“About Alice” by Calvin Trillin

Earlier this month I joined a grief group at my church. I have been going to Calvary Presbyterian Church on the corner of Fillmore and Jackson Streets since 1989, when I first moved to San Francisco. I love my church. I will not show up to church for one reason or another for more than a year, and then I can walk through those big doors on Fillmore and someone will casually say to me, “What a nice scarf!” or, “Great rain boots, Lori.” There is no preachy judgment, nor religious criticism about not attending, just many warm comfortable smiles from people who genuinely are happy to see me. So the timing of this grief group after my dad’s death this summer seems perfect. The commitment was two Sundays in November and two in December. The fact that the minister Victor Floyd, who married Jeff and I in August, organized this grief group was a clear sign I should show up. I’m so glad I did. Grief is strange and fussy, but I find it comforting to be in a room of people who understand what loss feels like and are willing to talk about it. “Ask Alice” by Calvin Trillin has offered me similar comfort. I read this book years ago after it was published in 2006, but when I recently saw it again at the library it jumped out at me as if saying, “Read me again!” Calvin survived his wife Alice’s death from lung cancer and heart problems, and I can survive my dad’s death, too. Trillin writes just beautifully about Alice, the mother of two daughters who thought that if you didn’t go to “every performance of your child’s school play the county would come and take the child.” Calvin has written several books about his late wife and to re-read them while grieving is to connect with his heartbreaking loss. He once wrote in the dedication of a book, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”  As I read this book again I was touched by the fact that even though I knew Alice died in the end, I still wanted to read it because of her grace while dying. Trillin wrote, “For Alice, of course, the measure of how you held up in the face of a life-threatening illness was not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your own identity.” This is just a lovely read from beginning to end. P.S. Jeff wants me to review happier books and I’m working on it. To purchase this book click here.