Rules of Inheritance. A Memoir on Loss and Grief. #BHBC #ad

Rules of Inheritance. A Memoir on Loss and Grief. #BHBC #ad

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are from my very own gray matter.

Grief.

Not the much loved Charlie Brown cry “Good grief,” but grief as in merciless pit without end. A bottomless, tunnel down where sufferers are sentenced to exist in solitude for a time.

Some of you have experienced more than your share in this life — others, may have yet to experience significant loss.

After reading Claire Bidwell Smith’s poignant memoir Rules of Inheritance , I have a better understanding of profound grief and it’s place in this journey called life. A piece that needs to be talked about and shared.

Bidwell Smith was only a girl of 14 when her father was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. Six months later, she learned her mother had Stage 4 colon cancer.

A glamorous, beautiful woman, Claire’s mother married her father at age 38 and had Claire at 40.  Her father was older, a successful businessman. They married within three months of meeting on a blind date.

The book opens with the last stages of her mother’s illness with Claire off at small Northeastern college and her mother at home in Atlanta. Reading the book while striding away on the elliptical (my favorite attempt at multitasking) I was moved to tears. Her honest writing of seeing such a strong lovely woman wasting away from the ravages of disease touches a chord in us all. In the second chapter, the reader is privy to her life as the 14-year-old who first learns of her parent’s illnesses. The third chapter chronicles the narrator at 24, out of college and living in Southern California.  The book ends hopefully, as Bidwell Smith emerges on the other side finding joy in a loving family of her own.

It might sound as a disjointed rambling but Bidwell Smith’s life, loves and raw emotion tie all the vignettes together.  She leads readers on her journey through the valley of grief  — relaying her affairs of the heart, battles with alcohol and renewed connection with her father — along with the intimate questions she asks herself.

The reader can’t help but ask the same of herself after reading.

Rules of Inheritance is window into the depths and utter solitude of grief.

Whatever pain loss brings, everyone is alone in their experience. After reading her moving account, I can’t help but agree with Bidwell Smith’s statement “Why would anyone want to walk into pain? But when I did, I found it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”

I didn’t know what to expect with such an emotional subject…but I loved it.

The book will be discussed for the next few weeks on the BlogHer Book Club.