An anthology about grief is a very good idea. I know because I had the idea myself although I was beaten to it by editors Spike Gillespie and Katherine Tanney. Stricken: The 5,000 Stages of Grief is a wonderful title and there are some excellent essays among the 24 pieces that make up this book.
As editor Tanney notes in her introduction the isolation of grief comes through quite stirringly: “Your life is just the same as it was - same busy schedule, same good friend, sweet dogs, love of yoga, but all the joy has gone out of it.” And that lack of joy, as one goes through the motions of an ordinary, everyday life, is just what the writers try to convey.
Some of them do an amazing job of it. Most notably Laura House who opens her essay “The Thing Bout Losing My Mom” with a wonderful retake on Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief with her own: “Denial. Crying. Eating. Anger. Rage. Freak Out. Bargaining. Drinking. Begging. Pleading. Sex with strangers. Reluctant Acceptance. Acceptance. But these don’t tell you the whole story. You actually have to go through an entire reprogramming of your brain.”
She then goes on to detail ordinary days when she would be doing ordinary things: “Or I‘d be at Target. I’d see a necklace, ‘Mom would really like that — But she’s dead — She’s what? — Dead! Oh, god’” House tells the reader: “It’s grief... Honor it. Pay attention."
In “Touch Me,” Rachel Resnick writes about getting a deep painful massage which brings up horrible memories of her mother’s suicide by hanging.
And in one of the most stunning essays, Amy Friedman’s “New Year’s Day,” Friedman writes about her life as the wife of a man incarcerated for murder. Her honest and unflinching and beautifully written portrait of a woman waiting for a man to leave her as she knows he must when he is given parole is mesmerizing. Her grief at his betrayal is palpable and profound.
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