2 weeks Ago By Reviewed by Jarett Myskiw
FEW of us escape the experience of loss — whether of friends, opportunities, family members or even our own capacities. Our grief is shared in various forms across peoples and times. This commonality is intersected by a diversity of objects to which bereavement attaches, and even more so by the myriad ways grieving processes unfold.
Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * FEW of us escape the experience of loss — whether of friends, opportunities, family members or even our own capacities. Our grief is shared in various forms across peoples and times. This commonality is intersected by a diversity of objects to which bereavement attaches, and even more so by the myriad ways grieving processes unfold.
Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? FEW of us escape the experience of loss — whether of friends, opportunities, family members or even our own capacities. Our grief is shared in various forms across peoples and times. This commonality is intersected by a diversity of objects to which bereavement attaches, and even more so by the myriad ways grieving processes unfold.
Calgarian Jessica Waite began exploring these topics through short stories and essays in the wake of her husband Sean’s sudden death. Her newest, the memoir , seeks to encapsulate and understand her relationship with Sean both before and after his passing. Sean died of a massive heart attack in a Houston airport in late 2015.
He was only 47, leaving behind a young son and a bewildered widow, terminating what the author refers to as two decades of a glorious relationship. The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards It is only in the weeks that followed that another, more complicated side of Sean came into sharp relief. The devoted and energetic father was also a compulsive collector of pornography who bequeathed not only substantial debts, but evidence of drug use and multiple extramarital affairs.
If the story began and ended there, in a posthumous unearthing of one person’s self-acknowledged failures, then we’d be left with only uncomfortable, lurid fascination. Instead, Waite opens with these difficult beginnings, but moves forward as she alternates between reflections on her past with Sean and the difficult work of reconciling her own memories and beliefs with a newly emerging present reality. What coalesces is an account of healing, reconciliation and hope.
Following Sean’s funeral comes a new and unwelcome life. Waite explores a wide variety of cathartic practices. She enters into traditional therapy, but also consults psychics.
She journals and listens to empowering music, goes on dates and confronts one of Sean’s mistresses. Waite joins grief support groups and even founds a website devoted to the same. In all of this she seeks solace, but also a renewed understanding of a husband who has become profoundly unfamiliar, in the service of crafting an honest but tender remembrance for their son.
Kurt Vonnegut famously said that tears or laughter are the responses to suffering. Waite travels both paths, moving equally well through heart-rending emotion and bleak comedy. Her prose is nimble and adeptly paced.
We follow the twin narratives of a past reviewed with gratitude, sadness and newfound discernment. Monday mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. Waite has a tendency to disappear in her own retelling, leaving the reader with precious little to understand who she was as a person before Sean, what she believed in and hoped.
This choice, Waite says, keeps the spotlight squarely on her husband, yet it’s difficult not to wish for a more complete accounting. Readers would well be warned, as well, that there is a degree of new age woo permeating this narrative. Waite does not explicitly advocate for, but also does not reject, psychic phenomena and ghostly communication, but it’s also not difficult to discern wherein her sympathies lie.
If mourning is indeed nearly universal, then it follows that we ought to welcome maps to navigate these experiences. While these guides themselves can and should take many different forms, there is certainly room for an intensely personal recollection of loss told with compassion, honesty and humour. Such an intimate approach may, of necessity, skirt larger questions as it delves into the minutiae of lives, both passed and continuing.
All the same, , polemical title aside, is a considerate and optimistic story for those who have grieved and those who will grieve. Jarett Myskiw is a teacher in Winnipeg. The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards: A Memoir By Jessica Waite Atria, 320 pages, $27 Advertisement Advertisement.
