A very different book to those I usually read is The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith (Text Publishing $37). This could be summarised I guess as a memoir of grief. Smith tells the story of how at age 14 she learned that both her parents had cancer. Subsequently her mother dies from colon cancer when the author is 18 and her father dies from prostate cancer when she is 24.She becomes especially close to her father after her mother dies and they have a number of adventures together including a wonderfully described trip to Prague for her father to research what happened to his lost aircrew in 1944 when he was a bomber pilot and his plane was shot down.
So the book is not entirely about grief, it is also about love and life and while parts of it are immeasurably sad the book does have a happy ending when the author marries at age 30 and quickly has a daughter of her own.
In contrast with a conventional framework Smith tells her story using Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
So the book is divided into five parts and each begins with a quote from Kubler-Ross:
1. There is grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
2. Anger surfaces only when you are feeling safe enough to know you will probably survive whatever comes.
3. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.
4. Invite your depression to pull up a chair with you in front of the fire, and sit with it, without looking for a way to escape....When you allow yourself to experience depression, it will leave you as soon as it has served its purpose in your loss.
5. In a strange way, as we move through grief, healing brings us closer to the person we loved. A new relationship begins. We learn to live with the loved one we lost.
Unsurprisingly the author is now a grief counsellor at a hospice in California. I believe anyone working in this field would find the book of help. Not sure where she got her title as there is nothing about inheritance in a legal sense but it may be that she is just referring to the grief she inherited.
Some readers might also be reminded of a book published in 2000, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering genius where Dave Eggers chronicled his stewardship of his younger brother following the death from cancer of his parents.
Footnote:
My review was first published in the Herald on Sunday, Easter Sunday - 8 April, 2012