Memorial Days: A Memoir

Geraldine Brooks is an award winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. She had a many decades long, happy marriage to author and celebrated journalist Tony Horwitz with whom she had two sons. Her beautiful and moving memoir, Memorial Days, is her account of Horwitz’s sudden, unexpected death while he was on book tour, her days of shock navigating ridiculous bureaucracy immediately following his death, and then four years later on the sparsely populated island of Flinders off the coast of Australia when she finally took the time and space to go and be fully immersed in her grief.

She weaves her narrative back and forth between that terrible Memorial Day weekend in 2019 and her 2023 remote sojourn in a couple of small show more cottages far from people and civilization to reflect back on her shared life and love with Horwitz. She recounts the news of her husband’s death and the aftermath in a straightforward, objective way, reporting her reactions, the logistics of a last minute flight from their home in Martha’s Vineyard to DC on a holiday weekend, trying the convince medical professionals she wants and needs to see her husband’s body, telling her sons about their father’s death—preferably before they heard about it thanks to the speed of our current news cycle, having to face and/or learn the marital tasks that were always Horwitz’s purview, and more, all while trying to finish the novel that would become Horse. The 2023 chapters are more contemplative and emotional, examining her deep loss, finding solace in nature and aloneness, and allowing herself to stop trying to move forward and just to feel whatever it is she needs to feel. Brooks is a gorgeous writer and this is an intimate, honest, and personal look into what it is to lose a beloved spouse. show less

What do you do when a spouse suddenly dies? Geraldine Brooks faced just that question when her husband, journalist and author Tony Horwitz, collapsed and died while walking in Washington, DC on a book tour in 2019.

In this memoir, she examines his death and the aftermath, her deep grief, and their relationship. Going back and forth between 2019 and a trip she takes to Flinders, Australia three years later for time to grieve in solitude. The prose is as beautiful as you would expect, and both sadness and joy permeate the pages as she takes the reader into her confidence and shares the details of her grief in his passing and their life together. A moving story that will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one.

I was reading Brooks' book "Year of Wonder" while traveling in Switzerland when I got the news that my dear brother had died suddenly. Within a week when I was grieving I happened upon this book in the library while returning the other book. Being familiar with Brooks, I took this as a sign and read it. It was wonderful as she talked about the sudden death of her journalist husband Tony Horwitz who died suddenly while on a book tour She goes back and further between the days following his death and her time 4 years later on a small island near Tasmania immersing herself in her grief. As always her writing was beautiful and you felt her pain. She also gave practical insight into how difficult it is dealing with administrative things that show more hit suddenly(canceling credit cards etc). It made me aware how important it is to update your to do list for your loved ones. A wonderful book that I found very helpful in dealing with my own grief. show less

Brooks balances two timelines: receiving the news of her husband Tony Horwitz's sudden death in 2019, and actually taking the time to grieve on Flinders Island in 2023. In the immediate aftermath of a sudden death, she is inundated and overwhelmed with the logistics of getting the news to their sons, traveling to see Tony's body, making funeral arrangements, organizing memorials, and sorting out necessary paperwork that Tony had been responsible for handling in their family (including health insurance, credit cards, and taxes). Australian by birth, Brooks observes the bureaucratic nightmare that many widows or orphans are plunged into with a spouse's death; in Australia, the death of a spouse does not trigger a loss of health insurance, show more for example.

But this is not solely a memoir of the nitty-gritty; it's a critique of the way that, without religious rituals, American culture does not make time or space for grieving, and how Brooks finally takes that time for herself, coming to terms with Tony's absence and that the rest of her life without him will be different than they had envisioned.

Quotes

"Grief is praise....because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." (Martin Prechtel, The Smell of Rain on Dust, 8)

"We imprint like baby goslings, on a type of horizon. On a type of sky..." (Barbara Kingsolver, 16)

In her essay "On Grief" Jennifer Senior quotes a therapist who likens the survivors of loss to passengers on a plane that has crashed into a mountaintop and must find their way down. All have broken bones; none can assist the others. Each will have to make it down alone. (57)

There's one thing you must be able to do as a novelist, and that is understand how your characters explain their own actions to themselves. (re: Jane Franklin, 82)

"hurry sickness" (110)

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. (Mary Oliver, 125)

I suggest that everyone make a document. Call it Your Life: How It Works and periodically update it. (206) show less

This memoir by the acclaimed author, Geraldine Brooks, recounts her grief journey following the sudden death at the age of 60 of her husband, Tony Horwitz, also a noted author and journalist. Alone and in shock, she has to call their two sons and family members while making arrangements to get to the hospital in DC where he died from their home on Martha's Vineyard. What follows are funeral arrangements and all the legalities necessitated by death. Her grief is put aside while she deals with all of this. Three years later, she flies to Flinders Island, off the coast of her native Australia, to process the grief she had put aside in order to assure everyone that she was "fine." There she allows herself to mourn and to remember their life show more together. This memoir is a tribute to their love and a testament that grief has no timeline. Everyone reading her words who has lost a dearly loved person will recognize the depth of her anguish and be grateful to her for sharing her heartfelt struggle to come to terms with her loss. show less

Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks, author and narrator
On Memorial Day, in 2019, Geraldine Brooks lost her soulmate. From that day forward, she begins a journey to understand and overcome her grief. Moving back and forth between 2019 and 2024, between an island in America and an island in Australia, she reveals her shock and her unpreparedness to deal with so great a sudden and unexpected tragedy. There was no template for her to follow. In addition to her grief, and although they had loved intensely, they had lived independent lives, and she was unaware of how he took care of his many responsibilities that would now fall upon her shoulders. He would have been just as adrift had she been the victim. In a marriage, each spouse has different show more responsibilities unknown to the other. She learned from her experience that a list should have been made, by each of them, defining their tasks and how they took care of them. Whom does one call for a specific problem, how does one treat certain matters in the home, and what about issues that simply arise in an ordinary daily life? Her suggestion that others do think about making a list is a good one.
Geraldine Brooks and Anthony Lander Horwitz met while studying for advanced degrees. They were not necessarily meant for each other, when one considers he was conservative and she was liberal, he was from the United States and she was from Australia, and he was Jewish and she was not. They overcame their political differences, she converted to Judaism, and they tried out both countries for size. When they actually realized that they were meant to be with each other, for the rest of their lives, lives they hoped would be long and wonderful, adjustments were made.
Without contrivances, Brooks explains how they met, courted and married. The memoir follows their lives as they worked, played, and raised a family. It illustrates the compromises they made for each other. The memoir felt honest, authentic, insightful and so tender as it revealed the author’s emotions and extraordinary love for her husband and his love for her. Their relationship was indeed kismet, and it did end far too soon. Was anyone or anything to blame? She does not blame anyone. In the end she accepts the burden of her grief and her loss, understanding that choices were made and things simply happened that they really did not know they should have changed or done differently. No one can predict the future.
She did a superb job of writing this book. She was grieving over an enormous loss, a man who was not only a gift to her, but had been a gift to the world with his journalism and books. Both had been war correspondents. They had worked together earlier in their lives. The hole he left in her life was too deep to fathom. In this book, she honors the memory of Horwitz, as she deals with her own memories of their lives together, a life that will now be lived on its own. The book truly touched me, but it also advised me about how important it is to be prepared for all eventualities.
Her book is authentic, honest and to the point. There were no wasted words, but there were indeed, some that brought tears to this reader’s eyes. Most people will identify with her confusion and her grief, most people know that at some point, if they haven’t already faced grief, they will have to face it in their lives and will have to deal with it appropriately. There are some things we simply have no control over.
Unlike Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book which ran over 400 pages and delved into politics and seemed to be more about her than the 60’s and her husband, this book was less than 300 pages and very subtly dealt with politics when January 6th and RBG were just barely mentioned. Rather than focus on her own life, Brooks dwelt on their lives together, their joint endeavors, their joyous moments and the hole he left when he suddenly disappeared from her life. The reader gets the feeling that they were truly meant for each other and that the loss was truly enormous, a loss that was compounded when one realizes how bereft she was on the occasion of the death of one of their beloved dogs. Somehow, Geraldine Brooks illustrates how she coped with all of the sudden responsibilities, that no one prepares for, as she revealed all of the consequences of so great a tragic loss. In some instances, she failed to do what she would have hoped to, she wasn’t thinking clearly, she was truly suffering. Interestingly, she does acknowledge what she might have done to alter the outcome, what the system did to make it harder, and how she was expected to go forward versus how she actually did proceed.
I did not expect to enjoy this book and probably would not have picked it had my book club not selected it for next season. I am glad they did. Often when an author reads one’s own book, the result can be disastrous; not so, in this case. A performer might have over emoted and over emphasized at inappropriate times. Brooks read her book with just the right amount of emotion and stressed the narrative in all the right places. It was a genuine and tender exploration into the process of grieving, and an explanation about the roadblocks she had to face because of the bureaucracy and because of people who good naturedly intruded with well-meaning intentions. She acknowledges that sometimes, one needs to be alone to howl, to release the building torment in one’s heart and mind when faced with so unfair and unpreventable an occurrence as the death of a loved one. The questions that arise, the emotional pain that follows, the inadequate responses are dealt with honestly and openly. There is no artifice in this memoir. As Geraldine wrote, and I paraphrase, man plans and G-d laughs. show less

This memoir of a brilliant marriage ended by a sudden death is a heartbreaker. Tony Horowitz, journalist and writer, collapses on the street and dies suddenly; his wife Geraldine Brooks, journalist and writer, reveals the complexity and sorrow in the immediate aftermath and the years following the tragedy. While one might think that dying this way is better than a long, drawn-out, painful demise, this heart wrenching story will convince you that it carries its own difficulties. Brooks moves between their home on Martha's Vineyard and an island in Australia, where she was born and where she retreats to write this book. I'm sure that treating this real misfortune must have been so much harder than creating fiction, but as her novels show more usually have a basis in history, she's very well suited for the task. This is a slim book that can be devoured in a few days, and there is much to be gained, especially for those who are part of a loving couple, when one of whom must go on alone. show less