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.
Contact US!
Have a question? Suggestion?
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.
Subscribe to Sharing Jan's Love Newsletter!
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 Mark Kramer
I started reading Borscht Belt Boy: Recollections of a Hotel Brat by Mark Kramer today. The book is the story of a young man who grew up in the heyday of the Borscht Belt. The author sent me a copy when I shared my 2023 reading accomplishments. I found joy in reading his memoir as the author, and I are almost the same age.
The author, the son of a Catskills Mountain resort hotel owner, describes his experiences growing up when hotels, bungalow colonies, and sleep-away camps were booming. Learn about the characters that populated this world, from the kids who worked in the dining rooms, the handymen recruited from the Bowery, to the chefs and maitre d’s.
Enjoy the author’s humorous description of the different kinds of people who summered in the mountains. Read fascinating tales of entertainers, including Buddy Hackett and Lenny Bruce’s experiences at the family hotel. There is a brief history of Catskills’ institutions, how the influx of Jews changed the landscape, and how the resort trade influenced race, religion, and class.
This lighthearted memoir will return fond memories to those who visited the Borscht Belt in their youth and enlighten those not lucky enough to have shared this particular time and place in history.
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 Doris Kearns Goodwin
Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s best presidential historians, offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth and exercise of leadership as demonstrated by Presidents Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Johnson.
I received this book for Hanukkah from my granddaughter and son Mike and his girlfriend Elyssa. They know me very well. A book by Ms. Goodwin is always a must read. If you add in Lincoln, the two Roosevelt’s and LBJ, it is a book I cannot put down.
This NPR interview with Ms. Goodwin is worth listening to.
by Marilynne Robinson
Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson is an unusual but believable love story. Although different than how I met Jan, this novel is about love and romance that, on the surface, should never have happened. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church – the only available shelter from the rain- ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.
Lila is the third novel in the Gilead series. Previously I read Home, the second in the series, and Jack, the fourth. I highly recommend all three books.
Hopefully, one day I will read the Gilead and complete the series.
The Goodreads summary of the book provides an excellent overview.
Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.
Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.
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 Peter Wohlleben
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate ― Discoveries from A Secret World is a book I have wanted but had not had the time to read. In July of this year, when I was still in the early stages of my recovery journey, I talked to a friend of my wife’s (whom I now count as my friend) about our plans to plant a tree in Hanson Park.
As I talked about our plans, my friend suggested I read this book as it would help me understand the importance of trees. I will forever be grateful for her recommendation, as it made me read this book sooner than later.
To read that trees have a social network with more prominent, healthier trees concerned about the smaller, weaker ones. How is it that humans, a supposedly advanced species, have a social network that divides and weakens our community?
Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.
Having read this book, I am more sensitive to trees and have enjoyed my walks more than ever. In addition, when we plant Jan’s tree in Hanson Park, I will now have even more reasons to talk about the importance of trees to Jan, myself, and the community.
by Susan Wels
An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder by Susan Wels is a true crime odyssey that explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield. I had read about this historical period in several other books, most recently Civil War by Other Means.
Susan Wels has written an excellent historical overview of a period we often overlook. I highly recommend An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder.
The Oneida Community, even though it was the most successful utopian community, is often overlooked. Ms. Wels connects the dots and places the experiment in the center of a transitional period. It is not merely the connection between Charles Julius Guitea and his assassination of President James Garfield, albeit a brutal crime, that shook America to its core, but all of the other linkages. These include “John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune).”
She also resurrects the importance of the Wormely Compromise and the African-American family that was an instrumental part of public society.
I have found fiction to be something I enjoy, but I knew it was time for a non-fiction book to balance my reading. The New York Times and other publications highly rated An Assassin in Utopia.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
It was heaven on earth—and, some whispered, the devil’s garden.
Thousands came by trains and carriages to see this new Eden, carved from hundreds of acres of wild woodland. They marveled at orchards bursting with fruit, thick herds of Ayrshire cattle and Cotswold sheep, and whizzing mills. They gaped at the people who lived in this place—especially the women, with their queer cropped hair and shamelessly short skirts. The men and women of this strange outpost worked and slept together—without sin, they claimed.
From 1848 to 1881, a small utopian colony in upstate New York—the Oneida Community—was known for its shocking sexual practices, from open marriage and free love to the sexual training of young boys by older women. And in 1881, a one-time member of the Oneida Community—Charles Julius Guiteau—assassinated President James Garfield in a brutal crime that shook America to its core.
An Assassin in Utopia is the first book that weaves together these explosive stories in a tale of utopian experiments, political machinations, and murder. This deeply researched narrative—by bestselling author Susan Wels—tells the true, interlocking stories of the Oneida Community and its radical founder, John Humphrey Noyes; his idol, the eccentric newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (founder of the New Yorker and the New York Tribune); and the gloomy, indecisive President James Garfield—who was assassinated after his first six months in office.
Juxtaposed to their stories is the odd tale of Garfield’s assassin, the demented Charles Julius Guiteau, who was connected to all of them in extraordinary, surprising ways.
Against a vivid backdrop of ambition, hucksterism, epidemics, and spectacle, the book’s interwoven stories fuse together in the climactic murder of President Garfield in 1881—at the same time as the Oneida Community collapsed.
Colorful and compelling, An Assassin in Utopia is a page-turning odyssey through America’s nineteenth-century cultural and political landscape.
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 Abraham Verghese
Today, I began reading The Covenant of Water, the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the significant word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. The Covenant of Water was a holiday gift from Mike, Elyssa, Nick, and Wes.
From 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast. It follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes throughout her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and human understanding and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
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.
