Time heals all wounds.

Have surgery, and your doctor will tell you how long before you can “resume normal activities” and go on living your life. All you have to do is wait. Cut your finger, slap on a bandage, wait a few days, and your skin knits back together. Time heals all wounds – but in the new memoir, “Memorial Days” by Geraldine Brooks, it takes years to heal a soul.

“It.”

After Geraldine Brooks’ husband dropped to the pavement in Washington D.C. while on a book tour, after bystanders did CPR, ambulances were called, and he was pronounced dead in the ER, after Brooks spoke to a weary hospital intern, “it” was what Tony was reduced to. If she traveled from from her Maine home to Washington, if she’d want to see his body, she was told that “it” would be at the morgue.

One son was away at school, the other was on his way to Australia. Brooks had to figure out how to catch a plane on Memorial Day, at the height of tourist season; how to get to her brother-in-law’s house in D.C., how to tell his loved ones that Tony was gone.

She had to say he was gone before she could believe it herself.

There was so much she wanted to remember: how they met, how driven Tony was when he worked, the way they worked together, compromises made, the kind of father he was, the kind of man he was. There was so much he didn’t tell her: for one, that he’d been short of breath once or twice and it scared him enough that he brought it to his doctor’s attention.

These were the things Brooks thought about some four years later when she went to a small island off the coast of Australia, to live in solitude and quiet, to give herself time. She wanted time to think, to know how to keep Tony’s memory alive for generations to come. Time to heal and to finally grieve…

So, here’s the thing about “Memorial Days”: you can bring tissues when you start it, but you may not need them.

For sure, author Geraldine Brooks tells a gut-punch story – if you’ve ever lost a spouse, you’ll know – but surprisingly, it’s not a tear-jerker. No, this book has more wide determination than that, more focus, more say-its-piece and less make-you-cry. Brooks swings readers from early summer of 2019 to early spring of 2023, with back stops through the years before her marriage and after, in deeply personal stories that are good and not-always-good. That’s cathartic and inspiring, but most of all, it’ll make you feel like you missed out – as though you’re reading a good newspaper obituary, and you sit back and think, dang, you really wish you’d known the guy it’s about.

This is a plain old great story, but it’s a must-have for anyone who’s grieved or is looking for the next step in the process. “Memorial Days” will touch your heart; absolutely, it’s worth your time.

“Memorial Days: A Memoir” by Geraldine Brooks
c.2025, Viking
$28.00
224 pages