Review of Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks

Memorial Days is Geraldine Brooks's memoir of sudden loss, delayed grief, and a delving into sorrow so she can move forward with her life.

Brooks's husband Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and acclaimed author, father to her two sons, and her best friend, was on a book tour when he collapsed on a D.C. street in 2019 and died at age 60. Brooks and Horwitz himself had believed him to be in good health, and Brooks was beyond shocked at the news. But an endless logistical to-do list following his death kept her busy and delayed her grieving.

Tedious, infuriating, frustrating, time-sucking tasks piled onto the crush of everyday life so that Brooks felt that despite the funeral and the memorial service, she had never specifically, intentionally taken steps to acknowledge her pain and to think deeply about Tony and his life.

Three years after his death, she traveled to a remote Australian island--where she had once considered settling down--to sit with Tony's journals, dive into her memories, rage against what she's lost, and give in to sorrow.

She explores various cultures' traditions of marking life and acknowledging grief, seeking peace by taking elements of various rituals and shaping her own way of honoring Tony, their life together, and their hopes for the future that would never come to be.

She also begins to consider her own future, now separate from Tony. She tentatively delves into writing, quoting Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Do your work. It might not be your best work, but it will be good work, and it will be what saves you.”

This is poignant and heartbreakingly lovely; Brooks brings the reader through the joy of not suspecting tragedy lies around the corner, to shock and endless logistics, to anger, sadness, confusion, and desperation, then, in her journey and in her deliberate way of taking time, to a more peaceful acceptance accompanying her deep loss.

More Geraldine Brooks love

Geraldine Brooks is also the author of the novels People of the Book, Horse, Year of Wonders, and others.

If you're interested in books about mortality and loss, check out the titles here.

I listened to Brooks's lovely Australian accent by reading this as an audiobook.