“The Light of the World: A Memoir” by Elizabeth Alexander

It has been a year now since Sheryl Sandberg’s husband, David Goldberg, died of heart-related issues at the age of 47 on a treadmill while on vacation in Mexico. When I found out about his death I could not make sense of it. I looked at dozens of pictures online of Sheryl, of David, their children and their wedding pictures. Why would this happen? How could this happen? And how would things ever be better for her again? In May of this year, Sandberg gave the commencement address Cal Berkeley and spoke about her husband’s death. “When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again. I learned that in the face of the void – or in the face of the challenge – you can choose joy and meaning.” Excellent advice for anything that seems impossible to bear. Shortly after David’s death, I got a notice from my library that a book I had ordered a month earlier was available. It was this book: The Light of the World,” a memoir by Elizabeth Alexander who, coincidentally, found her own husband dead on a treadmill in 2012. Her book was published in early April 2015; reviewed in “The New York Times” on April 21, 2015; and Sandberg’s David died on May 1, 2015. The timing seemed uncanny to me, but I did what I always do when I am overwhelmed and confused: I sat down and read. Alexander is a well-respected poet and her memoir is a love letter to her late husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus. He died of a heart attack while exercising on that treadmill four days after his 50th birthday, leaving her to raise two little boys alone. She writes beautifully of meeting her husband, building a life with him, and then suddenly the darkness that came. At the end of the book, she boldly leaves her home in New Haven and moves to New York City with her boys. You get the feeling that she is going to be okay, but that the grief and loss will forever take up space in her heart. Books have always made sense of the world for me, and this book is exemplary. You are not left with the question “why did this happen?” but rather the answer “she was really lucky to have known and loved him.” And p.s.: Thank you Kimberly Jones for encouraging me to write about this book, too. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.