And Life Comes Back: A Wife’s Story Of Love, Loss, And Hope Reclaimed, by Tricia Lott Williford

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by WaterBrook Multnomah Press in exchange for an honest review.]

This is a book by an accomplished blogger who used her blogging as therapy after the sudden loss of her husband of ten years in 2010, leaving her a widow and a single mother at the age of 31. With that abrupt start, this book deals with a variety of themes involving grief and loss and moving on, wrestling with the questions why God allows what He does, remembering the times shared and coming to grips with new-found freedom and disorienting changes, seeking to make a new life even while mourning the loss of a beloved loved one.

This is a work of deep and moving contrasts that deserve mention. It is a book with an overarching and coherent theme of recovery from loss yet it is divided into chapters that read like elegantly worded diary entries (probably coming mostly from her blogs), and yet these entries are not organized chronologically (as would be normal), but rather by theme, similar to the way that I organized Escape From The Land Of Smiles [1]. It is a book that deals with the universal experience of death and loss, but a book that is filled with rich reminisces and sensory details vividly described, whether it is the effluvia of items stored in a secret basement room including a book on weapons and armor and 80’s Christian contemporary music to a scene where the author’s dead husband (normally a prim and reserved person who did not even like his conversations blogged by his chatty wife and shared with the whole world) stripped down to his scivvies in front of near-strangers at a Mexican hotel bar to prove his love for his wife. It is a work that deals with the searing agony and jarring pain of a sudden death and yet it is written with a polished style that is easy to read.

There are a lot of incidents described within this book that are highly amusing, including a humorous debate about word use, and other incidents that are deeply poignant, such as the description of days spent in catatonic depression, unable to get up and bathe and do anything, or of panic attacks in public that are deeply embarrassing, or the love and encouragement of friends in the darkest of times. The author talks about her use of therapy as well as writing as ways that she dealt with her grief, turning her own personal experience into a work that should prove to be of comfort to many people like her.

Of particular relevance to many readers of this book (since the number of people who become widows in their 30’s is not a large reading audience) is the moving way in which the author finds comfort in the similarities and distinctions of various types of single mothers, giving a poignant discussion of the different ways that women are treated depending on whether they are young widows, women whose husbands have left them or who have left their husbands, single women who never married, or women who are married but whose relationship with their husbands are so distant that they might as well be single. It is rich story of a grief observed from the point of view of an articulate and sympathetic woman with a good family and social network to help her out in her darkest hours. Not all women are so fortunate, but there are a great many who would appreciate the author’s combination of blunt honesty in dealing with grief and loss as well as hopeful optimism (even if much of that optimism consists in speculations about heaven and the afterlife). There are no doubt many men as well who would appreciate this tale as they mourn the loss of their own beloved wives, although like many books, this one appears far more focused on the perspective of women.

[1] Escape From The Land Of Smiles: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AFGB7EM/ref=tag_dpp_yt_edpp_rt#tags