The Lovely Bones and Grief..

Like my flowers?  I took those over the weekend while we was visiting.  Some said they are worthy of making prints out of them and putting on the wall lol (ya right) 

I have been meaning to write this for a while.. NO really I have! That e-mail from the editors from key word books saying I was being considered had nothing to do with this post LOL. 

You may recall the previous post I made about this book The Lovely Bones and how I was raving over it?  I finished reading it last week so it is not all that fresh but I thought since it dealt with loss and we are all going threw some of that right now in J~Land it would be appropriate to write on it today.

I will have to say I LOVED this book despite the theological disagreements I have with it.  I don't see Heaven the way it is described in this book or believe in ghosts but it is an interesting take on it.  Other than that the book is GOLD.  I cannot recall ever reading a book quiet like this one from a victim's POV and written so vividly.  It is horror but not the kind I am used to like Stephen King or Anne Rice.  The horror is that you can see this story happening anywhere and to anyone one you know.  That is why I was a bit freaked this weekend when we was over visiting for the family reunion and one of the Aunts live by a school that has a corn field behind it.. read the book and you will understand why that freaks me out.

I will definitely have to see if the author has any other books out.  She writes so wonderfully, almost too good, it hurts.  The charters are well developed and you can see yourself relating to them in some way or another.  I related to the mother in this book the most.  Not just because I am a mother and I can see how devastating in my own life it would be to loose a child violently, but just by the way she was written and described as being two ppl.  The one she was with her family and the one she was when she was by herself.  I think a lot of us women are like this.  I loved the part where it talks about the mother and the picture the daughter took of her when she was sneaking around early in the morning and caught in an unmother moment, how she described her as seeing for the first time her mother was more then a mother, but also someone with dreams of her own that had been put aside.  I can understand why the Mother reacted in her grief the way she did and even see myself possibly being the same way but hopping deep down I would be different.

Here is one of my fav. parts.

Chapter 3 page43:

"I looked at what I had never seen as anything but Mom and saw the soft powdery skin of her face-powdery without makeup-soft without help. Her eye brows and eyes were a set-piece together. "Ocean Eyes," my father called her when he wanted ....  And now I understood the name.  I had thought it was because they were blue, but now I saw it was because they were then, not a developed thought, but now I saw it was because they were bottomless in a way that I found frightening"   " There was only one picture in witch my mother was Abigail.  It was the first one, the one taken of her unawares, the one captured before the click startled her into the mother of the birthday girl, owner of the happy dog, wife to the loving man, and mother again to another girl and a cherished boy.  Homemaker.  Gardener.  Sunny neighbor.  My mother's eyes were oceans, and inside them there was loss."

This book follows how a family and a community deals with the murder of a young girl.  It also follows the girl threw her ordeal and from her point of view of how ppl are reacting to her death and how she herself is reacting.  It is very interesting and now thinking about it, it chronicles all the stages of grief. And the last part when they all reach the acceptance of her death and beginning to move on and not be haunted by her memory or ghost, she herself finally has peace.

I know for myself I feel as if I am grieving and I have been going threw all the stages of it.  I can see a lot of us going threw this process and each of us dealing and handling it in our own ways.  No, this person didn't die but to me it is as if they did and I am going to just leave it at that and move on. 

Here are the stages from a website about grief and loss and I thought it may help some of us out in getting a handle on our emotions.

• What are the stages of the loss process
• Denial
• Bargaining
• Anger
• Despair
• Acceptance

I have to get to the library tomorrow!  My books and music was due Friday but with us going out of town I never got to it.  The next books I want to get is ofcourse "The Dark Tower" and only because it is a heated topic at church, "The DeVinci Code".  I am sure I will not be able to get either of those hot and in demand books tomorrow but I can get on the reserve list.