Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

For my second book of the new year I chose the beautiful yet painful Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks, a book that details the death of her husband, the “love of her life,” in May of 2019. I remember reading about when Tony Horowitz died suddenly after collapsing on a sidewalk in Chevy Chase, MD. He was in town, staying at his brother’s home, because he was on a promotional book tour for his new book, Spying on the South (Penguin, 2019), and he had a book signing scheduled for the next day at Politics and Prose bookstore. Geraldine Brooks, his wife of 35 years, was at their home on Martha’s Vineyard, working on her book, the novel Horse (Viking, 2022).

This book is equal parts beautiful and devastating. I read it quickly, in just two nights before bed (or let’s be real, late into the night when I should have been asleep), partly because it is short at only 224 pages but also because the writing is so good, so clear, it’s a very easy read. That’s not the same thing as being easy to read, trust me.

While reading it I had lots of thoughts – so many thoughts – first about other books and movies it reminded me of, and then of close friends and relatives who have lost husbands who were far too young, and lastly, the possibility that this nightmare could happen to me.

When the news that her husband has died reaches Brooks, she is trying to settle down for a day of writing. She is alone on the island, one son away at boarding school and the other on a plane on his way to Australia, Brooks’ homeland, to visit Brooks’ sister. She has not joined Horwitz on his book tour because she is trying to make progress on her own novel, and it is proving to be difficult. She is alone. The phone rings and she hesitates, let it go to voicemail or answer it? Worried that it is something about one of her sons, she answers it, and her world as she knows it comes crashing down about her. She is alone.

That phone call sets off a chain of events that lasts from that dreadful day in May of 2019 all the way through the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Once the train leaves the station, it barrels down the track and doesn’t let up. There are so many things to do, plans to make, memorials to plan in two cities, reports to file, taxes to pay, finances to figure out, health insurance coverage to have reinstated.

This is a masterclass in teaching anyone, but primarily women, what not to do, primarily, allow someone to control all of their finances, investments, bills, taxes, etc. Usually this comes to light when the man has absconded with the marital assets and leaves the woman with nothing. Here, the money is there (you really can’t take it with you) but she doesn’t know where it is or how to access it. Passwords to accounts, not a clue. Quarterly payments of estimated taxes, late and already accruing fines. Credit cards, canceled because none were in her name.

Because of her own natural tendencies to stay strong and her strict upbringing by her mother ingraining in her “get over yourself,” she can’t (doesn’t? won’t?) take any time for herself to grieve the loss of her husband.

So, during the lock-down, she uses the time of confinement to finish Horse, mostly so she can dedicate it to Tony. She is home with both sons and nothing more can be done but walk the dogs, do a bit of gardening, cook dinner, and write her book.

Once the pandemic starts to subside, the book is finished and she has some time before the crushing travel for the book tour begins, so in February of 2023 she leaves home for something she desperately needs: time alone to grieve the loss of her husband.

She heads to Flinders Island off the coast of Tasmania to deal with her grief in the only way she knows how, to live alone in the wildness of Australian nature. She rents a “shack” and spends her days hiking, watching the wildlife, reading her husband’s journals, and taking a swim each evening as the sun is setting. It is one of the last evening swims when she finally is able to unleash her pent up pain and sorrow, and can finally return home at peace with herself.

Brooks and I are nearly the same age. My husband and I have been married for over 35 years. He is the love of my life, my best friend, my everything. It’s only natural that I could place myself in Brooks’ shoes while reading this book. I have multiple friends whose husbands died first, some of illness with time to prepare, and some very suddenly.

While reading this book I thought about Delia Ephron’s memoir Left on Tenth, detailing her own experience of losing her husband of 37 years to prostate cancer. She says in the book that when her husband’s oncologist sent them home, armed with a DNR and hospice plans, that she “began to rehearse being alone.” She had time to prepare for the inevitability of losing him. Brooks had no such preparation.

Both of these women, writer and film producer Delia Ephron (sister of Nora Ephron) and Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, have the financial means and connections to make these situations somewhat easier. But once again, making something easier to do doesn’t mean it’s easier to bear. I feel deeply for both of them.

This book is a beautiful tribute to a good marriage, a good partnership, a good relationship, all filled with love and respect. It is a primer on loss, on grieving, on adapting to a new path of life. I loved reading it, even if it took my breath away at certain points. Rest in peace, Tony Horwitz, rest in peace.