Grieving

“Few of us safely escape the bitter knowledge of loss, the howling silence, the waiting and the watching, the listening, the wishing. We fight to hold on to recent memories even as, with a force like gravity, time pulls us apart from those who have died.”

In her memoir, Grieving, Ruth Coughlin lays bare the story of her and her husband, William J. Coughlin as their lives, intertwined, are forever changed by his sudden and terminal illness.

Written with beauty, poignancy and clarity, it is as much about love as it is about grief; a comforting reminder that in the aftermath of death the shape of love is forced to change, but its depth and endurance remains untouchable. 

The journey of Ruth and William is both remarkable and heart-breaking. 

They are a vibrant couple; friends and lovers planning to grow old together, always believing in tomorrow. 

Yet, as they discover too early, the subject of Grieving is one that will cast a shadow over all of us during our lives — rarely do we expect it, but when it arrives, we are at its mercy.

This is a book for anyone who has experienced the shattering reality of loss, the courage to let your loved one go in their final moments, the aftermath of an empty space in the bed, and the longing for a friend who is gone but never forgotten. 

In prose that are written with stark honesty, Ruth Coughlin addresses the anguish of widowhood and the prospect of life after death. 

“Grieving is a heartfelt outpouring, by turns sentimental and angry, that documents an extraordinary relationship and a couple’s shattered dream of growing old together.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The strengths of Grieving are its precise details and fluid movement through time — back and forth between the endless weeks of tests and treatments, earlier, happier stages in the Coughlins’ romance, and the undiscovered territory beyond Bill’s death ... If truth rings, Grieving is a beautifully constructed bell.” — Booklist

“Grieving: A Love Story intertwines two tales — one about the couple’s precious and painful last months together; the other about Ruth’s devastation after Bill’s death. It’s really only one story, of course, about the way that love changes shape, molding itself to fit life’s contours.” — Detroit Free Press 

“Coughlin notes that bereavement brings about a narcissism that is nearly ‘pathological.’ In confessing her obsessional grief, spiralling depression and self-neglect, she wanted to reassure other bereaved people who are still setting the table for their dead husband, or waving when they see a car that looks like the deceased’s, that they are not insane.” — New York Daily News

“What makes Grieving so compelling is its honest, real desperate immediacy, and the willingness of its author to struggle on the page, with her own confusion and pain without false heroism or literary posing. No one can tell you everything about grief; but Ruth Coughlin tells a great deal, and tells it beautifully, with humor, love, sorrow, frustration and hope.” — Detroit News

“Moving ... Coughlin comes across not as a triumphant heroine but as a vulnerable human being torn by rage, confusion, and grief — one just beginning to find her way of bearing her existence.” — Kirkus Reviews

Ruth Coughlin was an award-winning feature writer; she had been the book editor for The Detroit News since 1985. Before moving to Detroit in 1983, she worked in New York publishing. She is a past board member of the National Book Critics Circle, having served as vice president for publications for three years. She lived in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with her husband William J. Coughlin, an author, federal administrative law judge and novelist, until he passed away in 1991.