I MISS MY MOMMY

Readers see the many faces of adult orphan grief in Garwood-Jones’ adult picture book.

The five stages of grief, as conceptualized by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, get an expansive remix, complete with renderings of subjects in the throes of various distilled moments of coping mechanism flux. In this cleverly conceived book, faithfully nuanced caricatures, or stagers (a term taken from Shakespearean theater protocol and a play on Kübler-Ross’ stages), mirror the ways grief manifests in our actions across 41 chapters with titles that are sometimes familiar (“The Shell Shocked,” “The Pity Partiers,” “The Addicted”) and other times unexpected (“The Dog Moms,” “The Closeted,” “The Narcissists”). Over a dozen stand-alone quotes on grief by noted people are interspersed between, as well. An eggplant-purple color scheme is used purposefully to unify the sweeping range of emotions between disparate poles of intensity, associated with red, and calm, associated with blue. To “capture how we are coping, moment to moment, year after year, after a big loss” is the author’s mission statement, and for the most part, it is easy to draw a connection between the coping mechanism attributed to the various stagers. In some chapters, however, the correlation between the subject as portrayed in the accompanying text and the person’s stage of grief is tenuous. A chapter entitled “The Dicks,” for instance, includes a portrait of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and two other men, all espousing questionable ideologies. They may well be orphaned adults, but their personalities can’t be boiled down to a reaction to grief. Midway through, a quote by writer and actor Amy Sedaris, “Assume everyone is grieving,” reorients readers in light of such less apparent examples of how an adult orphan might be grappling with loss. Finding oneself, family, friends, or others within these pages makes it a perfectly contemplative coping tool.

A unique book with more than a few profound philosophical moments that evoke peace and foster emotional healing.