Our plans did not work out, but moving from a three-bedroom ranch to a walkable downtown was more critical than we understood then.
If we had stayed where we lived, I am unsure how I would have survived without Jan. Overwhelmed and adrift, I would have been too attached to material things and lost like a kid in a candy store.
Instead, I am centered in overlapping communities where I can walk daily and live interdependently with my neighbors.
I will forever be grateful that Jan and I moved here, as living in supportive communities has been critical in managing my grief.
Jan’s love transformed me the day we met. Her love continues to shower me with her undying support and allows me to live fully, albeit alone, in Apartment 3B!
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.
Flowers Convert 3B Into a Home
In Praise of Walking
I woke up this morning with renewed enthusiasm for my top-of-the-day walk.
Last night, I read the first third of In Praise of Walking by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara.
Mike, Elyssa, and my two grandsons, Nick and Wes, had given me for my birthday. Their visit on Sunday was filled with joy and happiness.
The visit occurred two years after Mike and Elyssa came to Cranford to help Jan. I had just thought about that coincidence after they left.
In Praise of Walking is described as a hymn to walking, the mechanical magic at the core of our humanity; the book combines two of my interests, walking and reading.
Enthused by the book, I began my walk by climbing the stairs to the train platform to prepare for the Big Climb.
Standing on track one, the westbound train approached. As it passed me, the sun shone and filled the middle of the train tracks.
The rays of bright light reminded me to stay the course, live fully, and bring Jan with me.
As I exited the station, the eastbound train, filled with commuters, roared into the Ctanford station.
My mind focused on memories of the cross-country train journey that Jan and I took in 1978. If only we could make the trip again.
I could feel tears welling up inside my eye sockets, but I held them back as I remembered that Jan was with me now and forever!
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.
These Feet Were Made for Walking
On Friday, the temperature for my morning walk was 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
Today was the polar opposite.
The reading on my Weather app was 5 Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius). With the wind, it felt like -13 Fahrenheit (-25 Celsius).
Yesterday, I walked 7.26 miles. Today I could only go 4.34 miles as nature, exacerbated by the cold, made an urgent call.
I recently received a book from my family that combines two interests: walking and reading. The book, "In Praise of Walking" by Shane O'Mara, celebrates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking. It emphasizes the importance of getting out of our chairs and discovering a happier, healthier, more creative self.
The Power of True Love Transforms Hanson Park
Yesterday, I woke at half past five and told Jan how much I loved her in the darkness of my bedroom.
I abbreviated my walk as I received a text from Nelson, the landscaper, who had notified me he would add plants to Jan’s Memorial Garden the previous evening.
Nelson informed me that once they complete this, Hal, the irrigation contractor, will install the drip irrigation system tomorrow, and the remaining plants will arrive next week.
My feet danced as I walked to Hanson Park. I could not believe how fortuitous the timing was. Jan’s garden would take a significant step toward competition on my birthday!
Melissa, a woman I had never met, walked her cocker spaniel through the park and stopped to speak with us. Initially, she had kept a wide berth from the work site.
She inquired where she and her husband could order a similar sculpture for her home. I provided the information, and Nelson gave her his phone number.
“Hanson Park was always fantastic, but now it is truly spectacular, beautiful, and memorable. Why did they decide to make these improvements now?”
I explained to her that it was a memorial for Jan, my wife.
Melissa handed her dog’s leash to Nelson and hugged me.
May the peacefulness and beauty of your wife’s memorial help you heal. I know the tranquity of your wife’s memorial in the park helps me every day when I walk thru this jewel in Cranford.
I mumbled thank you but could not formulate a more articulate response.
After Melissa and Nelson left, I sat on Jan’s bench that faces the Rahway River.
When Nelson had scheduled the initial work on the garden and the sculpture on Jan’s mid-year birthday, I had accepted it might be a sign from her or a mere coincidence.
But having now scheduled the start of the final phase on my birthday, I could no longer assume this was coincidental.
The only answer was that it was a message from Jan and a confirmation that my guardian angels protected me and reminded me that faith and love matter.
As Viktor E. Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire.”
When I met Jan, her love transformed my life. Like Frankl, I knew my salvation would be “through love and in love.
I rose from the bench and decided to walk back to Jan’s garden to imagine I was viewing it thru someone else’s eyes for the first time.
As I approached, the spinning of the sculpture slowed, and at first, it looked like a flower blooming.
Jan died, but her love did not. From the depths of my grief, I have learned that I can bring her with me by sharing her passion for life. As Melissa confirmed, sharing Jan’s love can help others.
Standing in the sculpture’s shadow, I felt warm air on my neck. Then a quiet voice began to sing All You Need is Love. Unable to hold a tune, I hummed.
All I have ever needed was Jan’s love.
Jan’s sweet voice whispered, “I love you and always will. I will always be with you as long as you share my love.”
Yes, my love, I will share your love now and forever with those who desperately need love!
Because all we need is love to repair the world.
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.
Working with the Hanson Park Conservancy, we have taken significant steps in building Jan's Memorial Triangle Garden at Hanson Park including installing the Wind Sculpture.
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by Jess Row
The New Earth, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!
The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.
In 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within–blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem).
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.
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by Shane O'Mara
I recently received a book from my family that combines two interests: walking and reading. The book, “In Praise of Walking” by Shane O’Mara, celebrates the joys, health benefits, and mechanics of walking. It emphasizes the importance of getting out of our chairs and discovering a happier, healthier, more creative self.
One of the most important insights I gained from this book is that walking can lead to mind wandering, focusing on autobiographical memory rather than the immediate environment. This realization helped me accept and appreciate Jan’s love and move forward with her passion.
The book also explores the significance of walking to our human identity. Walking upright has given us many advantages, including the freedom of our hands and minds. Walking has enabled us to spread worldwide and has many benefits for our bodies and minds, such as protecting and repairing organs, aiding digestion, and sharpening our thinking.
Overall, “In Praise of Walking” inspires us to start walking again and recognize its many benefits to our lives and societies.
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 Hernan Diaz
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality; Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes. The novel is divided into four sections, each engaging and reminding us of the tremendous costs a fortune imposes on those who accumulate wealth. I highly recommend this novel as it is one of the best books I have ever read!
The first section is from Bonds, a successful novel about Benjamin and Helen Rask. Before finishing this section, I was so engrossed that I wanted their story to continue. The second is a memoir of Andrew Bevel, a successful fourth-generation financier, with notations on edits and corrections.
The third section is about Ida Partenza, an Italian-American novelist hired to flesh out Bevel’s memoir. The dynamics between her and Bevel, as well as her father and boyfriend, clarify the storyline and give it depth. Ms. Partenza seeks to find the truth, revealed in the fourth section, comprised of excerpts from Mildred’s diary. Suffice it to say; the admitted fact underscores the burdens of wealth and the antiquated views that limited women’s roles.
Trust is one of the NY Times’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read four of them, Demon Copperhead, The Candy House, The Furrows, and Checkout 19. Trust was the fifth and the seventy-second book I have read this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
Even though the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur incite gossip. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? Rumors about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helen’s reclusiveness start to spread–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end.
This is the mystery at the center of a successful 1938 novel, Bonds, which all of New York seems to have read. But it isn’t the only version.
Hernan Diaz’s Trust brilliantly puts the story of these characters into conversation with other accounts–and in tension with the life and perspective of a young woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. Provocative and propulsive, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation.
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 A.M. Homes
The Unfolding by A.M. Homes is a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country. The Unfolding is an alternative history that is terrifyingly prescient, profoundly tender, and devastatingly funny. Will this novel help me to understand how we became a nation that no longer shares the same definitions of truth, freedom, and democracy, much less a shared vision of the future?
Although I understand more clearly the crisis facing the US, I highly recommend this novel.
Ms. Homes has written a must-read book that compliments the January 6th Committee report and should make us all more vigilant.
The characters are so well defined that at the end of the novel, I wanted to continue to read about them, especially Meghan.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the 2008 presidential election results, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, realizes that her favorite subject–history–is not exactly what her father taught her.
In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in force, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy–and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the exact words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.
In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny.
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.
by Adelle Waldman
Today, I started reading Help Wanted: A Novel by Adelle Waldman. The best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel writes a funny and eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America. The story revolves around the members of Team Movement, who work at the big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town.
They come in for their shift at 3:55 a.m. every day, and under the supervision of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s merchandise truck, stock the shelves, and leave before the store opens for customers.
Although their lives follow a familiar and grueling routine, their real problem is that Town Square needs to schedule them for more hours. As a result, most are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When the store manager, Big Will, announces he is leaving, the members of the Movement spot an opportunity. They set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion, hoping one of them might land a management job, providing stability and possibilities for advancement.
The members of Team Movement, including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman trying to keep her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path, band together to achieve their goal. Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, and her long-awaited follow-up brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to modern, low-wage work. Help Wanted is a humane and darkly comic workplace caper that highlights the hardships low-wage workers face in today’s economy. It is a funny and moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.
by Charlotte Mendelson
I began reading Charlotte Mendelson‘s novel, The Exhibitionist, today. The book tells the story of Lucia and Ray, two artists whose marriage starts to fall apart over a weekend. It explores themes such as art, sacrifice, family dynamics, queer desire, and personal freedom. Charlotte Mendelson has created yet another exceptional novel with The Exhibitionist, ranked as the year’s novel by The Times of London, and described as “furiously funny.”
The Hanrahan family is coming together for an important weekend. Ray Hanrahan, a well-known artist with a big ego, is preparing for his first exhibition in many years. His eldest daughter, Leah, is his biggest supporter. His son, Patrick, has decided to pursue his own path. His youngest daughter, Jess, has a big decision to make. Ray’s wife, Lucia, is also an artist but has always prioritized her roles as a wife and mother. She is keeping secrets of her own and must decide which desires to pursue as the weekend progresses and the exhibition approaches.
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 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Today, I started reading “Chain Gang All Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. The story revolves around Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker, the main characters of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, a highly controversial and top-rated program in America’s private prison industry. The program is called Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE), where prisoners compete for the ultimate prize- their freedom. It’s similar to the return of the gladiators but in a modern-day setting.
The story is set in a prison called CAPE, where inmates are forced to participate in death matches as a part of a chain-gang. These matches are held in front of cheering crowds, while the prison authorities claim it to be a righteous act. Among the participants, Thurwar and Staxxx are the most popular as they are also lovers. Thurwar is just a few matches away from her freedom, which she carries with a heavy heart and lethal hammer. Thurwar contemplates how she can help her fellow inmates preserve their humanity despite being forced into these brutal games. However, the owners of CAPE are determined to safeguard their status quo, and they will go to extreme lengths to stop anyone who challenges them. Thurwar’s attempts to resist the system have devastating consequences.
Chain-Gang All-Stars” is a powerful book that sheds light on the American prison system’s problematic alliance with systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration. It critically examines the situation from various perspectives, from the Links in the field to the protestors, the CAPE employees, and beyond. The book offers a clear-eyed reckoning of what freedom really means in America. It is a noteworthy contribution from a “new and necessary American voice,” as described by Tommy Orange in The New York Times Book Review.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding 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 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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