The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning

Grief grinds slowly; it devours all the time it needs.

We live in a society that regards death as a defeat for medical science rather than a part of life. In a culture that allows little place for death in the public area, grief becomes a private affair, viewed as a luxury we cannot afford.

We are all amateurs at grief, although sooner or later every one of us will lose someone close to us.

Everything that I had thought of as fixed and permanent, as solid load-bearing beams, had been turned into featherlight bubbles floating slowly away and vanishing from view. I was like the lightest of ping-pong balls, hurled into the ocean and tossed hither and yon on the swell. Grief is a stormy, shifting sea with no life buoy in sight. I was taken aback by the strength of the forces that pulled and tugged at me.

Reading a book is like taking a walk through an unknown country.

As a relatively young widow, I discovered that there was little help to be had from people of my own age, most of whom have little or no knowledge of the realms of grief. We live in a society that regards death as a defeat for medical science rather than a part of life. In a culture that allows little place for death in the public arena, grief becomes a private affair, viewed as a luxury we cannot afford. We are all amateurs at grief, although sooner or later every one of us will lose someone close to us. I was determined to permit myself the luxury of grieving.

Death is absolute: either you're dead or you're not.