Solo Mother

I picked up The Alchemy of Loss on the night before Thanksgiving, United States timeline. Wednesday night. Mumbai was in flames and the horror of those coordinated attacks on India’s financial center was causing me to remember September 11, 2001. I thought that night was as good a night as any to begin Abigail Carter’s memoirs of loss and survival in the aftermath of the incident we now call, simply, 9/11.

I’d been needing to cry for days–and didn’t get five pages into the book when the tears came. I woke up on Thanksgiving morning with an emotional hangover, but stayed up that night until 2AM, finishing her book.

To be honest, these sorts of books are not what I usually read. Either I’m nose deep in some historic non-fiction, or I’m far out in cyberpunk land. But Ms. Carter’s book stayed with me, and I never once wished I hadn’t read it. As a book about the crushing weight of experiencing tragedy–and surviving–I wished sometimes that she would drop her distance. But I know first-hand how difficult it is to write about the ‘lesser’ tragedies of losing a marriage, or a friend, or a dream. I can’t fault Ms. Carter for holding back and sometimes writing in a voice that left me to believe that sometimes, she too was an observer of her own grief.

Often, though, I’d find myself crying for her loss, and for all the losses we suffer as women who love. And when she described her descent into rage, the utter fury she felt at the world, the only victims she had to take it out on, her angry little children…. I was grateful that Ms. Carter had decided to be honest with us. It made me feel not so alone in my own struggle with anger, and disappointment. And as she struggled to define the parameters of her grief, I understood.

MY DEAD HUSBAND’S CLOTHES closet held me hostage for almost four years. In the early days after Arron’s death, his clothes hung patiently in his closet waiting for his return. I would open the closet doors to see his shoes staring at me expectantly, longing for the warmth of his feet. I would stand inside the folding louver doors and cry deep, wet tears into his blue terrycloth bathrobe that still smelled of him. I fingered the striped flannel shirt that everyone hated but him. His socks were piled impossibly high in a rolling wire mesh basket. Another level of the basket held his underwear. They waited for him, as did I. I would close the closet doors and fling myself face down onto the bed in dramatic sobs.
The closet became a litmus test of my grief. Open door, cry, close door, pass test. Still grieving. Repeat in four weeks.
Soon, the act became almost masochistic. A crying dry-spell would send me back to the closet for a rain dance of tears. A whiff of his bathrobe was a reliable shaman. The tears would cleanse my body, releasing me from the grip of grief. Relief washed over me – I still mourned for my husband honorably, appropriately, with tears and sobs.

One thing had never occurred to me as I contemplated the survivors of 9/11; these men and women lost their loved ones twice. Once on a very personal level, as each of us experiences the death of a loved one… and once again, to a nation crazed with grief that claimed each of the names as their own. Ms. Carter’s search for some meaningful way to say good-bye to her all-too-human husband is touching and real. I smiled with true joy when I read of how she finally created a fitting memorial to the man she had loved.

What Ms. Carter’s book offers each of us is some understanding of our own losses, our search for self, and the myriad paths of effort, error and elation that each of us must travel. If your heart needs solace in the tribulations of a single mother, I would recommend that you read this book. Abigail Carter has something to say. She often says it with grace, wit, and honesty. Keep in touch with her through her blog, and cheer her on as she discovers a new self. And get yourself a copy of The Alchemy of Loss.

My thanks to Lisa over at TLC Book Tours for inviting me to participate in this virtual book tour!

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