My Dead Parents

In this ruminative memoir, Yurchyshyn examines her parents’ past and tries to understand how their once-passionate marriage unraveled. In 2010, when Yurchyshyn was 32, her mother died from heart failure and alcoholism, leaving behind an empty Boston home filled with relics from her marriage, among them pictures and souvenirs from travels abroad and letters from her husband. Yurchyshyn’s father died in a car accident in Ukraine in 1994, when he was already alienated from his daughter and wife. Yurchyshyn had assumed that their lives had always been fraught with tension—that her father had been abusive, violent, and distant; that her mother had been depressed and drunk. Her father’s love letters revealed another story, one that Yurchyshyn tells with honesty and great care: “When I found my parents’ letters, I had to surrender the people I’d constructed from my experiences, observations, and assumptions so I could meet them for the first time.” Yurchyshyn highlights her parents’ happy early marriage—its joys, their exotic travels through the Middle East and Asia. Through discussions with her mother’s friends, Yurchyshyn learns about how the death of her brother Yuri from pneumonia before she was born changed her parents, leaving her mother isolated in her grief. This is a fascinating and insightful memoir about how relationships evolve and change, even after death. (Mar.)