Our Mothers' Spirits: Great Writers on the Death of Mothers and the Grief of Men

MOTHER DEAR (Oh mother dear, I miss you like never before) Where are your warm hugs? Have they cracked and wilted in your empty arms Where are your sweet smiles? Have they dried and shriveled on your cold lips Where are your funny jokes? Have they turned to dust and lay at your feet To whom will comfort me? To whom will dry my tears? To whom will I lay my head, When no one else is near? (Oh mother dear, I need you more than ever) Where have you been? Have you finally been laid to rest Where are you now? Are you flying high with the angels? OR Are you down in the deep dark well? Call Me Sonya Grey: A Young Girl's Poems about Death, Life and Adolescence

This is a careful scholarly work by a professor emeritus from Berkely. You'd never know it from the tasteless and garish cover the publisher stuck on the hardback edition: it shows the late Princess Diana with her two sons, posed over a coffin that has a note entitled "Mommy". The author offers a detailed account of the crass and clumsy attempt by the publisher to use his scholarly work to cash in on the Princess' death -- an attempt made over his strong protests. The entire story can be read in the March 2000 edition of Brill's Content. Revulsion of the reviewers finally led the publisher to change the cover of the softcover edition to something more tasteful. Don't let the tabloid mindset of the publisher turn you away from an otherwise fine anthology.

My roommate, whose mother had died when he was very young, had a hardcover version of Our Mothers' Spirits: Great Writers on the Death of Mothers and the Grief of Men, with the Princess Diane cover. I was immediately turned off by what appeared to be an emotional manipulation by the publisher. When I complained to a friend about the dust jacket illustration, she intimated the book might threaten me more' than the poor taste in design. Thankfully, a few days later I took the time to look at the section titles (Before Death: The Aged Mother; When a Mother Dies Young; Good Deaths, Bad Deaths; Taking Her Own Life: Suicide and Euthanasia; Regret; Alienation; etc.) and I saw there might possibly be something of me and my Mother in this book. When I went to buy the book at a local independent bookstore the sales clerk informed me that all of the hardcover editions had been withdrawn due to the author's protests concerning the dust jacket illustration. The paperback is not so burdened. The essays in this book are not to be read one after the other but due to their impact should be taken in smaller, easier to digest portions. Henry Miller's Unhappy Memories forced me to want to look at my own unhappy memories. I have never properly addressed my own mother's suicide and my father's clumsy attempt to cover it up thirty-five years ago (see Daniel Oberti's The Accident) This book has helped me reinitiate that crucial process in my life. As a hospice volunteer T. .S. Matthew's Dying is Hard Labor and Andrew Solomon's, A Death of One's Own left me not only looking with more empathy at my hospice clients' experiences but my attitude toward my own death and euthanasia. The poetry which begins each section and almost every essay is of a uniformly high quality and do not attempt to manipulate one with idealized conceptions of what the death of one's mother can/should be. These accounts are unblinkingly poignant.

Editor Bob Blauner has done an exquisite job of weaving together old and new stories on a subject that men don't talk much about -- their relationships with their mothers. Compelling and moving stories. In doing so, he invites and encourages us to look at this aspect of who we are. The "old" stories are drawn from biographies of writers like Wallace Stegner, John Updike, Kirk Douglas, New York Times columnist Russell Baker and Henry Miller. But the "new stories" that Blauner solicited for this anthology are also finely-crafted gems. One of the most moving is a "decline letter" from a man who tells why he finds the subject so difficult and won't be contributing to the anthology. The most popular feature in MenWeb and the Men's Voices journal is men's personal stories. For the good reason that other men's stories invite us to resonate with our own stories, the truth of our own experience. This book is a "must read," not simply because the stories themselves are beautiful and poignant, but also because they invite us to look into this too-often-neglected yet vitally important part of our own lives.