THE WIDOW'S GUIDE TO DEAD BASTARDS

A complex memoir about mourning, mental illness, and shocking revelations.

In her debut, fueled with anger and grief, Waite recounts her husband’s sudden death from a heart attack at age 47; her stunned discovery of his secret past of infidelity, drug use, and credit card debt; and their marriage, which was roiled by the recurring symptoms of his bipolar disorder. Sean had struggled with manic episodes, depression, and OCD, but his symptoms, rather than appearing in long cycles, were "rapid-cycling," seeming more like unpredictable mood swings than an illness that required medical intervention. Without therapy and medication for Sean, she and their son were at the mercy of his volatile eruptions, which sometimes left her wondering if the marriage could last. Waite acknowledges the complexities of grieving when the relationship had been so rocky and after discovering that the husband she loved betrayed her with prostitutes, affairs, and an addiction to online pornography. She sought help from a therapist and grief counselors, went to Camp Widow, met with a death doula and a psychic, and tried drum circling, art journaling, shamanic healing, yoga, and massage, all in an effort “to recalibrate to my new reality.” Grieving was complicated, as well, by recurrences of “unusual-seeming” encounters that convinced her that Sean was trying to contact her from the beyond: lightbulbs in her house burned out; in the library, suddenly feeling faint, she saw through blurred vision only one book, whose plot exactly mirrored her life at that moment. “I wasn’t the only member of the Waite clan whose television turned on by itself,” she admits, “nor the only one whose ‘normal life’ was interrupted by unexplainable phenomena.” Other mourners, she suggests, may find solace in the uncanny possibility of a “reciprocal nurturing relationship between the living and the dead.”

A candid, raw chronicle of bereavement.