Comfort: A Journey Through Grief

"There is a kinship between those who have suffered the death of a child, and this book speaks to that familiarity, and the healing that begins to nudge its way in as the retelling occurs. I nodded my head in agreement, and cried as Ann shared the journey of her grief, the silly things people think they have to say to a grieving parent, and the reality of the words "I'm still here". This book is an empathetic comfort for those who have known the tragedy of burying a child."
~ Written on 2008-08-19

"Reading Ann Hood's best-selling novel The Knitting Circle, I sensed that she was doing exactly what aspiring writers are told to do: She was writing what she knew well: Knitting, friendship, life's challenges--and losses. What I didn't realize as I read her wonderful novel was that she held a deeper, far more intimate story that was begging to be told. Comfort: A Journey Through Grief is that very personal story about the sudden loss of Hood's five-year-old daughter Grace. With the kind of raw emotion that only a survivor of such grief can share, she journeys back to the events that define her losses and finds light and hope in what seems to be a hopelessly dark place.

In a searing prologue bearing the same title as the book ("Comfort"), Hood begins and ends with the thought that "Time heals," methodically listing the comments that people made to her in the aftermath of Grace's death. Interspersed among the well-intentioned words of others, Hood writes her own rebuttals and rebukes of them. "Once you have lived through all of the firsts, it will get better." ... "Are you writing down how you feel?" "But I cannot write. I cannot think of anything but her." ... "She is in a better place." But how can a five-year-old little girl be in a better place without her mother?" "Are you writing any of this down?" "Only the lies people tell me. There are no words for the size of this grief. There are only lies."

By the time I finished reading the prologue, her words clutched my heart and threatened to never let go.

They say that writing about such pain is therapeutic. I say that reading this book is also therapeutic. As a mother and a nurse, I cannot imagine having to make sense of the loss of a young and healthy child. Likewise, I cannot imagine having to function and move forward after such a shock. Hood reveals just how terribly difficult it is to go anywhere but inward.

"In the days and weeks and months that followed, I told these details over and over and over to anyone who would listen. Repeating them made the story which seemed unbeliebable still, real. It was as if by repeating the details I cold somehow understand them, understand what had happened to Grace, to our family." (Chapter Two: Knitting Lessons).

This book will take you on an emotional ride unlike any other. I have emerged from the pages of this book with an incredible ache for Hood's loss but also with joy for her renewed hope for the future, in her adopted daughter, Annabelle.

Written with grace and brutal honesty, Comfort has touched my life and is sure to touch the lives of all who read about Ann Hood's powerful journey.

by Lee Ambrose
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women "
~ Written on 2008-08-04

"The author's five year old daughter Grace died suddenly. She writes about her life and her coping with her grief. While the subject matter may turn many away, this 186 page book, which can be read in one sitting, will move you and particularly so if you have children.

Many compare this book to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. From my point of view, this book is in a different class - far superior - coming deep from the author's soul where you live and feel the grief as you turn the pages. For example (P. 96): "I have read that when someone loses an arm or leg, for months afterward they still feel the pain in their missing limb. A phantom limb, it is called, as if the outline or shadow of that limb is still there. That is what my arm became. Phantom limbs, aching for Grace. At night I would wake up in pain, my arms actually hurting with longing for her. It is hard to imagine that emptiness can cause pain, but my empty arms arched."

The book is beautifully written. The author has a knack of bringing alive small every day experiences - "I ate wine biscuits twisted into pretzel shapes and hard bread dipped into tomato sauce, tight batons of prosciutto and crunchy stalks of fennel dripping with olive oil."

Hood is direct in explaining her grief - there is no magic silver bullet to deal it.

"Writing about Grace, losing her, loving her, anything at all is not linear. Readers wants a writer to be able to connect the dots. But these dots don't connect. One day I think about how knitting saved my life, and I write about that. But how do I connect it to other parts of my grief? Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end."

Or

"It had been three years since Grace had died. Slowly, we were back to work, out with friends again. Our loss still filled our home, every corner of it. It still filled us. Time doesn't heal, I had learned, it just keeps moving. And it takes us with it."

And finally, she expresses her anguish in vivid heartbreaking ways:

"The first time I walked into Grace's room after she died, when the reality of what had happened to us in the past forty-eight hours was still unbelievable, the first things I saw were those tights. I saw them and screamed, not the kind of scream that comes from fright, but the kind that comes from the deepest grief imaginable. It is a scream that comes when there are no words to express what you feel. It is an argument with God or life or death. It is a scream that rails against logic and fate and everything there is."

Hood eventually turns the corner but never shakes the horror and pain of losing a loved one. Hood's grief comes alive and is real as you turn the pages. Sad but emotionally stirring book.


"
~ Written on 2008-07-30

"How to get through a parent's worst nightmare? I don't know why I was drawn to this but I felt that I should listen to her message. I will read more of her writing."
~ Written on 2008-07-21

"I have read another of memoir of by the author Ann Hood so I was familiar with her name. She wrote a very moving, heartfelt memoir in this most recent book--"Comfort" I began reading it a couple of days ago and got about 1/4 through it and today on a car ride taking my son to camp I read going up to camp and coming home from camp and I just finished it. I was moved by many things Ann said about her daughter, and her family before, during and after her daughter's death. I won't say much more about that time I will leave it to the reader to learn more about that by reading the book. :)"
~ Written on 2008-07-20