Language Lessons (For When Your Mom Dies)

By Mary Clare Griffin

Mary Clare's nephew, Griffin, was born with cancer. Within a few weeks, Mary Clare's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Griffin dies a few months after he was born; Mary Clare's mother dies two... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0966894014
• ISBN13: 9780966894011
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Daybue Pub Ink
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

FRIGHTENING AND EXHILARATING

Must read: Terrified of how close to home this book hit-frightening and exhilarating play by play account of a woman on the edge dying inside while her mother was dying of cancer. This book is intense and hard to put down. Triumphant in the end she pulls herself up and becomes a catalyst for change, due to a power that intermingles with my own----revealed.In the end: a time of rebirth, growth, and renewal.

Read This Book -- Really

It's not often that a book comes along that says, "read me." Really read me. We all can all name a few. They fall under classics, with a capital C. Mary Clare Griffin's Language Lessons is one of those books, for it calls our rapt attention, not just to its poetry, its language, music, mystery, but also to its content: brutal, raw, life stuff - death, reconciliation and redemption. Language Lessons reminds us, in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, "everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right."Language Lessons IS right. It will make more of you than you ever been: it will make you laugh, and cry, and make you angry and fiercely committed to living your life with a heart and palm wide open. It will make you want to voyage, in the same way Griffin does, down your own personal river of self discovery, self knowledge, and yes, self indulgence: turbulent, dangerous, personal and utterly painful. And yet, so, so necessary. Language Lessons invites all of us to witness Griffin's journey during four years of her adult life. Through oft-times pared-down diary entries (think emotional Zen) and carefully worded prose, Griffin takes us through the illness and eventual death of her mother, by observing, recording and uncovering her family's drama and trauma (including her own) springing from this tremendous loss. And what a loss it was. Not just the death of a friend, a wife, a lover and a mother of five, but the death of everything we protect so closely within ourselves: trust, need, desire, love. Innocence. It is this loss with which Griffin wrestles. And she does so with the grace and truthfulness of a poet. Indeed, she bares her life in stark, brutal honesty -- true, open, close-to-the-bone-language, the stuff of heartfelt prayers: help, wait, stay, love me, don't die, forgive, forget. Engaging, eloquent, at times elegiac.Ultimately, Language Lessons transcends the grammar of death. It rises above finality to rest in the newness, renewal of reconciliation and redemption. Griffin's work delivers hope, for, if nothing else, she allows us to see her own soul, bare, wide open and full of grace. With such honesty and such beauty, we wait patiently for her next book.

Language Lessons

Rarely do I finish a novel in one sitting, but Griffin's account of her mother's passing had me spellbound. Although it is a intensely personal memoir, I completely related to the pain of losing one's mother and the courage it takes to deal with the immediacy of the situation.I enjoyed her book immensely and would recommend it to anyone dealing with the pain of losing a mother.

A story of grace and redemption

This is at once a great book for it's artful language and a painful journey that will tear at your heart. Read Language Lessons if you've lost a loved one, been estranged from your family or wish to have your belief in God's grace affirmed.

a powerful healing tool for all families

As a physician who attends several hospice conferences a year, I found this book invaluable for caregivers, especially those of baby boomer age. Rarely does one find such an honest and raw account of what it is like to lose a parent; and, the subsequent despair- and healing- that ultimately follows. Griffin offers us a gift.