READING BOOKS has become my lifeline in coping with grief. After my wife passed away, I began consuming books obsessively, desperately trying to fill the quiet hours where thoughts of my loss might otherwise take over. Keeping myself busy in the days immediately following her death acted as a crucial pain reliever; I found I was always at my loneliest when I wasn't reading.
During this period, I scoured bookstore shelves and e-book lists for any literature on grief. I hoped these books would offer the wisdom needed to understand my experience, speaking to me on a personal level in the quiet solitude of my darkest days. I was looking for a lifeline to carry around, but I found no success—or perhaps I simply didn't know where to look. I am not a religious person, nor am I particularly drawn to inspirational books, though I have read a few.
It was only last year that I came across an e-book copy of The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman. Rather than a narrative, it is a teaching manual designed to help readers recover from loss. The authors draw from their own histories of grief—one dealing with divorce, the other with the deaths of a child and a grandfather—as well as the stories of others to illustrate how a well-defined plan can help restore a person's energy and spontaneity. It offers grievers specific action steps coupled with reflective homework activities.
Ultimately, the book didn’t deliver the miracle I was hoping for, perhaps because I struggled to stay on track with its methods. However, the handbook did leave me with several valuable insights about my situation:
- There are no absolutes in grief.
- Recovery is achieved through a series of small, correct choices made by the griever.
- Incomplete recovery can leave a lifelong negative impact on one's capacity for happiness.
- True recovery requires absolute honesty with oneself and with others.
- Much of the advice we receive about dealing with loss is actually misinformation—including the reflexive lie of saying, "I'm fine."
Despite these lessons, I realized that I gained far deeper insights into grief from reading fiction than from any clinical method or manual. The novels I have read are incredibly diverse, spanning from timeless classics to modern bestsellers. The stories that truly resonated with me all share the universal theme of loss, exploring the countless ways people navigate it.
Perhaps I am just trying to justify my addiction to fiction. When I first started reading novels years ago, I did it for entertainment, or maybe for the simple thrill of bragging that I had finished Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield or Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Now, in the wake of my loss, I read fiction to learn how to survive.
Fiction has helped me in a far more significant way than nonfiction ever could. I have learned that fiction conveys truths straight to the heart because of its unique capacity to tap into our emotions. It expands our minds, teaching us to be open to different perspectives and experiences. Most importantly, fiction builds empathy. project our own state of mind into what we read is a powerful tool that allows us to function as more than just self-obsessed individuals. As Neil Gaiman beautifully noted, reading fiction allows you to find something vitally important for making your way in the world: the realization that the world doesn't have to be like this, and things can be different.
Empathy in reading provides us with a profound understanding of what it feels like to be a character navigating grief. Judith Guest’s bestselling novel, Ordinary People, for instance, places a heavier clinical emphasis on depression than any nonfiction book I've encountered. It helped me realize that depression is not always about sobbing and crying; as the novel’s psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, puts it, it is a "plain and simple reduction of feeling."
I have read novels that provide everything I need to get through the day, from quiet reminders to stay strong to practical methods for overcoming adversity. I immerse myself in these fictional worlds, gaining a better perspective on characters suffering immeasurable losses similar to my own. From Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, I learned not to dwell on problems I cannot immediately solve, comforting myself with the thought that "tomorrow is another day." When I need to muster the energy to solve a problem before it's too late, I think of the clever orphan Violet Baudelaire from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, reminding myself that there must be a solution to every problem. Even if the planet were blown to smithereens and I was hurtled through vast space, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers the best advice, printed on its sturdy cover in large, friendly letters: DON'T PANIC!
Despite my loss, I have learned not to give up. There is no middle ground, because "there’s no such thing as a temporary suicide," as Henry Rearden observes in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged while fighting to hold onto his life's work. I refuse to entirely remove myself from life like old Lyman Ward in Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose, who retreats into isolated retirement while facing severe physical illness. I choose to stay engaged because this life is the only one I have.
Furthermore, I refuse to believe that the wife I loved so deeply has vanished completely, like the heavenward smoke of a candle. In Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a fictional bridge collapses, taking five random lives. The story beautifully reminds us that while we shall all eventually be loved and forgotten, the love itself is always enough. Memory is not even necessary for love to endure, because "between the living and the dead, the bridge is love."
Books that use death or separation to propel the plot help me understand the weight of alternative lives. I can easily imagine what it is like to step into another person's shoes. I feel the gnawing guilt of Jack Salmon in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, who tortures himself over failing to save his daughter. My heart bleeds for King Denethor II in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings over the heroic death of Boromir, and I can feel the burning call for revenge driving Don Vito after the ambush of his son Sonny in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.
The death of a spouse or lover never fails to tug at the heartstrings, especially when used to drive home a book's major themes. I feel deep admiration for Cuyler Goodwill in Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, who builds a stone tower in his late wife's memory, one block at a time over the passing years, even though he is unable to utter her name by the time of his own death. I recognize the danger of becoming like Archibald Craven in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, who locks away his dead wife's garden and shuts himself off from the world and his own sickly son. I understand the silent, crushing weight felt by Frederic Henry in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, who cannot utter a single word after the death of his beloved Catherine and their stillborn baby, choosing instead to simply walk back to his hotel in the rain. And I grieve alongside the narrator of Out of Africa, who sells her coffee farm after the death of her dearest friend, Denys Finch Hatton, before returning to Denmark to turn her pain into writing.
Ultimately, reading reminds me that I am still in control of my own narrative. Nothing relieves my sorrow better than the famous opening of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It serves as a beautiful realization that human well-being will always outlast human despair.
If new scientific studies come out tomorrow claiming that reading fiction actually digs me deeper into my loneliness rather than pulling me out, well—I’ll be damned! But until then, I am not giving up.
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