On May 27, 2019, Memorial Day, Australian writer Geraldine Brooks received a phone call telling her that her sixty-year-old husband, Tony Horwitz, who was away on a book tour, suddenly collapsed on a sidewalk in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and died. Years later, in early 2023, she journeyed alone to a remote shack on Flinders Island, between Tasmania and mainland Australia, so that in isolation she could finally deal with her grief.

This slim but profound, emotional, beautiful, and illuminating memoir alternates between her account of dealing with the immediate tragedy and the multitudes of details that inevitably followed, and her time on the island when she had the time to contemplate their marriage and the life they shared. It is a thoughtful, cadenced narrative brimming with insights about death which, despite our awareness of its inevitability, still comes as a shock when it happens. She brings out its universality in sharing brief summaries about how death is reacted to around the world in various cultures and religions, but her main focus is on the singular death that she has to somehow come to grips with.

Her story reminds us that death can come to anyone at any time. Shortly before Horwitz died, he was diagnosed with high cholesterol and hypertension, two factors that contributed to his heart failing. It inevitably struck me that not long ago I was diagnosed with these maladies as well, and now they are held in check through lifestyle changes and medications. I think it’s human nature that we shove death out of our conscious thoughts as something that befalls other people but not us – until something happens that provides us with a stark reminder. For me, reading this memoir was in the nature of a wakeup call. After all, I’m over a decade older than Horwitz was when he died. During the period I was reading this book, I stumbled and fell on the steps of my apartment building while heading out for a walk; although I managed to catch myself and the only injury was a skinned knee, it got me in a somber mood as I strolled through the neighborhood. If there is any inevitability in all of our lives, it is death.

At the same time, Brooks avoids taking a despairing, maudlin approach to her subject matter. Memorial Days is not a depressing read. To the opposite, it is empowering. Of course Brooks mourns the loss of her husband and had a very difficult time in the weeks following his death, but at the same time she celebrates the wonderful life they shared. In fact, it was a kind of fairy tale, larger-than-life existence. After all, they were both highly acclaimed, award-winning, world-traveling writers. Their income was substantial. They had a home on Martha’s Vineyard, an elite, affluent island off the coast of Massachusetts, and a multitude of high-profile friends and acquaintances. After her husband died, and Brooks dealt with things at Martha’s Vineyard, she flew to Australia and lived in Sydney for awhile, and then flew to France and lived in Paris for awhile before returning to the States at the outbreak of COVID. It is not a reality that most people would be able to relate to. I became somewhat envious of her ability to cut loose from all her obligations and take extended time off in a remote location; I would love to be able to do that. This is not to diminish or minimize at all the loss she suffered, though; one thing that this book brings out is that not only death comes to all, but the grief that follows death is also ubiquitous. Grief is grief, no matter who it happens to, and we all have to acknowledge it and handle it in our own ways.

This is a slim book, as I mentioned, and for some reason the publisher decided to leave a space between each paragraph. At first this annoyed me, as it felt like extra padding. But as I got used to it, I came to appreciate that it created a slower, more contemplative reading rhythm. All in all, it is a wonderful, thoughtful book on a subject that, like it or not, is relevant to all of us. Highly recommended.