Geraldine Brook's MEMORIAL DAYS-Memoir and Tribute to her Late Husband Anthony Horowitz

The sudden loss of a spouse is a heartbreaking tragedy that befalls many. Grief is the response to the loss of a loved whom one bestowed their love and is no longer there to receive it. The process for giving is as individual as one's fingerprints. Accomplished writers like Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates were able to channel their emotions into their forte of writing. Brooks' husband, Tony Horowitz, died suddenly at age 59, leaving Brooks with their two sons and an immeasurable void after decades together in a blissful marriage. Writing about their unlikely coupling, their even more surprising successful literary careers and the morass of loneliness following her husband's death was a means for Brooks to process her mourning and challenges of widowhood. Having read both Didion and Oates' memoirs, comparing them felt required. All three writers have received numerous literary honors including Pulitzer Prizes in Literature. Of the three, Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" resonates poignantly with her ephemeral references when confronting her husband's death and daughter's flailing health. Oates' memoir,"A Widow's Story" is blatant in her tactile descriptions of her husband's corpse. Oats' writing felt too harsh and detached. Conversely, Brooks memoir, "Memorial Days" resounds candidly and clearly when sharing her suffering and state of mind. Brooks' prose ebbs and flows like the tides on the shores of their home recounting their courtship, the arduous/adventurous years of foreign reporting to falling in love and becoming a family four folded into the welcoming arms of each other's parents and siblings. Brooks is direct concerning her financial status which left her secured in their dream home on the Vineyard and the joys derived from raising their sons. Brooks Admitted to being thrust into handling fiscal matters she gladly left to her husband such as taxes and insurance which reverberated with the fears for many of not only losing one's soul mate but the guilt associated with many couples who gladly turn over various responsibilities knowing they should take more responsibility for knowing what to do. Both Brooks and her late husband's paths fortuitously intertwined into a loving couple hood, expanding family each establishing a literary legacy and most of all a legacy of having lived, simply put, happily-for-what-it's worth and while it lasted in a most congenial way - where July and August never got too hot. MEMORIAL DAYS provides solace in its calibrated allotments of grief. This eloquent memoir tugs gently at the heartstrings resounding with sorrow offset by blessings that abound in life,