Bookstore Sections

I used to spend a significant amount of time in Bookstores.  When I wasn’t old enough to drink, I would grab a coffee at the cafe, and plop myself on the floor in between the aisles of books, just browsing through my next reads.

After I lost Kevin, I found myself thankfully in the bookstores, and not the bars (that came later ;)).  I wanted to find books that related specifically to my situation.  What I found were books from people in their later years of life, who had spent lifetimes with their spouses.  These weren’t for me.  There were a few books geared towards younger loss, but every book seemed to touch on dating, and children, neither of which were applicable to me just weeks after losing Kevin.  I was at a loss.

I would search through the self-improvement section, wanting to flip through all the grief and loss books, but before I knew it, my hand was wandering to books on intimacy, sex, divorce.  I became angry.  “What the hell did I want with those books?  My husband DIED, I ain’t having sex, or intimacy and screw those who got divorced.  I WANTED my husband to live.”

This isn’t the only case of books being placed next to genres they shouldn’t be…it’s everywhere.  These bookshelves are much like young widowhood in real life.  I’m a tiny fraction of a situation available to the public.  More people are dealing with the issues of intimacy, sex, divorce, than are dealing with the issue of young death.  It’s just not as popular statistics-wise, or emotionally.

Where do the young grievers fit?

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Comments 1

  1. Good question….maybe, just maybe it raises all sort of difficult questions. It may be that many don’t want to accept that young people die, especially from illness and not an accident. By not addressing the issue of those left behind, we sort of lose the initial problematic. We can cope with James Dean, Marilyn Munro and Princess Diana…… but someone we know, or someone like us, someone whom we love, someone real, that is a whole new ball game.
    And most of us don’t want to play!

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