Book one. The package arrived a week after my husband Peter passed away. Inside was Healing after loss, daily meditations of working through grief, a little book by Martha W. Hickman. It came from Marsha, a member of the talkative group of friends who’ve socialized one Wednesday a month for years. Early on, we were a silly  bunch who paraded on July 4, went to concerts and plays, played canasta and, not just incidentally, wore red hats and purple garments.

As the years passed we’ve aged of course and our outings and cavorting have tamed. We even gave up the red hats. Over time we’ve lost too many members, too many spouses. The author packed her book with wise words and thoughtful quotes for each day of the year. At the time, I was planning a celebration of Peter’s life to take place in September. Curious, I opened the book to August 15, the date of his death, and there was the perfect passage to use for his celebration. This, in particular, sang to me:

Can we, in the air that surrounds us,
the sunshine that bathes us with its warmth and light,
the life that surges in our own being,
imagine the abiding presence of our loved one?

I am no longer the religious person I was brought up to be, but those words resonated.

Book two, Why don’t you write my eulogy now so I can correct it? promises chuckles. Written by Patricia Marx and illustrated by Roz Chast, the author offers quotes from her mother. “If you ever have children, don’t let me babysit,” made me laugh out loud.

The point of today’s post is, although I preached laughter as medicine throughout “Dementia isn’t funny,” I suddenly realized I hadn’t threaded any humor into the previous post! So after the fact, I encourage you to read Marx’s book. There are giggles to be had, but sage advice too: “Show me now what you’re going to wear to my funeral so I can let you know whether it’s appropriate,” said the mom of the woman who wrote the book.

Now I wouldn’t tell my own daughters, Carolynn and Leslie, what to wear to my funeral or Peter’s, but I did tell them several years ago that I had written our obituaries. They groaned. They didn’t want to know about it. We weren’t going to die! But then one of us did.

And the obit was ready. All I had to do was fill in dates, find an appropriate photo, and Bob’s yer uncle. Done. Leslie helped by downloading what I’d written onto the newspaper site, but I insisted on proofreading again, just to be sure. I’m a stickler for typos, extra punctuation and spelling. When the obit appeared the following morning, I moaned. The all important ‘e”at the end of Clarke was missing!  And I hadn’t caught it!  That “e” was so important to Peter’s Granddad Alf that he struggled through miles of red tape back in the 1930s to get an “e” added to the end of Clark. There were too many families in England with C-l-a-r-k as their surname, he opined. He wanted his family to be C-l-a-r-k-e. Then some 90 years later I, the granddaughter-in-law he never met, forgot the “e” on his grandson’s name in his obituary! Peter would have laughed, Alf, not so much! 

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Proverbs, 17:12

Healing after loss, daily meditations for working through grief, Martha W. Hickman, William Morrow, 2002
Why don’t you write my eulogy now so I can correct it?  Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, Celadon Books, NY, 2019