Amy Welborn

My grandfather had been suffering from a disease that had crippled his mind for quite some time. His memories were confused, incomplete, and, in many cases, missing. He was unable to remember the many faces and voices that made up the story of his life, including those of his own ten children. Even his sense of structure, progress, and time were gone. As members of my family who lived closer to him reported it, he believed near the end of his life, in 2010, that Jimmy Carter was president, show more and, worse, he believed he was a good president. In spite of all of this, when he was told that his wife of 58 years, my grandmother, had passed away, he cried and yelled that he wanted to go to his wife. A few weeks later, he died.

Amy Welborn's "Wish You Were Here" is a story about that kind of love and that kind of loss. Her story of the premature and unexpected loss of her husband is an insight into the kind of love that, like my grandfather's, overcomes decades of hazy memories and alters the courses of lives. In other words, it is a story about the kind of love we should all seek to cultivate in our lives.

We are told, as Christians, that Christ has defeated death and that death and sin have no more power over us. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, an early Christian writer, once said that “the business of a Christian is to be always preparing for death.” Death (and taxes) are the only things certain in life, as the old saying goes. And yet we still mourn for those we have lost. We still doubt and fear for what death means for them and for all of us. We still wish that we could only delay it just a bit longer. We still struggle with how this pain fits into God's great plan. We still feel the loss of their presence, even as we retain hope that we will be with them again in a better place.

Amy's story is that story. Amy's story is our story. Her husband, a pious Catholic, a loving husband, and a father to her young children, was taken from his family one morning. No one expected it and no one could explain it. In her efforts to deal with her loss and the loss felt by her children, Amy took three of her children on a vacation in Sicily several months after her husband's death. While there, they explored the beautiful and ancient cathedrals, churches, ruins, villages, and countrysides. They spoke with the people and experienced – often, endured – the culture. And amid those medieval buildings, created by men who lived and died and whose bones crumbled into dust long ago, and those people there today with their strange communal afternoon naps, she discovered something. What she found is not a way to make the pain go away, but a way to transform her feelings of loss into the yearning for something higher. show less

Amy Welborn's new memoir, Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope, details the aftermath of her husband Michael's sudden death in February of 2009 -- specifically, the trip she took with her daughter and two young sons to Sicily a few months after. Part travel diary, part spiritual memoir, part reflection on grief, Wish You Were Here resonated deeply with me and my own experiences following the death of my father shortly before my senior year of college.

Welborn writes with honesty show more about her grief. She details her anger, her fear, and her sadness. But these details don't stand as mere self-pity; she makes numerous parallels between her spiritual journey through grief and the physical journey she undertakes with her family -- between the life-giving destruction of Mt. Edna and the illusory nature of death; watching her son build sandcastles on the Italian beach and her attempt to begin building a new life; between regrets of things unsaid and undone and seeking to "live in the now" an ocean away.

And yet, at it's core, Wish You Were Here is a hopeful and faith-filled book. If there is a theological center -- the theme Welborn comes to several times -- it is her husband's admonition to live for God Alone:

"I would do that whiny thing and I would ask him, Do I make you happy?, and he would sigh and say that he would be in bad shape indeed if his happiness depended on my existence. Not because he wasn't happy now, but because he needed to be "happy" -- at peace -- whether I was around or not, no matter if he liked his job or not, or whatever was going on or whoever was around him. He'd make his case as he always did that our happiness shouldn't depend on anything except God. I should be able to be happy, he'd say, even you died tomorrow. He'd take his eyes off the television and look at me.

"And so should you."

The book is, in many ways, the chronicle of Welborn's attempts to do just that in the immediate aftermath of Michael's death. Her openness about this struggle is refreshing in the face of a culture that seeks to shield us from death and to deny the reality that we all must one day die.

Wish You Were Here is a delightful, funny, heart-breaking book. I heartily recommend it.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. show less

How do you cope with the sudden death of a young husband? How do you face the gaping loss, day after day? How do you face the questions of faith and doubt that ambush you? How do you continue to put one foot in front of the other, meet the needs of growing children, go about the simple tasks of living a life without your life's partner? Amy Welborn attempted to answer these questions by taking three of her children on a spontaneous trip to the island of Sicily in the months following the show more unexpected death of her beloved husband, Mike. Her experiences, her thoughts and her heartache and hope are chronicled in this memoir, "Wish You Were Here."
Having been to Sicily numerous times to walk the paths of my ancestors I was familiar with most of the locations detailed in this book. Sicily was a perfect place for Amy to go. If any locale understands sorrow, loss, anxiety, perseverance, and a survival instinct, it is Sicily. The people are intimate with grief and from that comes a compassion and healing.
The writing was realistic and felt authentic. Amy's own struggle to continue to hope in a "hereafter" when beset with frequent doubt was believable to me, a former Catholic. I usually do not read books with a religious thread and I wondered how I would tolerate this book, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it not offensive to me. It often echoed my own hopes and fears. My heart and my admiration go out to the author. show less

Amy Welborn's new book, "Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope", delves into her thoughts and feelings after her husband dies suddenly at age 50. She shares these thoughts and feelings against the backdrop of a trip to Sicily with 3 of her children several months later. The book then becomes part travelogue, and the trip becomes the framework of both the book and her revelations concerning her grief and that of her kids.

Amy is a well-known Catholic writer, columnist, and blogger show more who is married to a former priest, Mike. It is her second marriage and she has two young sons with Mike, as well as three older children from a former marriage. They have just moved from Indiana to Alabama for Mike's new job when the unthinkable happens...Mike falls off a treadmill at the Y due to a massive heart attack and dies. This leaves Amy absolutely bereft, with two little boys, ages 4 and 7, clutching at her faith and the faith of her husband for understanding and comfort.

The book is very Catholic with references to her own faith, her husband's, and the faith and history of Sicily and its people. I can imagine the book might be a little difficult to understand if the reader is not Catholic. However, her grief is universal and she is unflinching in revealing her journey through it.

I had a hard time reading the book at times because it was just so sad...absolutely heartbreaking. The longer it has been since I read it, the more I liked and appreciated it. I had to 'sit' with it, because it was so dense with emotion and insight. In the end, Ms. Welborn has given us a rare work indeed and if you are taking your spouse for granted, as we all do at times, this book will bring you to your senses!! show less