The Long Goodbye: A memoir by Meghan O'Rourke

Keeping this blog lets me see patterns in the kinds of books I like to read. I'm finding that I read a lot of memoirs, mainly about two different subjects: cooking and grieving.

Here's one about grieving.

The writer's mom died from metastatic colorectal cancer in 2008. In this book, she writes about her relationship with her mom, the process leading up to her mom's diagnosis, and her mom's treatment. She also writes about the whole year (and a bit beyond) after her mom's death and what her grief was like.

I liked that this book covered a year plus more about her grief. It's a misconception that grief is something to "get over" in two weeks or three months or six months. It doesn't work like that, if we're being honest with ourselves. O'Rourke reads studies about grief while experiencing her own feelings of grief and figures out that the loss of her mother is something that she'll never "get over." Rather, it's a loss that she will live with in some form for the rest of her life.