Widows Story

Product Description

My husband died my life collapsed. On a February morning in 2008 Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband Raymond Smith to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce & Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge Ray was dead from a hospital-acquired virulent infection & Joyce was suddenly faced -- totally unprepared -- with the reality of widowhood. A Widows Story illuminates one womans struggle to comprehend a life absent of the partnership that had sustained & defined her for nearly half a century. Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial the anguish of loss the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of death duties & the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief -- the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil the treacherous pools of memory that surround us the vocabulary of illness the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Enlivened by the piercing vision acute perception & mordant humour that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates this is a extremely moving tale of life & death love & grief.