Every time we experience grief, it is different. It’s why I keep reading grief memoirs – they always provide a new perspective. Love, Death and Other Scenes by Nova Weetman offers extraordinary insight into many aspects of grief.

Weetman’s memoir opens with the memorial of her husband, playwright and director Aidan Fennessy.*

It is like being at a party where the guest has forgotten to arrive. Everyone is waiting for you. And you are nowhere and everywhere. In all the conversations. In all the memories. But gone too.

She then rewinds, reflecting on their relationship, his diagnosis with cancer, her time caring for him (at home, during COVID lockdowns), his death, and her bereavement.

Weetman explores the differences in the grief experience – reflecting on how she grieved for her mother (who was also in palliative care) as compared to Aidan, and how her children experienced bereavement quite differently from her. Of course, from a textbook point-of-view, none of this is surprising but for Weetman, who was in it, it was. And this is grief at work.

The process of dying isn’t for the patient, it’s for those caring for them. I wasn’t ready for Mum to die. I needed it to take time. Over those weeks, I needed to process how I was going to feel… It was only after watching her suffer that I was fully ready for her to go…. It shocked me to realise how willing I was to compromise her quality of life just so she could stick around for a bit longer.

It is in discussing her children and their loss, that Weetman delves into the significance of memories.The fallibility of memory wobbles her – ‘…there is no one truth in memory – just an attempt at such…’

She veers from her own narrative to draw on the work of various neuroscientists, to explain how memories are retrieved, and in recalling something, how it can become distorted or altered. There is growing evidence to suggest that memories are not ‘replayed’ but rather repeatedly reconstructed thoughts. Within the context of grief, ‘…the idea that we can inflate our memories, alter them, distort them or even create false ones, is overwhelming…’

I like imagining that what I remember about Aidan is real and true. I want to hold on to those memories, return to them at will and argue for their existence. But I also understand that my version of events is not the only one and that if I asked my children about their memories… theirs would be different from mine.

And goes on to say –

Nowhere are memories more desperately hunted for than when someone dies. A time when grief makes even the smallest thought often impossible and when we are bumbling through guilt and hurt and longing. Surely during such heightened emotion, memories have no chance at being accurate?

This memoir is beautifully written. It will be added to the small collection of grief memoirs that I can wholeheartedly recommend to others – for solace; because some part will resonate; for its truths.

4.5/5

He introduced the kids to the delight of stopping off on a road trip for a beef pie and sauce at a country bakery… I find myself stopping so the kids can buy their pies and remember their dad. We hunt Aidan out where we can, but find him in different ways.

*Fennessy wrote one of the best plays I have seen – The Architect – performed by Melbourne Theatre Company in 2018 (he also wrote the glorious Heartbreak Choir and the riveting What Rhymes with Cars and Girls). Weetman describes The Architect perfectly – It is a heady play, requiring ethical attention, with harrowing drama buried in pitch-perfect comedy. The parallels between Fennessy’s diagnosis and death, and The Architect are of course, notable.

As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (July 11): Belfast 10°-16° and Melbourne 9°-13°.