My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin was written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming of age, and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. I highly recommend Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories!
As the clocks tick away the remaining hours of this year, we tend to review the past year.
My review often focuses on how my resilience has allowed me to pick myself up when the tsunami of grief pushes me back into the rabbit hole of mourning.
Reviewing the year, I can see the harshest phases of my grief journey in the rearview mirror.
It does not mean I will not have moments when tears roll down my cheeks like lava from Mauna Loa.
But with each passing day, I become more robust, and the darkness of my grief fades away gradually but assuredly.
My strengthening faith and family and friends have assisted me in this recovery.
But Jan is due the full measure of credit.
Her love transformed me and sustained me in times of doubt and uncertainty.
Her simple words of wisdom can motivate me to live fully.
Richard, you are capable and strong, and I believe in you.
Jan’s love will never die!
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Dust Myself Off and Start Over
Jan and I believed in the message in the lyrics by Nat King Cole,
Pick yourself up... Take a deep breath... Dust yourself off And start all over again.
I am reminded of those words as I approach the final hours of my move to a smaller apartment.
As the year rapidly fades into history, I review where I have been and focus on how to hold onto my strengths.
I never expected that grief would be one of my best teachers.
As I have previously written, when I pray every week at Temple Sha’arey Shalom, we remember those we lost in this passage; one of our readings is:
Grief is a great teacher when it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who, like ourselves, are bowed with sorrow. We learn when to keep silent in their presence and when a word will assure them of our love and concern.
I am a better person and do not want to backpedal in the new year or ever.
My past experiences are lessons that guide me.
I have become calmer and more empathetic.
I invest my time, resources, and energy in helping others.
When Jan was alive, we worked together to repair the world. I continue those efforts daily.
With Jan’s spirit with me, I will walk with her into the future as a better person.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
As I pray every week at Temple Sha'arey Shalom, when we remember those we lost in this passage, one of our readings is: "Grief is a great teacher when it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who, like ourselves, are bowed with sorrow. We learn when to keep silent in their presence and when a word will assure them of our love and concern."
The first time I used the phrase “Call the Midwife” was when Jan and I decided to engage a midwife for the birth of our second son.
On Saturday evening in 1985, before he was born, I suggested to Jan that we call, but she kept saying she wanted me to contact the midwife when it was time. At 3 AM, Jan relented. Our son was born at 4 AM.
When we started watching the midwives, I felt like I was returning to my early days as a VISTA in East Williamsburg. I walked into the Rectory at St. John’s, and my life was transformed.
The midwives walked into Nonnatus House, and their lives and the community were changed forever.
Jan and I quickly made streaming the series the highest priority.
Last night, I watched the 2022 Holiday Special alone but with Jan in my heart.
As much as Call the Midwife is about childbirth, it is truly about love, family, faith, and community.
Those attributes were the core of the love that Jan and I shared.
These core values have assisted me during my grief journey for almost twenty months since Jan died.
Jan’s love will never die, and she will always sit next to me when we watch Call the Midwife.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Call the Midwife Holiday Special 2021
On Boxers Day, I watched the Call the Midwife Holiday Special 2021, without Jan. I had watched the previous season without her.
Christmas 1966 promises to be a memorable one. The Nonnatus House team is faced with their busiest Christmas Day ever as the Maternity Home is filled with pregnant moms and challenging cases. Luckily Mother Mildred is on hand to support the team.
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality; Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes. The novel is divided into four sections, each engaging and reminding us of the tremendous costs a fortune imposes on those who accumulate wealth. I highly recommend this novel as it is one of the best books I have ever read!
On Boxing Day, five friends visited me.
We had lunch and went to Hanson Park to view Jan’s Memorial Triangle Garden, including the Wind Sculpture.
On a grief journey, friends are critical.
Since Jan’s Wind Sculpture was installed, I have had many people visit the park.
Most of them met me, and others went on their own.
In both cases, the comments were buoyant.
Today was the first time friends from one of my two support groups visited.
I enjoy having friends visit me, but having five people on a comparable journey was special.
I did not have to worry if I wept or could not speak.
Jan is still with me, but when I visit the park, her presence is more potent than anywhere else.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
Last Saturday, five new friends who have also lost the love of their lives met me in Hanson Park.
I showed them the park and our plans and dreams for Jan's living memorial.
What moved my soul was that I could express my excitement and not worry that they would not understand.
Jan and I volunteered with the Montrose Volunteer Ambulance Squad in East Williamsburg when we first married.
Christmas Eve, especially in 1976, was the most challenging day to staff a crew.
I had grown up celebrating the holiday, but Jan had not. We volunteered for the overnight shift.
We started at 7 pm on Friday. Fortunately, we only had a few calls.
Sleeping in our clothes in the bunk beds in the basement was not ideal for a restful night.
As we left in the morning, snow flurries fluttered across Graham Avenue.
Across the street, we heard some chanting, “Ho, ho, ho, and a Merry Christmas!
Simultaneously, we saw a glimpse of a man with a red hat carrying a cloth bag filled with toys over his shoulders.
As our exhausted bodies floated across the empty streets to our apartment, it felt like miracles were possible.
Many may have waited for Santa Claus this morning or celebrated the birth of their savior.
Jan and I celebrated that day, and every day, we celebrated the miracle of life and the need to repair the world.
That night in the ambulance squad, we had been a light for those in need, not unlike the early morning Santa Claus.
Jan has been gone for almost twenty months. I miss her more than ever, but the memory from 1976 reminds me that I must light the candle not only on Chanukah but every day to be a light for others.
That is the miracle that gives life meaning and purpose.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Meng Jin
Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories by Meng Jin was written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming of age, and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. I highly recommend Self-Portrait with Ghost: Short Stories!
Each story speaks so clearly to the loneliness epidemic that confronts our world. I would read one short story and promise to stop and wait until another day to read the next one. Instead
One phrase that will always remain with me is: “The hallucinatory quality of grief.” As a widow, the phrase struck a chord that will forever resonate in my soul.
This is the seventy-third book I have read this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Meng Jin’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic (Omar El-Akkad, BookPage), “powerful” (Washington Post), and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Jin turns her considerable talents into short fiction in ten thematically linked stories.
Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly unlimited access to knowledge, and little actual power.
Page-turning, thought-provoking, and wholly unique, Self-Portrait with Ghost further establishes Meng Jin as a writer who “reminds us that possible explanations in our universe are as varied as the beings who populate it” (Paris Review).
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
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by Hernan Diaz
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an elegant, multifaceted epic that recovers the voices buried under the myths that justify our foundational inequality; Trust is a literary triumph with a beating heart and urgent stakes. The novel is divided into four sections, each engaging and reminding us of the tremendous costs a fortune imposes on those who accumulate wealth. I highly recommend this novel as it is one of the best books I have ever read!
The first section is from Bonds, a successful novel about Benjamin and Helen Rask. Before finishing this section, I was so engrossed that I wanted their story to continue. The second is a memoir of Andrew Bevel, a successful fourth-generation financier, with notations on edits and corrections.
The third section is about Ida Partenza, an Italian-American novelist hired to flesh out Bevel’s memoir. The dynamics between her and Bevel, as well as her father and boyfriend, clarify the storyline and give it depth. Ms. Partenza seeks to find the truth, revealed in the fourth section, comprised of excerpts from Mildred’s diary. Suffice it to say; the admitted fact underscores the burdens of wealth and the antiquated views that limited women’s roles.
Trust is one of the NY Times’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read four of them, Demon Copperhead, The Candy House, The Furrows, and Checkout 19. Trust was the fifth and the seventy-second book I have read this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
Even though the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the brilliant daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of seemingly endless wealth. But the secrets around their affluence and grandeur incite gossip. At what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? Rumors about Benjamin’s financial maneuvers and Helen’s reclusiveness start to spread–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end.
This is the mystery at the center of a successful 1938 novel, Bonds, which all of New York seems to have read. But it isn’t the only version.
Hernan Diaz’s Trust brilliantly puts the story of these characters into conversation with other accounts–and in tension with the life and perspective of a young woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. Provocative and propulsive, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of money and how power often manipulates facts. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s best presidential historians, offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth and exercise of leadership as demonstrated by Presidents Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Johnson.
I received this book for Hanukkah from my granddaughter and son Mike and his girlfriend Elyssa. They know me very well. A book by Ms. Goodwin is always a must read. If you add in Lincoln, the two Roosevelt’s and LBJ, it is a book I cannot put down.
This NPR interview with Ms. Goodwin is worth listening to.
by Nathaniel Rich
Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich reminds us how close we were to halting the climate emergency, and our failure has resulted in our passing the tilting point. The book “reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence.”
By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change – including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story and ours.
The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Nathaniel Rich’s groundbreaking chronicle of that decade, which became an instant journalistic phenomenon – the subject of news coverage, editorials, and conversations all over the world. In its emphasis on the lives of the people who grappled with the significant existential threat of our age, it made vivid the moral dimensions of our shared plight.
Losing Earth tells the human story of climate change in even richer, more intimate terms. It reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The audiobook carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves.
Like John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, Losing Earth is the rarest of achievements: a riveting work of dramatic history that articulates a moral framework for understanding how we got here and how we must go forward.
Losing Earth is a must-read book!
by Niall Williams
Today, I dove into “Time of the Child” by Niall Williams, and I can already tell it will be a journey worth taking. This beautifully crafted novel, penned by the same author who brought us “This Is Happiness,” unfolds during a magical Christmas in the quaint Irish town of Faha. At its heart is a touching story about a father and daughter that beautifully explores the idea that miracles can touch our lives, no matter our beliefs.
As I turned the pages, I thought about how this enchanting tale would evoke love’s profound and transformative power when I light my Hanukkah candles. It promises to be a genuinely uplifting read!
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities toward the sick and his care for the dying have always set him apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow and remains there, having missed one chance at love and declined another marriage proposal from an unsuitable man.
During the Advent season of 1962, as the town prepared for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives were turned upside down when a baby arrived on their doorstep. As winter passes, the lives of the father and daughter, their understanding of family, and their roles in the community are changed forever.
Set throughout one December in the same village as Williams’ beloved “This Is Happiness,” “Time of the Child” offers a tender return to Faha for readers familiar with its charms and serves as a heartwarming welcome for new readers exploring it for the first time.
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by Tana French
Today, I started reading Tana French‘s The Searcher: A Novel. Last week, I read The Hunter by the same author. I should have read The Searcher first, as it is the prequel to The Hunter, but reading in reverse order helped my enjoyment. Despite knowing some of the suspenseful twists and turns the story would take, I found it a page-turner.
The story follows Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago police officer who seeks a fresh start in a tranquil Irish village. However, when a local boy approaches him to investigate his missing brother, Cal discovers that the town has its share of dark secrets. The book raises thought-provoking questions about distinguishing right from wrong in a complicated world and what we risk when making that decision.
Tana French is a highly acclaimed crime novelist who skillfully creates a captivating and suspenseful atmosphere throughout the book.
by Ian McEwan
“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan, the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels and two short story collections, is a remarkable work of fiction and a love story that celebrates both individuals and the words they leave behind. This literary detective story reclaims the present from our sense of impending catastrophe and envisions a future world where not everything is lost.
In 2014, during a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honored his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, titled “A Corona for Vivien.” As the guests enjoy a delicious meal and drink plenty of wine, little do they know that people will speculate about the meaning of this poem for generations to come. A copy of the poem was never published, and it remains an enduring mystery.
Fast forward to 2119: over one hundred years in the future, rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident have submerged much of the Western world. The survivors tormented by the memory of the vibrant world research the world that once existed. In the waterlogged south of what was once England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he searches for the elusive poem “A Corona for Vivien.”
Thomas reflects on how wild and full of risk their lives were, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles upon a clue that may lead to the poem’s discovery, he uncovers a story of entangled loves and a brutal crime that shatters his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately.
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author known for his nineteen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories titled “First Love, Last Rites,” won the Somerset Maugham Award.
His notable novels include “The Child in Time,” which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 1987; “The Cement Garden“; “Enduring Love;” “Amsterdam;” which won the Booker Prize in 1998; “Atonement;” “Saturday;” “On Chesil Beach;” “Solar;” “Sweet Tooth;” “The Children Act;” “Nutshell;” and “Machines Like Me,” which became a number-one bestseller.
Several of his works, including “Atonement,” “Enduring Love,” “The Children Act;,” and “On Chesil Beach,” have been adapted into films.
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by Alice McDermott
I started reading “Absolution: A Novel” by Alice McDermott today. The opening line immediately grabbed my attention: “You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean.” In most literature about the Vietnam War, American women, particularly wives, have been minor characters. However, in “Absolution,” they take center stage.
The book follows the story of two women, Tricia, a shy newlywed, and Charlene, a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three. They both found themselves in Saigon in 1963, forming a wary alliance. They balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia after encountering an aging Vietnam vet. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, carefully considering that pivotal year and Charlene’s altruistic machinations. They discover how their lives as women on the periphery have been shaped and burdened by the same unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
This virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant and affecting writers, explores themes of folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.
The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
