This time two years ago, we were preparing for what would be, unbeknownst to us, our last family vacation. Dennis was into his second chemo regimen, and we worked that schedule into the timing of our Disney cruise so that he wouldn’t be too miserable while we traveled. It was the best vacation we’d ever taken as a family, and on the last night he expressed the teary concern that it might be his last.

I spent just over 18 years married to him and almost a year and a half of that anticipating losing him. My therapist told me that they call it anticipatory grieving. You can’t help but think about it, you plan for it, but you still get lost in the grief when the time comes. Knowing it’s coming just gives you the time to say things you might not think to say otherwise.

In March of 2020, when COVID started shutting everything down and kids went remote for school, we fully expected to be back in school by the end of the year. When two weeks turned into two months, Corinne literally grieved her school activities. She was in 8th grade and looking forward to the field trip to Six Flags (cancelled), the 8th grade dance (cancelled), her graduation ceremony (cancelled and then a solo walk across a stage in a mall parking lot). She knew it was unlikely that her father would see her graduate high school, so losing those events took a bigger toll on her than we realized at the time.

She didn’t want to verbalize the idea that Dennis wouldn’t be here for prom and the next graduation, so she kept it to herself. Even while Dennis was telling her that everyone around the country was experiencing the same thing and she needed to just deal with it, it was bigger for her in that moment. She didn’t know yet that she was already grieving, or if she knew, she didn’t want to say it.

But I don’t think either one of us really anticipated the depth of grief…or the anger that would come with it.

About a month after we lost Dennis in September of 2020, I took Corinne and her cousin to a camp ground in Michigan where we rented a cottage for the weekend. Corinne spent a lot of time by herself, struggling over a choir assignment. She did a lot of complaining, a lot of pouting, and a lot of time pounding on things when she couldn’t hit a note. By the end of the weekend, I went off on her, telling her that I was just trying to have a nice quiet weekend together and she was pissing all over it. We both ended up in our respective rooms crying. She felt like she had ruined the weekend, and I felt horrible for losing it, knowing how she had been struggling.

After that weekend, I made her start therapy, and we started being able to talk more about it. I reminded her that I knew she was grieving her dad, and that it was ridiculously hard for me to see her hurting while I was grieving my husband. I don’t think she had thought about it that way until then. At the same time, I didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent. I can’t imagine not having my parents around for all those milestones in my life.

Six months after Dennis, I learned when we lost my mom. But as an adult, I was much better equipped to understand the emotions I was feeling. I had 54 years with my mom. Corinne had 15 with her dad.

We still feel it, but we talk about it more. Anti-depressants help. 😊 But what I know for a fact, what I carry with me every single day, is that the grief wouldn’t be so hard if we didn’t love them with our whole hearts. You don’t truly mourn someone (or something) that you just liked a little bit.

Grief requires that love comes before it.

When I first read The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, what drew me to it was a quote on the back cover. “I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

As we start this new year of 2022, let’s remember to love with all our hearts and souls. My grief, Corinne’s grief…it will still be there. But we will always have the love of Dennis and my mom to keep us grounded and to carry us through.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for To Love and Be Loved by Amanda Prowse

346 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: January 11, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher’s Description

Young and desperately in love, Merrin had the whole world ahead of her. But just as her new life was about to start, the ground beneath her feet was cruelly swept away. Devastated by the humiliation, she ran far away from the beloved fishing village she had always called home to lick her wounds and escape her gossiping friends and neighbors.

It hasn’t been easy, but six years later Merrin has forged a new life for herself far from the sea, burying the impulsive girl she once was. But when tragedy strikes, she has no choice but to return to the village she swore she’d never set foot in again.

Reluctantly back in the arms of her community, Merrin begins to realize what she’s been missing out on all these years. As she begins to remember the person she used to be, she is forced to make choices about her future, and to question the past. What does she want from her life? Who is important to her? Who is to blame for everything that went wrong? And can she forgive them, let old wounds heal and finally be her true self again?

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Main Characters:

• Merrin Kellow – goes by Merry as well, 19 years old, madly in love and planning her future with Digby Mortimer
• Ruby Kellow – Merrin’s older sister; there is some sibling rivalry, but she is prone to punching people and things in Merrin’s defense
• Heather Kellow – Merrin and Ruby’s mother, she and Ben have the type of marriage that Merrin and Ruby aspire to
• Ben Kellow – Merrin and Ruby’s father, a fisherman whose family helped found the village of Port Charles
• Bella – Merrin’s boisterous best friend
• Jarvis Cardy – a friend to Merrin, Ruby, and Bella; still infatuated with Merrin from a brief period of dating
• Digby Mortimer – 22 years old, son of a wealthy family, oversees a biscuit empire with his father
• Loretta Mortimer – Digby’s mother, she employs Heather to clean the Mortimers’ mansion

The “About the Author” section of Amanda Prowse’s To Love and Be Loved ends with “Amanda’s ambition is to create stories that keep people from turning off the bedside lamp at night, that ensure you walk every step with her great characters, and tales that fill your head so you can’t possibly read another book until the memory fades….” I don’t have to turn off the bedside lamp since I read on my Kindle🙂, and I have already started my next book because that’s what I do🙂, BUT this story will be on my heart for a very long time.

Set in the small fishing village of Port Charles in Cornwall, this is the story of Merrin (Merry) Kellow, whose family founded the village generations before. She lives with her parents Ben and Heather, her older sister Ruby, and their Gran Ellen. Her best friend Bella, who I would love to have as a friend of my own, lives just down the path. Everyone knows everyone, and Merrin has always imagined her future as a wife and mother in this place. At 19, when she falls in love with the wealthy Digby Mortimer, she envisions her future raising children in the Mortimer mansion overlooking the village.

When her world implodes and she can’t bring herself to stay in Port Charles, Merrin needs to figure out how to move on and create a new normal. We follow her when she leaves the home that truly defines every part of her and settles in Milbury Court three hours away. She starts a solitary life for herself working in a hotel, where she discovers that her co-workers think of her as the sad girl. We can empathize when she returns to Port Charles at one point for a few days and, upon preparing to return to Milbury Court, she says, “I don’t want to go. I never wanted to go. And yet I can’t wait to be gone. How do I reconcile that?”

What I love about Ms. Prowse’s stories is her ability to create characters and paint a picture. We know the kind of love that lives within the rivalry between sisters. We probably all knew a Bella who considered our parents her own. We can visualize the sea. We feel the cobblestones beneath Merrin’s bare feet. We experience her joy with Digby, and then… “It was only this repeated question that made her realise her limbs were trembling and her teeth chattering, but no, she wasn’t cold, more…in pain. She felt broken. Her chest hurt. Raising her fingertips, she ran them over the front of her dress and up to her throat, just to check that nothing was actually lodged there and no one had noticed; she would have been quite unsurprised to find a dagger, hilt-deep, sitting squarely in her breast.”

I could feel Merrin’s pure, all-consuming grief, and this grief drives the rest of the story.

But this is not just a story of romantic love. We live through Merrin’s love for her village, her family, her best friend. We feel her need to get away from the place where (in her father’s words) her spirit lingers, the spitefulness and seeming jealousy between her and Ruby, the grief during her losses, and the promise of the future as she comes out healed on the other side six years later. We learn about secrets and relationships from the generations before Merrin’s that influenced everything that happens in the present day.

This is not a light beach read. Curl up under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate or tea, maybe in front of a fireplace, and let the story swallow you up for a day or a weekend. It’s a story you can get lost in…and it will stay with you even longer. You don’t want to miss this one.

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