THERE WILL BE BRIGHTER DAYS

A young widower offers a memoir about the loss of his wife.

In the first chapter of this brief remembrance, Brown recalls the moment when he learned that Mara, his wife of nearly 18 years, had died of cardiac arrest: “Think about the person closest to you in your life….Close your eyes and really think about what you might do in that situation.” One night in 2015, at one in the morning in their family home in Austin, Texas, his spouse collapsed in the bathroom of their home and was unresponsive to the EMTs who arrived minutes later, after he called 911. A few hours later, Brown found himself sitting on the stairs of his home, having no idea what to do or think: “The absolute hardest thing we will all deal with in our lives is death,” he reflects, “and yet none of us learns anything about it ahead of time.” In these pages, he draws on his tragic experience to clarify some of the realities that accompany losing a loved one and the process of working through grief; these include dealing with the logistics of estate planning and helping children to process what’s happening (the author’s own children were just 8, 10, 12, and 14 at the time). Brown’s tone throughout this work is warm and approachable. He gently pushes back against such “old school” attitudes as never again speaking about the deceased: “No one says on their deathbed, ‘Move on and don’t ever talk about me again,’” he writes. “I hope my kids talk about me, their goofy dad, the rest of their lives.” However, the most consistent element of the book is its strong optimism; Brown is frank about how brutal his experience was, and the pain that he and his children still experience, but he stresses that good days do return—and grieving readers will be grateful for the reminder.

A warmhearted and wholesome look at the personal and practical realities of grief.