Four Funerals and a Wedding by Jill Smolowe

I saw this on the shelf at our local library and borrowed it but after two weeks I still hadn't read it. I returned it and then two weeks later when I knew I would be finished reading the book I was on I borrowed this book again to read. The cover isn't much to draw attraction to the book but the title seemed like something along the lines of my interests.

I am so glad I read this book. As I was reading it I read that the author had a summer home in the same town I live. Usually a book by a local author has a sticker on the side saying so but this one did not. I would have read this sooner had I realized it was by a local author!

Between March of 2009 and September of 2010 her mother-in-law, husband, sister, and mother died. She lost so many important people in her life in a short time and didn't crumble as I would have. I barely made it through my husbands death.

Jill sounds like such a strong woman but perhaps its just the way she grieves in a different way then I. On page 7 in the Prologue Jill writes about a publication of George A. Bonnano's . She writes "Over two decades, he identified three distinct patterns of bereavement, irrespective of the age of the mourner or the loss involved (spouse, child, parent, or sibling): chronic grief (the 10 to 15 percent who are overwhelmed by grief for eighteen months or longer); acute grief (the 15 to 20 percent who recover within eighteen months); and resilience (the more then 50 percent who return to normal functioning within size months)." I unlike Jill would have been in the 10- 15 % of people who had chronic grief for a very long time. I'd say for about 2 years at least.

I have read many books by widows in the past two years and this was the first one where I found a completely different perspective on mourning. In the end of the book Jill writes about her wedding to a man she fell in love with (who is a widower) a few months after her husband died. What a wonderful ending to see she has been able to find such happiness after all she has been through.

This is the 32nd book I have read in 2015. It is non-fiction and has 243 pages.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on July 25, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.