When my mother was first diagnosed with cancer two and half years ago, with a prognosis that was far from optimistic, I began searching for ways to manage my crushing sadness and the looming inevitability of the greatest loss I would face in my life thus far.
My hunt took me on the familiar path of books, which have always been a source of comfort in my life. I just knew that someone, somewhere had filled up the pages of a book with the exact emotions I was feeling, and through this universality of grief, could help me process them.
After reading books like Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” and Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart,” especially, I quickly found that the burden of loss is much easier to endure when reminded that you’re not the only one who has borne it.
Reading books on grief, whether they be fiction or works of truth, allowed me the ability to share and explore the complexities and trauma of this particular experience, all in my own time and without having to sit face-to-face with someone (which means I can ugly-cry in peace).
By the time my mother passed away in late May 2022, I had already read a couple of the books below, while others I have used like therapy in recent months. Some of them are unexpected, some feel profound and others contain really thoughtful musings on death –– but all have helped me find a way to move through life alongside my sadness. And they might be able to help you or a loved one, too.
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In the book, we meet Zauner as a busy 25-year-old who has unintentionally distanced herself from her Korean roots. Then, when her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Zauner is prompted to rediscover her culture in a way that's both food- and relationship-driven, and recounted in a way that's incredibly sensorial and satisfying.
Probably my favorite element of "Crying in H Mart" is the way that the author speaks with such honesty about her relationship with her mother. It's a complex one, like most mother-daughter relationships, and she is now being forced to observe it all in its entirety through the lens of losing her. It was incredibly relatable and helped me to break down my own memories with my mother and our connection to each other, outside of her illness.
In "The Year of Magical Thinking," Didion wields her quintessential way with words and uses them to tell her own personal story of loss, and about the natural ebbs of flows of life in general. It's just before Christmas and Didion's daughter falls ill, only for her husband to die a week later. Although this sounds completely doom and gloom, there's light at the end of the tunnel, I can assure you.
There's always something that has seemed a little wrong about witnessing the people you admire divulge on a personal topic such as grief. Reading this memoir helped drive home the fact that everyone experiences loss and that there's nothing shameful about sadness.
Our narrator is a pretty, entitled Columbia graduate who is living a reckless existence after both of her wealthy parents pass away. For an entire year, she decides to hide from the world by ingesting a cocktail of irresponsibly prescribed drugs, one after another. In between her moments of hibernation, we witness the narrator's loopy ramblings, memories of her parents and her bizarre relationship with her best friend, who also happens to be losing her mother to cancer.
At the end of the "year of rest and relaxation," the reader sees that positive things can happen, even from some of life's cruelest curveballs.
Although "Animal" is a work of fiction, Taddeo has been open about the death of both of her parents early in life and this relationship with loss is reflected in the experiences had by Joan. And while I wouldn’t recommend this novel for the faint of heart, it's completely riveting from start to finish and put together with some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read.
Reading Radziwill's memoir felt kind of like reading a fairy tale, even in those dark moments of despair. She manages to articulate unimaginable loss in a way that's beautiful and clear to understand and ultimately lands on the importance of friendship, love and the concept of destiny.
Towards the end of the memoir, which is bursting with profound descriptions and analogies of grief that ring so true to those who have experienced it, Lewis finds his faith again and, with it, a kind of peace.
Before You Go
