WIDOW'S WEEDS:LESSONS LEARNED FROM...

Widow's Weeds: Lessons Learned from the Death of a Partner is a series of stories that paint a picture of one woman's experience of dealing with the illness and death of the man she loved.

Lisa's off-beat sense of humor coupled with her admitted sense of fear and frustration make the journey the reader takes with her entertaining at times, sad and poignant at others. There are moments of laugh-out-loud humor mixed with somber tales of fear, exhaustion and loneliness-a more than fair reckoning in a long-term and often grueling process that, like the rest of human life, has no failsafe user's manual for managing the experiences inherent in loss and grief.

Here's the hook: each story Lisa tells speaks to an issue related to the losing of or the loss of a partner. The initial importance of each issue will vary, according to the reader's own experience, level of awareness, and place in his or her private encounter with loss and grief. There is a comfortable familiarity the reader eases into before the end of the second story; Lisa's almost wistful but definitely conspiratorial "But that's not what I meant to tell you. What I meant to tell you was..." draws the reader in. There's a sense that Lisa will understand what the reader is dealing with; she makes it clear that, especially in dangerous, uncharted waters, there is safety in numbers. Lisa doesn't pretend she has all the answers; in fact, she complains that she hasn't even defined all of the questions. She shares her stories in the hope that she can shed a little light to make the night seem a little less dark; she's spent time groping for matches, too, and knows how it feels.

Lisa's stories are sometimes sore to the touch; she takes the reader into the examining room the day her husband Tony's cancer is diagnosed, into the waiting room during his multiple surgeries, into the mortuary after he's gone. She quietly confides her anxiety over the ways she's changed since Tony's death.

Her stories are also ironic and funny; there is verbal fencing as Tony and Lisa debate what his last words might be, how they (well, how she) should spend his life insurance money, and just how far Lisa will go to try and save the day during their very last fight.

There are hundreds of books about death, the dying process, the grieving process, and the struggle to move through the world without a beloved partner. This one is unique in its unabashed, wholly unapologetic, irreverent candor, filtered through the awareness and personality of an unwilling participant who even now can think of ten things she'd rather have been doing instead. Its approach is moody and funny, pain-streaked and pensive, and most readers looking for someone to keep them company during the harsh nights of hopeful survivorship will be glad they found Widow's Weeds: Lessons Learned from the Death of a Partner.