Post by james on Jul 7, 2022 19:49:02 GMT -5
A moving essay that Rebecca Solnit shared on Facebook. Solnit wrote -
This great essay is hilarious and heartbreaking, about the loss of a beloved spouse, about grief and the hardwired habits of presence as they persist in the face of absence, and the things we do to get through what cannot be gotten through. Thank you Debra Gwartney.
From the introduction -
"In “Siri Tells a Joke,” Debra Gwartney writes about her grief following the death of her husband, the writer Barry Lopez, in late 2020. Lopez was a renowned author of nearly twenty books of nonfiction and fiction, who traveled to eighty countries and often wrote about remote and exotic places. His work was grounded in a deep reverence for nature. Margaret Atwood writes that he spoke “the language of our inseparable connection with the natural world,” and Bill McKibben says, “No one has worked harder to make sense of our present civilization.”
This great essay is hilarious and heartbreaking, about the loss of a beloved spouse, about grief and the hardwired habits of presence as they persist in the face of absence, and the things we do to get through what cannot be gotten through. Thank you Debra Gwartney.
From the introduction -
"In “Siri Tells a Joke,” Debra Gwartney writes about her grief following the death of her husband, the writer Barry Lopez, in late 2020. Lopez was a renowned author of nearly twenty books of nonfiction and fiction, who traveled to eighty countries and often wrote about remote and exotic places. His work was grounded in a deep reverence for nature. Margaret Atwood writes that he spoke “the language of our inseparable connection with the natural world,” and Bill McKibben says, “No one has worked harder to make sense of our present civilization.”
Lopez and Gwartney lived in the McKenzie River Valley of Western Oregon, about forty miles from Eugene. Three months before he died, the Holiday Farm wildfire swept through the area, destroying more than seven hundred homes and buildings and burning more than 173,000 acres. Though their home was spared, the couple lost an archive building that contained decades of Lopez’s work. The area was so devastated, they were forced to move to a house in Eugene, where Lopez died on Christmas Day. The family washed his body with water from the McKenzie River."
Essay at link.
www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/559/siri-tells-a-joke
Essay at link.
www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/559/siri-tells-a-joke