Amy Lin: "Here After"

 "Here After" is a memoir about a woman whose husband heads out for a run. This guy is thirty--thirty-one, thirty-two--years old. He stumbles and dies. It's never clear why he dies. The autopsy suggests that--at the moment of death--he was in perfect health.

The writer, Amy Lin, then becomes deranged with grief. She begins looking for a "suicide bridge." (Her friend suggests that "no bridge in town is high enough" for the desired outcome.) Amy Lin considers reading the Joyce Carol Oates "grief memoir" but feels (justifiably) irritated by JCO's famously coy omission. (Nowhere does Oates write, "Within a year of my husband's death, I marched down the aisle again.")

Lin is scathing when she describes the narcissism of friends and family. There is an expectation that you will start to cope and "find closure"; if you don't display signs of resilience, you will quickly become boring. Observers believe that a "stiff upper lip" line is helpful; it's a sign of tough love. But in fact a lecture from a friend is a form of controlling behavior. It's a controlling effort disguised as "help."

Lin makes discoveries. The "denial, anger, acceptance" cliche isn't actually about missing a loved one. If it has any descriptive power (a power that is debatable at best), the power is in reference to coping with your *own* terminal diagnosis. ("I've learned I myself am going to die. I can now anticipate phases of denial, anger, and acceptance.") Lin also sees that it's possible to cry so much that your tears form a puddle on the countertop, and the surface tension breaks; the tears spill off the ledge and on to the kitchen floor.

I sort of enjoyed Lin's craziness. She has set out to make herself as unappealing as possible--and, with that mission, she becomes (weirdly) appealing. I don't know what to make of her husband; he is a rough-draft sketch at most; this is one of the memoir's major deficiencies. But I was still entertained throughout. I'm giving two thumbs up.