AMAZING MOVIES: "SEVEN POUNDS," AND, "THE READER"

I've just seen two amazing and unusual movies on DVD, both of which end in an unexpected way. I can't tell you how, because that would spoil the viewing for you. The acting in both is superb. In "Seven Pounds" Will Smith, never before one of my heroes, conveys most complex, contradictory emotions, and he leaves us crying, but for the right reasons. I didn't know he had such depth and discipline. Ralph Fiennes (how is that pronounced?) in his "The Reader" leaves us profoundly moved; and the story evokes questions I'll bet you never considered. Co-star Kate Winslet's performance is astonishing. and worthy of the Oscar she received.

My latest book Survivor's Guide to Grief is moving along. It is helping several people I know who are trying to live through sudden death in their families. I wish I could reach all the families of the victims; you are victims too. How will the family of Natasha Richardson survive the total shock--one minute the lovely young woman is alive and vibrant and skiing, the next minute, with no warning, she has gone into the silence of death and can't be reached. Her young children, her husband, need help in trying to understand and deal with what has happened to their lives, now forever damaged. I have a friend whose wife was playing polo and suddenly the horse stumbled, she was thrown off, and the horse fell on top of her, killing her instantly. Her husband and children have asked me to send my book to them.

I am trying to learn how to create hyperlinks so that people looking for help will find me and this particular book. It has proven to be valuable.

It is different from most other books on the subject, including the recent elite success by Joan Didion, because mine is a narrative AND How To; it is not introspective but outward reaching; it is like a friend sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee and talking over what on earth to do next. It isn't being reviewed by the "great" reviewers and media because it is self-published. However, it has had really remarkably good reviews in smaller outlets and in my next blog, I'll excerpt from them.

See you then!

Initial reactions to my new book, "Survivor's Guide to Grief"

I seem to be driven by compulsions of different kinds in selecting what I am going to write. Perhaps most creative people have equally little choice over what they want to create.


With this book, I found the experience of living, of just being, after the sudden unanticipated death of my true blue, my one-and-only, excruciatingly painful. I began to observe myself stumbling through one day after another and realized that it was as though I were watching myself from outside myself getting guillotined. The actual physical pain and the progress of the grief fascinated me; and I began to take notes.


I also found that there was almost nothing to read which was simple and honest enough for me. My brains were in a shambles and my confusion not possible to describe except to someone who has been there. Most books dealt with a years-long anticipated death caused by long-term diseases such as cancer, where the grieving went on and on before the actual death. I wished that I had had the book to read that I was beginning to write, about sudden death such as massive heart attack or car accident or gun shot; and so, the notes slowly became this book.

There are three kinds of people who have read the pre-pub book, and there are three kinds of reactions.

1. Grief professionals. They are unanimous in serious praise for the book.

2. The newly bereaved. They find the book very, very helpful in sorting out their own emotional and mental needs and responses; they like comparing their experriences with mine in the book; they are grateful to me for having written it; it has been a valuable help to them.

3. Those who had been bereaved several years earlier and had grown some tough skin: they can't read the book. Friends read twenty pages, thirty, then quit. It throws them back into the emotional state they'd been in before; and of course, they don't want to become quivering lumps of open, exposed nerves again.

All groups love the Starfish theme: be like a starfish and grow new legs. There IS one funny part of the book: getting back in shape and trying to start dating again.

I am relieved that this book is finally out in the world where it can do some good; and I can turn to other interests in addition to helping the grieving.