Read, weep and celebrate: The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement
July 18th 2008 00:57
As I turned the corner at my half-way mark at the parking lot at Mahon’s Pool in Maroubra to run back to Coogee and took in, with a sort of breathlessness, the expanse of ocean that is the coastline of Lurline Bay on the clearest of winter days, it struck me today that there is almost enough beauty in the world to hold all of its pain. Philosophical insights are never summonsed, they do tend to sort of present themselves amidst runner’s cramp and the thought ‘if I don’t get a drink I am going to die.’ Between footfalls along the footpath, I became certain that if this world was only beauty, it would sicken us, like too many Max Brenner chocolate shots. If it were only pain, we would be squashed and defeated. Today I felt the design of it. The exquisite balance between the light and the dark.
This is the sense with which I have been left having just finished Virginia Lloyd’s moving memoir, The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement. I met Virginia serendipitously at a party a few weeks ago, and promptly went out to buy her book – I had read about it in the media, but I do not, as a whole, rush out to buy books about losing one’s life partner to cancer.
If you have this same rather naïve aversion to reading something challengingly real, I urge you to push past it. It is simply a dull-witted bouncer preventing you from entering a splendid, beautifully written, torturously honest book delicately poised between unbearable loss and exquisite courage.
I have on occasion been called a book snob by my dear friend Lisa (who reads books about vampires having sex and such things that elude me) because I cannot – I will not - read shit no matter how many weeks it has spent on the best seller list. Bad writing kills me. I almost take it personally. I don’t mind reading a book on any topic if it is done with grace and care. And this book is nothing if not graceful and careful.
You will cry. This book will squeeze you at every tender point in your heart meridian. But it has been scripted with such a loving hand, your heart will also swell.
Virginia met John when she was 32, married him at 33 and was a widow at 34. She writes of caring for John while he died a painful death. But the beauty of this book is more than enough to hold this tender subject matter. Their life together was brief and top heavy with medical intervention and the ever-approaching, uncertain deadline of his demise. In the short time they had together they embraced that insight from which most of us live our lives eluded: that we are here to love and be loved.
After John’s death Virginia attends to the problem of the rising damp in her home that has been left for too long. The rising damp, like her grief must be attended to, gently allowed to be aired so that the integrity of the structure can be lovingly restored.
The narrative is gently sculpted, as Virginia examines what death has meant to her with searing honesty and as carefully as she chooses colours for her walls, a painting to honour John’s life and she faces her future without him.
I sobbed through a lot of this book, but with a kind of heightened awareness of the hard-won insights on offer. I watched my husband sleeping with new eyes having read the passage about how special mattresses and then eventually hospital beds divided Virginia from John from the simple act of lying head-to-head on pillows and looking into one another’s eyes.
I closed this book with gratitude for its reminder of the grace of each moment, the beauty of love at its most contested and battered, and the sinew of the heart, that can hold its own shattering and yet stand sturdy.
I adored this book. It is a gem.
www.virginialloyd.com
www.joannefedler.com
This is the sense with which I have been left having just finished Virginia Lloyd’s moving memoir, The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement. I met Virginia serendipitously at a party a few weeks ago, and promptly went out to buy her book – I had read about it in the media, but I do not, as a whole, rush out to buy books about losing one’s life partner to cancer.
The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement
If you have this same rather naïve aversion to reading something challengingly real, I urge you to push past it. It is simply a dull-witted bouncer preventing you from entering a splendid, beautifully written, torturously honest book delicately poised between unbearable loss and exquisite courage.
I have on occasion been called a book snob by my dear friend Lisa (who reads books about vampires having sex and such things that elude me) because I cannot – I will not - read shit no matter how many weeks it has spent on the best seller list. Bad writing kills me. I almost take it personally. I don’t mind reading a book on any topic if it is done with grace and care. And this book is nothing if not graceful and careful.
You will cry. This book will squeeze you at every tender point in your heart meridian. But it has been scripted with such a loving hand, your heart will also swell.
Virginia met John when she was 32, married him at 33 and was a widow at 34. She writes of caring for John while he died a painful death. But the beauty of this book is more than enough to hold this tender subject matter. Their life together was brief and top heavy with medical intervention and the ever-approaching, uncertain deadline of his demise. In the short time they had together they embraced that insight from which most of us live our lives eluded: that we are here to love and be loved.
After John’s death Virginia attends to the problem of the rising damp in her home that has been left for too long. The rising damp, like her grief must be attended to, gently allowed to be aired so that the integrity of the structure can be lovingly restored.
The narrative is gently sculpted, as Virginia examines what death has meant to her with searing honesty and as carefully as she chooses colours for her walls, a painting to honour John’s life and she faces her future without him.
I sobbed through a lot of this book, but with a kind of heightened awareness of the hard-won insights on offer. I watched my husband sleeping with new eyes having read the passage about how special mattresses and then eventually hospital beds divided Virginia from John from the simple act of lying head-to-head on pillows and looking into one another’s eyes.
I closed this book with gratitude for its reminder of the grace of each moment, the beauty of love at its most contested and battered, and the sinew of the heart, that can hold its own shattering and yet stand sturdy.
I adored this book. It is a gem.
www.virginialloyd.com
www.joannefedler.com
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Comment by Janine
Tales From The Lab
Comment by tlcorbin
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A Global Citizen
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Alaska Chronicle
Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
When you are ready, this book will be here. I wish you strength in this time. I hope that the beauty in the world falls at your feet, like rose-petals,
Jo
Raven
This book is one of those books I wish I could share with everyone - someday we will all have to face the loss of someone we love. And this book shines a light in this dark place.
Jo
Comment by Jayne Kearney
Writers In Writing (and other writing)
Sounds like you have a bit of Leibnizian Optimism happening there. Gottfried Leibniz - German philosopher - believed that our world is the 'best of all possible worlds'. He felt that the existence of evil (and sadness etc)was what enabled us to understand and embrace good (of course it is much more complex than that!) Poor Gottfried was lampooned by the very clever Voltaire in his wonderful parody, Candide. I love Voltaire but I think Leibniz may have been on to something.
Viginia's book sounds wonderful and you have written so eloquently about it. I love when writers explore the darkness and discover the light therein. The two are inextricably entwined but the one we seek while the other we endure.
I read a great quote this week (on a greeting card of all places) by Gibran which said, "Accept the seasons of your heart and watch with serenity through the winters of your grief." It really touched me - (plus it had a quirky sketch of a duck lying sadly under a doona as a duck friend peered concernedly through the window).
I shall be sure to get a copy of this fabulous book. Thanks for letting us know of it.
Jayne
Comment by Judy Harvey
Style Speaker
Judy