Contents
Introduction
Prologue: Expectant Widows
Alice Goode-Elman “What We Were Afraid Of: A Memoir”
Kelli Dunham “The Queen Has Spoken”
Penelope Dugan “Living a Life”
Melanie K. Finney “Preparing for the Journey through Grief”
Nan Bauer-Maglin “Deserted/Dumped for a Second Tim
Recent Widows Nan Bauer-Maglin “A Widow’s Notes: The First Six Months”
“My Other Half: Raquel Ramkhelawan interviewed by Maxine Marshall”
Lauren Vanett “The Cloak”
Alice Derry “’The Most Precious Fit’— A Dialogue with C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed”
Michele Neff Hernandez “On Grief”
Elisa Clarke Wadham “Wedding Rings”
Deborah E. Kaplan “The Afterlife of an Archive”
P.C. Moorehead “A Healing Garden”
Mimi Schwartz “You See, I Told You So!”
Anne Bernays “Yes, I Miss My Husband, but I’m Also Discovering the Pleasures of Living Alone”
Long-Time Widows Edie Butler “The Grief Convention”
Debby Mayer “10 Scary Things I Have Done Since My Husband Died”
Sonia Jaffe Robbins “Being Alone”
Barbara E. Marwell “Recreating My Life”
Maggie Madagame “Becoming Maggie”
Roni Sherman Ramos “Who I Am Revealed”
Doris Friedensohn “Losing the Artist, Living with His Art”
Nancy H. Womack “After the Aftermath”
Joan Michelson “Three Poems”
Unique Takes or Digging Deeper Tracy Milcendeau with Merle Froschl, Andrea Hirshman, Molly McEneny, and Heather Slawecki “Widow-to-Widow”
Kathleen Fordyce “Parenting as a Widow”
Patricia Life “Memories of a Widow’s Daughter”
Nancy Shamban “Lost Acts…..”
Susanne Braham “Dealing with Double Loss: Husband and Hearing”
Alice Radosh “Synchroncity and the Secular Mind”
Parvin Hajizadeh “Mourning American-style”
Jean Y. Leung “The Rocks that Bind”
Joan Gussow “On Not Feeling Sad”
Kathryn Temple “What They Do Not Tell You”
Carrie L. West “Nine Things Resilient People Do After Losing a Spouse or Partner”
Lise Menn “Make Lemonade?!”
Epilogue
Christine Silverstein “The Missing Vow”
Acknowledgments
Tara Sabharwal “Artist’s Statement”
Notes on Contributors