Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

There are infinite ways to cope with the grief of losing a beloved one. The more memoirs and testimonies are written, the wider the outreach of the experience. Sooner or later we are all hit by grief - the incoming death we are trying to be ´prepared for´ or the shock of being confronted with the death of a loved one. Even people who crossed our paths at a certain time and never heard about in a long time, except that are now death are missed.

As I was reading the memoir of Pulitzer-Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days, about the sudden death of journalist and historian, Pulitzer-Prize winner Tony Horwitz, I was informed about the death of someone whom I knew, a kind lady fighting with an unusual sickness for over 30 years, who ceased for years to wish of being alive. I took a break from my book and remembered her kind and sad eyes, and the moments when me and my family had the chance to talk, always shortly due to her talking impediment. Indeed, life means change, and death belongs to it.

On Memorial Day in 2019, Tony Horwitz died suddenly of a cardiac event. He was on the tour promoting his latest book, in Washington DC. His wife, as him, previously a journalist now a fiction writer, was at their home, in Martha´s Vineyard. The shock and grief followed her for years. Three years after, on the Flinders Island in Tasmania, the Australia-born author is looking for peace.

Both of them, successful international journalists, dispatched in conflict areas around the world, they founded their peace before, on Martha´s Vineyard. Flinders was Brooks´ wish of a refuge many years before. Now, she is there to reckon with her dreams, memories of Tony and the struggle of past 36 months. 

Memorial Days may be similar - and Brooks herself assumed the comparison - with Didion´s The Year of Magical Thinking. The same shock and hardship, the same realiance on words - Brooks will be able to finish soon Horse, that Tony encouraged her to write, a bestseller. But each is, naturally different, because each person DNA prepares us to react differently.

We are alive as long as we are remembered, and Tony´s memory is kept alive through this warm memoir, that also encompasses the many challenges of widowhood - should she really fire the accountant, as Tony wrote on a post-it note recovered after his death? how to manage the late husband´s portfolio of investments etc. There are practical questions that may intersect with the mourning time, and anyone who suddenly lost a family member went through it - administrative issues, account disclosure, insurance requests.

At certain extents, I wished this book takes longer. Brooks storytelling - even when she is writing non fiction - is talking to the reader and I would want to continue this experience exploring more of her books - including Horse. But books, like mourning time, need to have an ending.

Rating: 5 stars