Hospice

Hospice Care was provided for Jan at home in Cranford, NJ.

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Flowers Everywhere

Jan and her Orchid!

Jan and her Orchid!

From One Rose to a
Home Full of Flowers

My beloved wife, Jan, was arriving home for the last time on April 10, 2021. I asked her how I could make her last trip home more comfortable, and she replied that she wanted to be surrounded by flowers upon her arrival. However, two days before her release from the hospital, Rabbi Renee, my sons, and Dr. Saksena delivered the heartbreaking news that hospice care was the only option left. Dr. Strair, her other oncologist, had explained that they couldn’t effectively treat Jan’s Lymphoma due to COVID-19, and the Lymphoma prevented them from treating COVID-19. He stated that her Lymphoma was very aggressive, and they had tried three treatments, but the efficacy of each new treatment had declined. Dr. Strair said there was little they could do even without COVID-19.

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Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

Read: March 2023

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Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

by Margaret Atwood

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood is a collection of remarkable tales, which delight, illuminate, and are quietly devastating. I especially found the stories about Nell and Tig compelling and engaging. Widow describes a letter Nell almost wrote to a friend after Tig is gone. Nell sounded like me when she said, “the warping or folding of time. In some parts of this refolded time, Tig still exists, as much as he ever did.”

The letter Nell is writing to a friend she will never be sent because it speaks to the harsh reality that grief imposes upon us.

Margaret Atwood writes as Nell,

Have I gone into the dark tunnel, dressed in mourning black with gloves and a veil, and come out the other end, all cheery and wearing bright colors and loaded for bear?

No. Because it’s not a tunnel. There isn’t any other end. Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you.

As much as it might have appeared that I was in a dark tunnel after Jan died, I was not and am not now. There is indeed no defined end to the grief journey.

We all must learn how to live without our loved ones. The pathway I have chosen may not work for anyone else.

The earlier Nell and Tig stories are memories about their lives, reminding me of how I wrote about how Jan and I met and eventually married.

I have always enjoyed reading Atwood‘s writing, including The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments. I highly recommend Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood!

Old Babes in the Wood was my twenty-third book of the year and fulfilled my Goodreads 2023 Reading Challenge, but it will not end my reading this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the world’s most visionary and canonical authors. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories–some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine–explores the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit, and intellect.

The two brave sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the unbelievable, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love–and what comes after.

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.

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When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East

Read: January 2023

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When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East

by Quan Barry

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry is a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as a pair of estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Since Jan died, I have been sharing her love and not looking for her, so this novel attracted me as it was a counter-narrative. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something more significant?

When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what is.

Although I know only a limited amount about Buddhism and even less about Mongolia, I found When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East a fascinating page-turner of a novel.

Coincidently, while en route to see Memorial, we stopped to eat at a Mexican-Peruvian restaurant on Tenth Avenue in NYC. On the television was a continuous loop of a travelogue on Mongolia.

I found several quotes that I have used in other posts already.

  • “Sometimes faith is the only medicine available.”
  • “When the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, I will be the boat.”

I plan to use others in future posts.

Love never dies, and this quote echoed my belief.

“Love is neither created nor destroyed. It exists at all times and in all dimensions. Love is not something we create—it is something that wells up in us, like sap in a tree. It is an element in the fabric of the universe. Even on that distant day when sentient beings no longer exist, Love carries on. Perhaps our personal relationship to Love is impermanent, but Love itself is not.”

I highly recommend When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama somewhere in the vast Mongolian landscape, the young monk Chuluun seeks the help of his identical twin, Mun, who was recognized as a reincarnation himself as a child but has since renounced their once shared monastic life.

Harking back to her vivid and magical first novel set in Vietnam, Quan Barry carries us across a landscape as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the stark Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khan. As their country stretches before them, questions of the immortal soul, along with more earthly matters of love, sex, and brotherhood, haunt the twins, who can hear each other’s thoughts.

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.

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Three Strong Women

Read: August 2022

Three Strong Women

by Marie NDiaye

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye is a novel that focuses on three women who say no. Winner of the coveted Prix Goncourt, the first by a black woman, Marie NDiaye, creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as beautiful. With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. I highly recommend this novel.

John Fletcher translated the Kindle version.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, an impoverished widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the Fanta above) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits to an immigrant experience rarely, if ever, examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month are matched dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Absolution: A Novel

Read: November 2023

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Absolution: A Novel

by Alice McDermott

I started reading “Absolution: A Novel” by Alice McDermott today. The opening line immediately grabbed my attention: “You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean.” In most literature about the Vietnam War, American women, particularly wives, have been minor characters. However, in “Absolution,” they take center stage.

The book follows the story of two women, Tricia, a shy newlywed, and Charlene, a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three. They both found themselves in Saigon in 1963, forming a wary alliance. They balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia after encountering an aging Vietnam vet. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, carefully considering that pivotal year and Charlene’s altruistic machinations. They discover how their lives as women on the periphery have been shaped and burdened by the same unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

This virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant and affecting writers, explores themes of folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken 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.

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A House for Alice: A Novel

Read: September 2023

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A House for Alice: A Novel

by Diana Evans

I just started reading A House for Alice: A Novel by Diana Evans. The story is set against a complicated political backdrop but is filled with hope, humor, and humanity. A House for Alice explores the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and reveals the secrets we keep from our loved ones.

The novel opens with two tragedies that occur in London. The first is the Grenfell Tower fire, which took many lives. The second is the death of Cornelius Winston Pitt, a family patriarch who dies alone. A House for Alice is a beautiful and poignant story about a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure.

The family matriarch, Alice, has lived in England for fifty years but longs to spend her remaining years in her homeland, Nigeria. Her three daughters are divided on the matter. The youngest daughter, Melissa, is also struggling with the aftermath of her failed relationship. The family’s foundational pillars of trust, love, and cultural identity begin to weaken as they navigate these difficult times.

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.

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Kairos

Read: June 2023

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Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

by Jenny Erpenbeck

I’ve recently delved into the captivating novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which has left a lasting impression on me. The book tells the story of a young woman named Katharina who falls in love with a married writer named Hans, whom she met in East Berlin during the late 1980s. The historical context of Germany’s reunification is already an intriguing topic, but the addition of a love story made this book a must-read.

As their intense and complicated relationship plays out against the backdrop of a declining GDR, the novel offers a unique perspective on the tumultuous period following the country’s dissolution in 1989. Erpenbeck’s writing style is unmistakable, and her sweeping portrayal of the two lovers’ journey is truly remarkable. We witness Katharina’s growth as she tries to reconcile the reality of her lousy romance with the disappearance of an entire world and its ideologies.

The Times Literary Supplement has praised Erpenbeck’s ability to capture the weight of history and the influence of cultural and subjective memory on individual identity. Her work acknowledges the complexity of the human experience and the nuances of historical events.

Jenny Erpenbeck is an epic storyteller and a highly respected voice in contemporary German literature. Her translator, Michael Hofmann, has described Kairos as a great post-Unification novel, and his translation has been praised for being both faithful to the original text and beautifully written. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a thought-provoking and engaging read.

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.

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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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