Reunion: A Love That Bridged Two Worlds

Death of a life partner is an experience that reduces many to inarticulate grieving. Jessica Ezell's account of her loss of her husband, Zeke, is anything but inarticulate. A nurse in a chemical-dependency clinic at Tennessee Meical Center, Ezell takes an unusual path through her grief, reading all she can find on death, dying and grief, and recording her epiphanies and insights about loss with a clinical eye. She finds a nearly magical healing energy in her ability to dream herself into encounters with loved ones she has lost to death. Such encounters provide an opportunity for her to clarify her grief and to complete her journey into a transformative life. As a result, her narrative is filled with descriptions of small rituals she invents during her healing process to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and the finite into the infinite. As a grief narrative, this is a marvelously compelling, beautifully designed volume well worth the attention it requires. (Oct.)