My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun, the critically acclaimed author of Shelter, has written an unflinching portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and the tortured realities of a deeply divided America. With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions and competing interests and one woman's attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of beautiful but troubled land. I highly recommend O Beautiful!
The Power of Art in a Political Age
Since the love of my life died in May 2021, I have read one hundred-thirty (130) books.
Seventy-four (74) were read last year, and I finished my twentieth (20) this year yesterday.
I have also begun to attend live theatre performances with friends and, whenever possible, with my oldest grandson. He and I are season ticket holders at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ.
Many of my fellow widows have warned me not to read or attend theatrical events because they might be triggering. I believe that triggers are everywhere, and learning how others have responded can help me to cope.
Both books and theatre have been crucial to my grief journey, which is now in my rearview mirror.
In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks wrote a column entitled “The Power of Art in a Political Age,” which reassured me of my opinion and helped me to recommit to reading and to attend theatrical events.
He made three key points,
First, beauty impels us to pay a certain kind of attention. It startles you and prompts you to cast off the self-centered tendency to always be imposing your opinions on things.
Second, artworks widen your emotional repertoire. When you read a poem or see a piece of sculpture, you haven’t learned a new fact, but you’ve had a new experience.
Third, art teaches you to see the world through the eyes of another, often a person who sees more deeply than you do.
Daily, I renew my commitment to the power of art in a political age. It helps me to bring Jan with me and to share our love with others, as love never dies.
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.
Can I Become a Mensch?
One of my goals has been to become a mensch.
Since Jan died in May 2021, I have focused on finding meaning and purpose.
I walk, read, and help others as much as possible.
Is becoming a mensch in my eighth decade possible?
I know that Jan was a mensch among her many accomplishments.
Perhaps I should accept that being her husband is the best I can achieve.
I often say I am a mensch-in-training, but the truth is that it is a designation achieved by the assessment of others, not by our training to become one.
Although I had prepared the essence of my eulogy in one sentence for Rabbi Renee, I will now modify it by deleting mensch-in-training.
Richard lived fully; he loved Jan and brought her with him by sharing her love; he worked to repair the world
and was a mensch-in-training.
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.
Although I focused on what I had lost in the initial hours and days after Jan died, the only way forward was to focus on what I gained, not what I lost.
My addition calculation begins with Merrit Malloy's poem Epitaph, which was read at Jan's funeral and will be a part of mine.
Love doesn't die, People do. So, when all that's left of me Is love, Give me away.
Today’s sunrise broke between the clouds, and the rays of yellow light flickered across my head.
My walk was shorter because I had several scheduled meetings and tasks.
I did not realize the significance of the month’s third day until I arrived in Totowa for my first meeting.
After parking Jan’s Prius, like the sunrise that commended my day, I realized that today was another birthday for Wes and one more month of my life without Jan.
My mind has not aged well, but my only choice was to do mental math.
If Wes is eight months old and was born fourteen months after Jan died, then the answer to how long I have lived without Jan is twenty-two months.
It is not that I am no longer in love with Jan or have forgotten how long it has been since she died.
No, it is neither of those answers. If anything, I love Jan more now than ever.
Instead, my grief is in the rearview mirror, and I choose to live life fully with Jan in my heart and soul.
Jan’s undying love has helped me to become a better person and helped me in mensh-in-training courses.
When I walk in Jan’s memorial garden in Hanson Park, I can her whispering her words of wisdom.
Richard, you are capable and strong, and I believe in you.
I might forget the days since Jan died, but I will never forget her or her transformative 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.
A year ago, I felt I had completed the most challenging twelve months in my lifetime.
As the minute hand ticks inevitably toward 2022's denouement, the hardships I carried a year ago have been subordinated but not eliminated.
I believe my grief journey is in my rearview mirror, but can humans demarcate such a dramatic change?
If I have stopped mourning Jan, it is because of my family, friends, and faith.
The year's highlights were Celebrate Jan Day and welcoming my grandson Wes into the world.
Western Lane: A Novel by Chetna Maroo is a taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself. Western Lane is about three sisters who have lost their mother. Their father is encouraged to provide structure in raising his daughters. Gopi, the narrator, is a squash player, and her father imposes a brutal training regimen. I highly recommend this novel!
My Shrinking Waistline
“Richard, we both know you are not good at shopping.”
“I am sure I am not as good as you are, but I think I can buy blue jeans.”
Twenty-two months since Jan died, I can hear her voice as clearly as I did the first time she spoke to me.
Two weeks after she died, I did go solo shopping and purchased two pairs of blue jeans.
They had a waist measurement of 38 and felt comfortable.
By the fall, they were too loose not to wear without a belt.
After a year, they looked like Jan was correct that I could not shop. The jeans hung loose and baggy.
Today, I purchased two new pairs of blue jeans on my own. This time my waist was 34!
They fit as if my body was poured into them. I can wear them without a belt!
By walking every day, I am aware I am approximately thirty-five pounds lighter, but I never knew my waist had shrunk from 38 to 34!
Would Jan recognize me today? I am confident she would because Jan’s spirit is still with me, as our 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.
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 am preparing my taxes this month. After I file, we should discuss next year and how to manage my charity donations.”
My financial planner nodded as she took a moment longer than I expected to respond.
“Richard, that sounds good. Are you filing as widowed again this year?”
“No, TurboTax recommended my only option was to file as single. They asked when Jan died, but single was the only option.”
We discussed how the IRS allowed widows two years to file with that status.
I said I would double-check with TurborTax, and she responded, “I will check with our tax experts.”
Today, I filed my federal and state returns as a single person.
In an age of gender fluidity, it seems odd that someone like me, who still believes he is married, has to file as single.
For the record, I am not asking for an extra deduction, albeit I am sure many widows could be crucial to their financial health.
Checking the filing status box as a single person in the second year after Jan died is like having a heavy door slammed in your face.
Medical visits are also awkward when they ask me to update my records.
But filing taxes as a single person for the first time since 1974, the year before Jan and I married, was a harsh reminder of widowhood in the second year.
Has my life been so drained by Jan’s death that I am now only a checkbox on a form?
No, I am more than a widow; I am a husband, father, grandfather, advocate, good neighbor, friend, and Jew, among many attributes that define me.
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.
Being a Widow Does Not Define Me
One of the nine books I have read this year was We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin.
The novel is one I highly recommend and wish I had read earlier. The title summarizes the reality of all humans, that in the dark we are all the same.
In this twisty psychological thriller, Julia Heaberlin paints two unforgettable portraits of a woman and a girl who redefines perceptions of physical beauty and strength. Her novel has helped me redefine my grief.
Disabilities do not define us, just as being a widow does not define who I am.
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by Jung Yun
O Beautiful: A Novel by Jung Yun, the critically acclaimed author of Shelter, has written an unflinching portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and the tortured realities of a deeply divided America. With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions, competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of beautiful but troubled land. I highly recommend O Beautiful!
I finished reading O Beautiful on International Women’s Day. It might have been coincidental, but in my humble opinion, it was the perfect book to read on this important day. Ms. Yun has written a novel that touches on the intersectionality of the core issues of our divided land. The misogyny, the racism, and the impact of capitalism out of control are all related and are affecting the quality of life in the early twenty-first century.
Elinor Hanson, the protagonist, is so vividly written that she jumps off the page and becomes someone we know as a family member. When she returned home to write about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota, I felt I had known her all my life. Unfortunately, the novel ended when she finally understood the issues and was in touch with her anger. I wish it would have continued so that the problems might have been addressed. Despite this, I highly recommend this novel.
O Beautiful is the twenty-first book I have read this year! My goal was twenty-three.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, struggles to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment. Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota.
Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers.
Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind.
The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and how she looks at 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.
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by Chetna Maroo
Western Lane: A Novel by Chetna Maroo is a taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself. Western Lane is about three sisters who have lost their mother. Their father is encouraged to provide structure in raising his daughters. Gopi, the narrator, is a squash player, and her father imposes a brutal training regimen. I highly recommend this novel!
The following passage explains the importance of squash to Gopi and how she views the world.
In the court, your mind is not only on the shot you’re about to play and the shot with which your opponent might reply, but on the shots that will follow two, three, four moves ahead. You’re watching your opponent’s position and the game he or she is playing, making calculations. This is how you choose which way to go. Though your mind is following several paths at once, it’s not a splitting but expansion forwards and backward in time, and it happens so quickly that it feels like instinct. Sometimes, you don’t even know you are thinking.
In the first few pages, I wondered what I would have done if I had been a single parent when my sons were young. I do not believe I would have imposed on my sons what Gopi’s father did to her. However, I have found reading and art to be powerful tools to help me cope with grief. I have focused on rituals, structure, and purpose.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.
But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we know ourselves and each other.
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 Rachel Blythe Kodanaz
Finding Peace, One Piece at a Time by Rachel Blythe Kodanaz is a book I wish I had long before Jan died. It provides helpful information on maintaining an organized lifestyle and handling a loved one’s possessions.
Having lost almost everything I had except for the clothes on my back after a house fire in 1972, I thought I had adopted a view that possessions were not significant. With Jan’s death, the truth is that she and I had collected essential possessions, and now it was my responsibility to decide what to do with them.
Rachel’s book is a practical guide, offering a comprehensive understanding of the significance of possessions and a step-by-step plan to manage them. Chapter 3, in particular, is a treasure trove of practical advice, focusing on Building Your Game Plan: The Ten Essentials and covering all the crucial topics – triggers, building a team, and creating a timeline, among others.
Magic of the Six Piles is a well-designed plan that will help most of us confront the possessions of our loved ones. The piles are:
Having absorbed the book’s wisdom, I am ready to transition from contemplation to action. This is how I sort my wife’s possessions into six piles. I am optimistic that it will also help me streamline my possessions, making books my trusted company more accessible for my sons.
Ms. Kodanaz has presented at my bereavement groups and has been an inspiration. She has also encouraged me to write about my love for Jan in a journal.
by Amy Bloom
Having surpassed my Goodreads 2022 reading goal, I wanted a lite, historical fiction book and found this one in the e-library. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom is a book that hooked me on the opening line – “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” I enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it.
The first section in Hollywood was the one I found less appealing. Partly that is because I identified with Eva, and she does not fulfill her leading role until the last two sections. Its depiction of how people survived the way years by sometimes is a reminder of our inner resilience.
Goodreads provides the following summary.
So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.
Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.
With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat, and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.
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by S. A. Cosby
Today, I delved into the gripping pages of “All the Sinners Bleed” by S. A. Cosby. This enthralling novel centers around Titus Crown, the first African American sheriff in Charon County, Virginia. Despite the county’s reputation for traditional customs such as moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, Titus, with his FBI expertise, knows that the peace won’t last forever.
On the first anniversary of Titus’s election, a schoolteacher is murdered by an ex-student, and Titus’s deputies take down the perpetrator. As Titus delves deeper into the case, he uncovers a web of horrendous crimes and finds a serial killer lurking in plain sight, haunting Charon’s dirt roads and woodland clearings.
Titus is determined to solve the case, even though it is linked to a nearby church, and he harbors a personal secret that plagues him. However, he faces opposition from a far-right group who want to hold a parade to honor the town’s Confederate past while he tries to solve the issue.
Despite the challenges, Titus remains resolute in his love for Charon and his commitment to finding justice. The collision of religion and hatred cannot deter him from his duty.
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 Lauren Fox
Send for Me by Lauren Fox. Send for Me is an achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the constant push and pull of family. Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents’ famous bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick was thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refuse to patronize the bakery.
This novel explores mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness of four generations of mothers and daughters – Klara, Annelise, Ruth, and Clare.
Klara is the matriarch who remains in Germany, where she dies at the beginning of the war. Annelise is her daughter who becomes a refugee in Milwaukee. The poignant letters from her mother ask for help to leave Germany and reunite with her daughter and granddaughter Ruthie, tying together the four generations.
The letters are found by Clara, who pays to have them translated. Can we ever escape from the past, and how does it shape our futures.
I enjoyed reading this book as I prefer historical fiction, especially about the rise of Germany and antisemitism.
Send for Me is also a reminder that we are refugees.
Our lives are forever intertwined between two cultures, the past and the future.
I highly recommend Send for Me.
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by Michael Stephen Daigle
The Swamps of Jersey by Michael Stephen Daigle is the first of the Frank Nagler series. Having read the fourth one – The Red Hand, I thought this was an excellent time to read the first in this impressive deceptive series. It was, in fact, an excellent decision. Understanding Frank Nagler better now, I plan to read the next two and the Red Hand to be ready for the fifth book Dragony Rising.
Ironton, New Jersey has seen hard times before. Deserted factories and empty stores reflect the decades-long decline, that even Mayor Gabriel Richman, scion of one of the city’s leading political families, cannot seem to rectify. Now families are living on the street or in the shells of the old factories.A week-long tropical storm floods the depressed city bringing more devastation as well as a new misery: The headless, handless body of a young woman in the Old Iron Bog.
Between the gruesome murder and an old factory suspiciously burning down, Detective Frank Nagler begins to believe that incarcerated Charlie Adams, the city’s famous serial killer, may have fostered a copycat killer. Determined to find the truth, he follows the case that leads into unexpected places.
Knowing the author and the geography of NJ, I found this book a must-read.
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by Octavia E. Butler
Today, I started reading Octavia E. Butler‘s acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel, “Parable of the Sower.” The book depicts a world in which global climate change and economic crises have led to social chaos, particularly in California. The state is plagued by dangers such as pervasive water shortages and masses of vagabonds who are willing to do whatever it takes to survive.
The novel provides a message of hope even in a gloomy environment. It tells the story of Lauren Olamina, a fifteen-year-old girl who lives with her preacher father, family, and neighbors in a gated community. They are protected from the chaos happening around them. However, in a society where everyone is at risk, Lauren suffers from hyperempathy, a condition that makes her highly sensitive to the emotions of others.
Lauren is a young girl who is wise beyond her years and acutely aware of the dangers that her community refuses to acknowledge. She must speak up to protect her loved ones from the impending disasters that could otherwise harm them. However, her fight for survival leads to something much bigger—the emergence of a new faith and a profound insight into humanity’s destiny.
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.
