WIDOWISH

An award-winning screenwriter’s account of how she survived the unexpected death of her beloved husband and learned to navigate life on her own.

Gould had been married for 10 years when doctors diagnosed her healthy, athletic husband, Joel, with multiple sclerosis. Joel managed his illness well with drugs, but as he neared his 50th birthday, "the MS was getting hard to ignore.” Then, two months after he turned 50, Joel suddenly became ill with West Nile virus, which left him paralyzed and brain damaged. Gould had to make the extremely painful decision to end life support. Afterward, her life felt like an "uphill" climb that offered no reprieve from the feelings of loss she suffered, and she spent each night remembering Joel with her daughter. “In the dark weeks that followed,” she writes, “there were beacons of light shining a path for Sophie and me to follow.” Financial worries added "to the stress of grief.” She began looking for signs of Joel's love for her and believed she found it when she accidentally stumbled across a Joel Osteen radio program that promoted positive spirituality and gratitude. A psychic medium later told the author that Joel “was still with” her and that he approved of the new man that the psychic predicted would enter her life. Not long after that, Gould finally began to refer to herself as a widow despite her preconceived notion that such women were "old, wrinkled, tragic. Wearing black. Maybe even a veil.” Acknowledgment of who she had become led to other breakthroughs, including friendships with other widows who led full lives and a passionate connection with a musician. The main strength of this memoir is Gould’s insight into the impact that spousal loss has on personal identity. Though not a standout in this genre, Gould's book will appeal to women seeking to understand the meaning of widowhood.

A candid, sometimes prosaic memoir of coping with grief and moving forward.