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The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 1,068 ratings · 240 reviews

What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published April 14th 2011 by Riverhead Books (first published March 10th 2011)

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Mar 09, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: arcs, nonfiction-memoir, best-of-the-genre, books-that-made-me-cry

This book wrecked me. I have trouble even saying that I recommend it, because its sheer brilliant intensity will tear you apart.

I am not a crier. I didn't cry at Old Yeller, I didn't cry at Romeo and Juliet, and while I didn't see Titanic, the odds are I would have been giggling at the end. And yet. And yet I was bawling over my cooking dinner by the second chapter of "The Long Goodbye." I finished it in a few hours, and there were precious few dry-eyed moments. Meghan's grief is so raw, so wri...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Terri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wavered b/t 3 and 4 stars but rounded up when I thought about all the impressive and eclectic research this young writer did in trying to come to grips with her mother's death. She is both more scholarly and poetic than I was when I did my own research after the death of my older brother. I lean more toward psychology and the spiritual; I got the strong sense this writer is an atheist.
Also - I was hoping to see in her bibliography/credits something by Polly Young-Eisendrath, a Jungian-Buddhis...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Allison marked it as read-nonfiction

Shelves: read-2012, favorites, great

This book. Wow. It is evocative, brave, raw, and just all around honestly written. It's everything a memoir should be. I found out several months ago that my grandmother has stage IV metastasized cancer, and I see myself relating to much of Meghan O'Rourke's experience of losing her mother.

I appreciate how thoroughly she researched grief and death, and that she included quotes from others throughout the sharing of her own experience. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is or has experien...more This book. Wow. It is evocative, brave, raw, and just all around honestly written. It's everything a memoir should be. I found out several months ago that my grandmother has stage IV metastasized cancer, and I see myself relating to much of Meghan O'Rourke's experience of losing her mother.

I appreciate how thoroughly she researched grief and death, and that she included quotes from others throughout the sharing of her own experience. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is or has experienced the grief that comes with losing someone dear, which is to say everyone sooner or later. (Jill's review is beautiful.)

"Loss is our atmosphere; we, like the snow, are always falling toward the ground, and most of the time we forget it."

"One of the things Prigerson told me when I talked to her on the phone was that researchers now believe there are two kinds of grief" 'normal grief' and 'complicated grief' (also called 'prolonged grief'). 'Normal grief' is a term for what most bereaved people experience. It peaks within the first six months and then begins to dissipate. 'Complicated grief' does not, and often requires medication or therapy. But even 'normal grief,' Prigerson said, is hardly gentle. Its symptoms include insomnia or other sleep disorders, difficulty breathing, auditory or visual hallucinations, appetite problems, and dryness of mouth."

"And as I was walking I thought: I will carry this wound forever. It's not a question of learning to live with this transformation. For the loss is transformative, in good ways and bad, a tangle of change that cannot be threaded into the usual narrative spools. It is too central for that. It's not an emergence from the cocoon, but a tree growing around an obstruction."

"The mind is like an ocean that we sometimes look into, and sometimes not, staring at the sun, distracted by the clamorous beach around us."

"I'd had an intuition like this once before, as a child in Vermont. I was walking from the house to open the gate to the driveway. It was fall. As I put my hand on the gate, the world went ablaze, as bright at the autumn leaves, and I lifted out of myself and understood that I was part of a magnificent book. What I knew as "life" was a thin version of something larger, the pages of which had all been written. What I would do, how I would live—it was already known. I stood there with a kind of peace humming in my blood."

"What strange beauty surrounds us, and how impermanent our vision of it, how palpable our loss when those we love no longer can view the world they would adore."

"The passage consoles me. The idea of time as a [deep, still] pool [rather than a fast-flowing river] brings an actual solace, conjuring up the peculiar fact that our brains so often make the past as vivid as the present, without our choosing. Our memory is our weather, and we are re-created by it every day."(less)

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Feb 24, 2013 Nichelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

I started reading this book about two weeks after my father died of lung cancer metastasize to bones, liver, brain.

Firstly, I will say that I bristled at some others' reviews about the worst thing being a woman losing her mother. I can tell you that losing a father is no less devastating. No less at all. My only disconnect w this book is when she talks about mothers being your entry point into life - I'm trying to come up with a similarly poignant descriptor for fathers. As a woman, your father...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Melissa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

This is possibly the most honest review I'll ever write. I read O'Rouke’s book as part of the TLC Book Tour and if I hadn’t had an actual deadline to read and review the book by, I’m not sure I would have made it all the way through it.

It was incredibly hard for me to finish this book, but that’s not because it wasn’t excellent, it’s because it hit too close to home. I saw too much of myself in the circumstances of Meghan's mother's death. My own mom was diagnosed with cancer, then after months...more This is possibly the most honest review I'll ever write. I read O'Rouke’s book as part of the TLC Book Tour and if I hadn’t had an actual deadline to read and review the book by, I’m not sure I would have made it all the way through it.

It was incredibly hard for me to finish this book, but that’s not because it wasn’t excellent, it’s because it hit too close to home. I saw too much of myself in the circumstances of Meghan's mother's death. My own mom was diagnosed with cancer, then after months of chemo she was declared in remission. A few months after that she relapsed and the cancer killed her after a two-year battle. She was exactly ten years younger than Meghan's mom. I read The Long Goodbye sobbing through many of its pages. As most people who know me well could attest, I don’t cry easily or often. When my own mom died, most of my weeping was done in the middle of the night when no one was around, so when I say I couldn't stop crying while reading this, that's no small thing.

O'Rouke's memoir is so painfully honest. She writes of arguments with her mom, trying to escape the situation and pretend like it wasn't happening, fights with her siblings or Dad, she doesn't hold back on the all-encompassing pain that death causes. It's amazing how far away you can feel from you own family when experiencing a loss like this. Even though you are all losing the same person, you experience that loss in such different ways that it's hard to connect with them.

Then there are the dreams. After losing your mother, this person who has literally brought you into the world, you can't stop dreaming about them. Those dreams, so real that you wake and have to remember their death all over again, haven't stopped for me after 13 years. I still see her, so close to me, and then wake to have to process the loss all over again.

Of course Meghan wasn't perfect while dealing with doctors and people in her own life, but none of us are. We see death closing in and we panic. We decide we can fight it if we just know enough about the disease. Then when that doesn't work we pray, then we argue, then we hope, then, finally, we understand that we can't control it and we grieve.

O’Rouke’s memoir is intensely personal and looks at her own relationships and reactions to the death, but it also deals with broader issues. She discusses American’s lack of traditions and rituals in grieving. We don’t wear black for months anymore or wail with anguish or tear our clothes. Grieving has become the final taboo. You’re supposed to act like everything is ok, when you feel the opposite. No one wants to hear about your grief, especially if it has been a couple months.

I can’t explain quite how much her memoir meant to me. It was like reading my own grief. She put words to so many of my feelings and I completely agree with both her and Iris Murdoch, who once said, “The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.” To me, this book was one bereaved woman speaking to another.

“When we are learning the world, we know things we cannot say how we know. When we are relearning the world in the aftermath of loss, we feel things we had almost forgotten, old things, beneath the seat of reason.”(less)

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Aug 23, 2011 Rhonda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

I probably shouldn't have read this book just yet, but it caught my eye and I was interested in how this daughter dealt with the loss of her mother to cancer. She chronicled parts of their lives together, her mother's illness, and her adjustment following her passing. Poignant.

I want to preserve many of the passages from this book, thus the following:

Favorite Quotes:

"Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your en...more

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May 24, 2011 Amanda added it

Definitely a tough memoir to read. I read O'Rourke's series that this book was started from on Slate and felt called to read the book. O'Rourke's mother passed after about a 2-year battle with cancer and the memoir covers the year before her death, the moments of her death, and the year (and then some) after. She spent a lot of time reading about death after her mother passed so in the book she was able to approach her grief from the religious, non-religious, spiritual and psychological perspect...more

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May 14, 2011 Lara rated it 4 of 5 stars

So, I was sitting in Time Out For Women on Friday night listening to Amanda Dickson talk about friendship. For a moment, she was talking about her late mother and how much she missed her and then she said something about meeting people and being able to tell that they were members of The Club. The Club of those who have lost their mothers. The Club of those who understand what it is like to lose a mother.

I kind of gasped when she said that. Partly because I have never once contemplated what it m...more So, I was sitting in Time Out For Women on Friday night listening to Amanda Dickson talk about friendship. For a moment, she was talking about her late mother and how much she missed her and then she said something about meeting people and being able to tell that they were members of The Club. The Club of those who have lost their mothers. The Club of those who understand what it is like to lose a mother.

I kind of gasped when she said that. Partly because I have never once contemplated what it might feel like if my own mother were to pass away and partly because I had just read an almost identical sentence also referring to The Club in the book I am reviewing today: The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke.

Now, I must admit that I had a difficult time finishing this book. Not because it wasn't good (it was brilliantly written). Not because I couldn't get into it (perhaps I got a little too into it). And not even because I didn't like it (I liked it quite a lot, as I always enjoy a good memoir). It was because I wasn't in the mood to live in somebody's grief--a grief I have admittedly never felt--so completely.

I think the first part of the book--the part that leads up to Meghan's mother's death--is slightly easier. Meghan skillfully (and beautifully--she is poetic with words) shows us the person she was before her mother was diagnosed with cancer. But that person begins to unravel as her mother goes through treatment after treatment, as Meghan's marriage falls apart, as her mother finally enters hospice and succumbs to the cancer, and it is the last half of the book where we learn who Meghan is today and the journey she took to get there. The journey that began with losing her mother.

My favorite quote from the book is one that took my breath away a little bit. Because, although I cannot relate to losing my own mother, I could see within this one paragraph what that would mean. She really hit it right on the nose, didn't she?

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.

Unimaginable.

While this book may be hard to read, Meghan has also done much research on death and grief, and it is very instructive--both to someone in the throes of grief and to someone who has never had to deal with a grief that comes with the loss of a parent.

I highly recommend it. (less)

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Apr 14, 2011 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

First of all, you should know that Meghan O'Rourke writes like an angel.

I am a fan of the memoir, and of course I have read those two iconic journals of loss and grief, C. S. Lewis's "A Grief Observed" and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." Meghan O'Rourke's memoir of her mother's death is equally powerful, yet it is neither Lewis's raw howl of grief nor Didion's tearless restraint. Rather, it is a skilled surgeon's exploratory surgery on her own wounded heart. O"Rourke's eyes may be...more First of all, you should know that Meghan O'Rourke writes like an angel.

I am a fan of the memoir, and of course I have read those two iconic journals of loss and grief, C. S. Lewis's "A Grief Observed" and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking." Meghan O'Rourke's memoir of her mother's death is equally powerful, yet it is neither Lewis's raw howl of grief nor Didion's tearless restraint. Rather, it is a skilled surgeon's exploratory surgery on her own wounded heart. O"Rourke's eyes may be filled with tears, but her vision is crystal clear, and her craftsman's hand never wavers. This is a brilliant book.

The Long Goodbye is written in roughly chronological order - her mother's illness, her death, Meghan's long sorrow - but O'Rourke weaves dream-like memories and nightmarish dreams into the narrative with great skill, each memory/dream evoking an emotion so enormously, powerfully present that I swear I spent half of the book shaking tears from my eyes so that I could continue reading. She has a painterly way, too, of juxtaposing bright moments with dark ones in ways that heighten both the light and the darkness. I was impressed with the sheer honesty of the memoir: O'Rourke is unsparing of her own sometimes irrational behavior, recounting without shame or excuses her own ravenous efforts to continue to milk parenting from her parents, even as her mother was dying, even as her father was consumed by his own grief. If Meghan O'Rourke suffered from our culture's inability to confront grief and raw emotion, she herself has made an enormous contribution to that culture by writing this aching, naked memoir.

I suppose I should not be quoting from an ARC, but I'm afraid the temptation to offer samples of O'Rourke's lucent prose is irresistible. Here she is, speaking of a mother's symbolic significance to a daughter: "A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable." Or this, of the year following her mother's death: " If children learn through exposure to new experiences, mourners un-learn through exposure to absence in new contexts. Grief requires reacquainting yourself with the world again and again; each "first" causes a break that must be reset....And so you always feel suspense, a queer dread - you never know what occasion will break the loss freshly open. Whole days were intensely inflected by reliving the past, re-contextualizing it, so that when those memories resurfaced a second time, they were coated with a veneer that distances them. I knew, already, that the next time I smelled the ocean, I would not be gutted like this."

Thank to LT's Early Reviewer's Program for my copy of this book!(less)

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Apr 11, 2011 Seaside Book Nook rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have never made margin notes or highlighted sentences since I was in college and certainly never did this to one of my "pleasure" books. I couldn't help it though, I was underlining certain sentences, making my own notes in the margin since this book was so relate able me. There were so many similarities between Meghan's memoir and my own experience that I felt she was writing the book for me. This book took me through a journey I never wanted to go through again; however, this time through t...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

At a time when our culture is open to just about everything, there is one taboo – the grief experienced upon losing a loved one. Or, as the author herself puts it, “If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

It is one of those exquisitely personal transactions that lead me to this courageous and empathetic memoir. As I lose my own aging mother, little by little, I have entered a pre-mourning period that is often challenging for myself to navigate and...more At a time when our culture is open to just about everything, there is one taboo – the grief experienced upon losing a loved one. Or, as the author herself puts it, “If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

It is one of those exquisitely personal transactions that lead me to this courageous and empathetic memoir. As I lose my own aging mother, little by little, I have entered a pre-mourning period that is often challenging for myself to navigate and others to understand.

And so I gravitated towards this courageous memoir from a woman who has steered her way those grounds and provides a sort of blueprint of what it’s like to feel unmoored. Meghan O’Rourke’s mother Barbara died in her early fifties; as she lay dying of cancer, Meghan became “irrevocably aware that the Person Who Loved Me Most in the World was about to be dead.”

Without the rituals of long ago to guide her, with a strong fear of death that encompassed her since childhood, she “just wanted to flee the pain that lay like a fog in the house; getting away would be like turning a blank page, to a new story, a different one.” The loss is so huge that she “needed to contain it somehow, to put barriers around its chaos.” But like a child who has become separated from mommy, she is in disbelief that “a person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back.”

She knows logically that her mother is no longer with her and that it’s up to her and her two brothers to carry her forward in the year. Yet she remains “clueless about the rules of shelter and solace in this new world of exile.” As C.S. Lewis wrote at the beginning of A Grief Observed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

What is astounding about this memoir – what elevates it above many other so-called “grief books” – is that Meghan O’Rourke is able to take the personal and lifts it into the universal. The pain that any grieving or soon-to-be-grieving person feels – “Am I really she who has woken up again without a mother?” – or a father, or a husband or wife can understand Meghan’s emotions, her monumental agony. It’s a sorority or fraternity that only those who have experienced it are given entry.

With both candor and lyricism and an unswerving eye to preserving her truth, the author explores the fifteen months following her mother’s death. She quotes scientific research as effortlessly as she quotes poets and writers who have confronted the grieving process. And at the end, when she resorts to a primal whisper – “Come on, Mom, say another night, stay the night—Stay the night,” she gives voice to all those who struggle with the implausibility of knowing that those they love cannot live forever. It’s a masterful work.

(less)

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Oct 04, 2011 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-autobiography, medical, non-fiction, health-wellness-healing

I appreciated that this book reinforced for me that the grieving process is individual and unique to each person and that we must stop comparing how deaths of loved ones affect us. (Such as - "losing a parent can't compare to losing a spouse or a child," etc). I liked the author's examples of definitions of grief and philosophers' and psychologists' opinions of grief. I also liked the author's history lesson of the evolution of grief (particularly in Western society) And I wholeheartedly agree w...more

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May 13, 2011 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

The author of this book is a poet, and it is quite evident in her prose. She has a terrific way with words. And I have to say, it’s nice to read a memoir about someone’s mother where said mother doesn’t end up looking like a total cretin by the end of it. Rarely is there a book praising a mom!

That said, I just never got "into" this book. I guess that’s the problem with a story about someone else’s grief. It’d be like a stranger coming up to you in Starbucks and saying “my mom died” and proceedin...more The author of this book is a poet, and it is quite evident in her prose. She has a terrific way with words. And I have to say, it’s nice to read a memoir about someone’s mother where said mother doesn’t end up looking like a total cretin by the end of it. Rarely is there a book praising a mom!

That said, I just never got "into" this book. I guess that’s the problem with a story about someone else’s grief. It’d be like a stranger coming up to you in Starbucks and saying “my mom died” and proceeding to talk to you about it for several hours. At a certain point you’d be like, that’s really sad, and your mom seemed like a great person, but I really need to move onto other things. Perhaps it would’ve resonated more with me if I had lost a parent or a child or a spouse. In addition to the author’s own story there are lots of factoids/referenced studies/etc. dealing with the topic. I think it would likely be a great read for someone fresh in his/her grief. That it was not relatable probably means I am very lucky. Despite not feeling emotionally involved, there were a few times I teared up, namely when she watches her father watching her mom and the Christmas carol that makes HER tear up. That was very poignant. (And frankly that carol gets to me, too).

One thing that I found interesting was that throughout the early part of the book I was thinking, geez, lady, pull it together. Not in a “get over it” sense because of course everyone grieves differently and you can’t “get over” the loss of a loved one. It was more of a “you still have to live in this world, so friggin’ pick yourself up off the floor and fake it because other people are counting on you.” Especially the parts where she doesn’t shower for 12 days and basically lets her very new marriage unravel without doing anything about it. I kept thinking, the people I know who have experienced a huge loss handled it much better! Then, a friend says to her she’s handling the loss with such grace. That was a bit of a head spinner because maybe all the people I know who seemed so together were actually reacting in much the same way, they just never spilled it into the pages of a book. So maybe instead of being slightly pathetic the author was actually brave. This revelation elevated the book from 2 to 3 stars for me. I am sure someone who’s had to survive the loss of a close relative would rate it much higher.(less)

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Jul 17, 2012 Rick (The Book-A-Week Project) added it · review of another edition

"I'd always thought of Hamlet's melancholy as existential ... But now it strikes me that he is moody and irascible in no small part because he is grieving: his father has just died. He is radically dislocated, stumbling through the days while the rest of the world acts as if nothing has changed.

For the trouble is not just that Hamlet is sad; it is that everyone around him is unnerved by his grief. When Hamlet comes on stage, his uncle greets him with the worst question you can ask a grieving per...more

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May 15, 2011 Maggie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: early-reviewer-s-edition, non-fiction

Except for the loss of a child, I don’t believe there is any greater loss to a woman than the loss of her mother. The bonds created between women, even relationships with a host of complexities, are close and immutable. In The Long Goodbye Meghan O’Rourke gives us a beautifully written, honest, and sometimes heart wrenching view of the last months of her mother’s life and her own long and difficult grieving process.

Having lost my own mother to cancer many years ago, I recognized many of the thi...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Jovanna rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't know how to begin to write what this memoir meant to me. It was so highly personally relevant for me too, since I lost my Dad of cancer at 16, a much younger age than Meghan...

As often said in the book, grief is probably the most universal phenomenon yet highly subjective for each individual. In this book, Meghan takes us through the painful and highly transformative experience of her mother's disease and death, and also the most important part of the grieving process: the aftermath of d...more

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Oct 08, 2011 Denise rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read O'Rourke's book after having heard a few radio interviews with her when it first came out-- and after having read a piece she did for the New Yorker (which could have been an excerpt or an essay based on her subject; I don't remember). The book is a memoir of her grieving process after the death of her mother,from cancer. So, obviously I wasn't looking for a lighthearted read! But I was a bit disappointed. She has some flashes of really gorgeous, evocative writing, and certainly being fre...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well, this will probably be a long post, so beware. But there were so many things in this book that rang true to me. It was very hard to read, and at times I had to put it down to have a good cry. I wanted to write down several of the things that meant something to me so that I can look back and remember. These are things that I truly feel:
"To this day, I pace the floor feeling off-kilter, thinking, I need something; What is it? And I realize: My Mother." How true this really is to me.
"I am hi...more

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Apr 22, 2011 Andrea Guy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads, memoir, tlcblogtours

It is difficult not to be moved by Meghan O'Rourke's memoir, especially if you have felt the loss of a loved one. She writes eloquently of her feelings and struggles first with her mother's cancer and then her grief at her death.

She spent a lot of time researching grief to write this. She uses quotes from the many books she read about the subject after her mother's passing. Much of what she went through reminded me of my feelings after my grandmother passed away on April 26, 2008. That is a date...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Meghan O'Rourke, who has been published mostly as poet, penned a memoir of her mother's death and her own grieving process that is simply remarkable. She has managed to take one of the most personal and painful moments in any one's life and turn into a wonderfully-written examination of life, death, and all that comes with it.

O'Rourke's mother died of colorectal cancer at age 55 on Christmas Day in 2008. It was not easy on O'Rourke or the rest of her family. But, was the pain she felt different...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: w2011-text

Few would disagree that this book is beautifully written and observed. So many readers suggest that the book is so sad, and somehow I didn't feel that, or I didn't dwell on it as I was reading it. Maybe I was deep in "identify with and compare" mode, I'm not sure.

But I really liked how she structured the book, the balance between the experience of her family and her own experience, and also the balance between exterior sources and experiences and interior analysis. And all of that tempered with...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Eva Leger rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: autos-bios-memoirs, b-non-fiction

I was lucky enough to notice this on the new arrival shelf in my library. Lucky is exactly how I feel after reading it.
My parents are both still alive and have lived relatively healthy lives. Yet their prospective deaths have long been very terrifying for me. I can't imagine too many people look upon their parents dying or even just the fact that their parents will die with anything less than terror but I think I've gone past the "regular" terror.
My family has long loved telling stories about ho...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ms. O'Rourke's experience losing her mother was very similar to my own. I was 32, my mother was 57, it was Christmas time, My mother also had cancer, I'm an atheist, my mother was cremated and we scattered her ashes, etc. There were many passages I could have written myself. I kept reading them aloud to my husband, who lost his own mother less than a year ago. Even though it's now been nearly 10 years since my mother died, I'm still aware of her absence every day. It was comforting just to know...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Jenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you have lost your mom as an adult to cancer you can probably relate to this book. My mom passed away 12 years ago to pancreatic cancer. She fought it for just over 2 years which is a relatively long time for the type of cancer she had. It was a rough two years for all involved. I was fortunate enough to live next door and be close to her the entire time. Many people find a book like this sad and hard to read but I find it a source of comfort as I learn that many of my feelings were also felt...more If you have lost your mom as an adult to cancer you can probably relate to this book. My mom passed away 12 years ago to pancreatic cancer. She fought it for just over 2 years which is a relatively long time for the type of cancer she had. It was a rough two years for all involved. I was fortunate enough to live next door and be close to her the entire time. Many people find a book like this sad and hard to read but I find it a source of comfort as I learn that many of my feelings were also felt by someone else who when through a similar event. Sure, I shed some tears as I read and re-lived my mom's illness and death but I also find joy in remembering my mom in any way possible. People move on after soo long, as they should, but a daughter NEVER, NEVER stops missing her mom. Some of my favorite quotes:

"I was irrevocably aware that the Person Who Loved Me Most in the World was about to be dead. Of course, I had my father, too, but fathers love in different ways than mothers do."

"Other people - friends, colleagues - got used to my mother dying of cancer. But I did not. Each day, sunlight came like a knife to a wound that was not healed."

"It is a heartsickness, like the sadness you feel after a breakup, but many times stronger and more desperate. I miss her; I want to talk to her, hear her voice, have a joke with her. I am willing for us to be "broken up" if she'll just have dinner with me once. And as I was walking I thought: I WILL CARRY THIS WOUND FOREVER. It's not a question of getting over it or healing. NO; it's a question of learning to live with this transformation."

".....that while my grief has lessened, my sense of being motherless has intensified. I hadn't anticipated this. The first grips of grief were so terrible that I couldn't wait to get beyond them, to a state I hoped might be "better". But as each new day arrives I find myself, though suffering less acutely, feeling MORE unmothered." "Even at my age, I still have so many questions, about children, about cooking, about what my mother thought of her life's work."

I really enjoyed reading this book. I find it therapeutic to revisit my journey with my mom as she battled pancreatic cancer and I never want to forget it. Thank you, Meghan O'Rourke, for sharing your journey with your mom.

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Feb 21, 2013 Reid rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Long Goodbye is a book that many of us could have written. There is nothing extraordinary or spectacular about the death of Meghan O'Rourke's mother, and it is this reason that this all-too-common narrative is a recommended read for those who are a part of the "club." O'Rourke's writing allows us to put our own story up against her's in order to take varying amounts of comfort in the parallels. When her experience lines up with our own, her words can turn our thoughts into something more com...more

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Apr 15, 2011 Yelda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, grief

I was pulled into Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye, a memoir on the loss of her mother, because I myself had recently endured the loss of my own baby daughter. You cannot compare one loss to another, but the grief that ensues is universal and relatable. Frankly, I had a hard time reading any books on grief because it made my loss all the more real.

But the plunge into O’Rourke’s memoir was effortless. Following her voice, intelligent and real, while hopeful and optimistic, I became enveloped...more I was pulled into Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye, a memoir on the loss of her mother, because I myself had recently endured the loss of my own baby daughter. You cannot compare one loss to another, but the grief that ensues is universal and relatable. Frankly, I had a hard time reading any books on grief because it made my loss all the more real.

But the plunge into O’Rourke’s memoir was effortless. Following her voice, intelligent and real, while hopeful and optimistic, I became enveloped not only in her story, but into her poetic world, where events, emotions and yearnings are transferred into stunning prose. Though O’Rourke is a poet, and her poetic voice gleams through every page, she is also down-to-earth and approachable. In fact, she speaks so intimately, and with such sincerity, that after reading her memoir, I felt I had met every single one of her family members and become a trusted friend.

Her story begins with the death of her mother to colorectal cancer and her immediate reaction to this shocking reality. She is processing the event, flashbacking to her mother’s healthier days and when she learns of the cancer for the first time. The narrative then climaxes to the moment when her mother is admitted to the hospital, where it is discovered that her cancer has returned after a brief remission. O’Rourke’s portrayal of her mother is pitch perfect and so tangible, that I could feel how her mother moved, almost predicting her expressions and reactions. Barbara O’Rourke was a gifted woman, the headmaster of a private school, a mother of three children, a devoted wife, caretaker, lover of pets, with a passion for books, which she passed on to her children.

Together with chronicling the illness of her mother in the first part of her memoir, the author also recounts her marriage and subsequent divorce. This double loss is palpable. In the second and third parts she shares her journey in processing it all, consulting books, turning to poems, anything to make sense of this loss, which she likens to an amputation—the days get better but you always feel the loss. So true. Also compelling is her discussion of present day society’s handling of grief, how it has become a private, lonely, silent passage unlike the rituals of the past. O’Rourke is not religious, but she admits to an “intuition of God,” an attraction to spirituality, and concedes near the end of her book that she did feel the interconnectedness of things, that there was something out there, as Tolstoy said in his own memoir.

I’ve read memoirs on a loss of a spouse, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and the loss of a child, Ann Hood’s Comfort, but I had yet to read of a loss of a parent. As the author says, what can be a greater bond than a mother to a child, as one comes out of another? The person who loved me most in the world was about to be dead, she says. How to cope with such a loss? As logical and empirical as O’Rourke can be, she succumbs to the notion that perhaps the dead never really leave us. They are still around; they are with us more than ever before; we just have to adjust to this new reality.

There are times that the narrative meanders, and breaks off into little vignettes of memories of her mother, or unconnected instances of time, like watching an injured hawk writhe in pain on the street one moment, and almost miraculously fly up the next. Parts are slow to start, others humming beautifully along; I feel I am in and out of the story. Sometimes O’Rourke is angry and not particularly likeable, sometimes sympathetic and grateful. But almost uncannily, this pattern mimics grief, which is not always so clean-cut—yes, sometimes it’s even messy. But it’s the truth. What more can we expect from a writer?

“One day as the winter gave way to spring,” O’Rourke writes, “I woke up, startled, to realize that I wanted to feel pleasure—that I missed reveling in the world.”
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Mar 07, 2011 Natalie marked it as to-read

Shelves: memoir

I read Meghan O'Rourke's Story's End today.

It is a poignant 3 page memoir of coming to terms with her mother's death. It contains one of the most sincere descriptions of a daughter's understanding of her mother that I've ever read: A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her.. What a wonderful turn of phrase to use to describe the ineffable way that knowing our mother's beginnings (her time before us) slips a way as soon as we think we might be pinning it down!

I will be loo...more

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Jun 08, 2011 Diana rated it 4 of 5 stars

My mother, who had cancer, sent me this memoir about a woman grieving her mother's death from cancer.

It's an intense read, particularly if you've ever lost one of your dearest loved ones or walked that frightening tightrope between "I have a mother" and "I had a mother." If you haven't experienced something similar, you might find the book tedious at times, only because in every situation after her mother's death, the author is struck anew by her mother's absence; there is a lot of "My mom isn't...more My mother, who had cancer, sent me this memoir about a woman grieving her mother's death from cancer.

It's an intense read, particularly if you've ever lost one of your dearest loved ones or walked that frightening tightrope between "I have a mother" and "I had a mother." If you haven't experienced something similar, you might find the book tedious at times, only because in every situation after her mother's death, the author is struck anew by her mother's absence; there is a lot of "My mom isn't here to experience this" and "She'll never again be able to help me with that." But that's exactly how grief is. You can't shut it off. You can't tone it down. You can't avoid being confronted constantly with examples of how incredibly wrong your normal little life feels without that person.

And the truth is, no matter how hard it is to put yourself in the mourner's shoes if you are fortunate enough not to be/have been in mourning yourself, you will almost certainly experience grief in very similar ways one day. And when you do, you will appreciate a book like this. I say this because one goodreads reviewer likened the book to having a stranger approach you and babble on for three hours about her mother's death -- you feel bad for the person but you mostly feel impatient and can't empathize. I actually think most people will have a much more compassionate reaction to this book, whether or not they've experienced grief. The writing is honest and personal, but it doesn't feel self-indulgent or like it's desperate for pity. She's a normal person trying to come to terms with something she's lived her whole life assuming would happen -- her mother's death precedes her own. Knowing that it's inevitable doesn't actually make it any easier when it finally happens.

She mentions friends saying things like, "At least she was sick for a long time, so you were able to be with her and say your goodbyes, etc," and her reaction is, "As opposed to what? The time my mom died instantly of a heart attack?" I used to think about that question -- which would be worse: having your loved ones die instantly and shockingly or having them die slowly of a drawn-out illness? Which would be worse for you, the mourner? And O'Rourke's answer seems to be...whichever one happens will be the worst thing, the hardest thing you have to deal with; as well-meaning as her friends are, pointing out how "lucky" she is to be mourning a certain type of death is supremely unhelpful. You only get one mom; she only dies once. That death will be the worst death of a mother you ever experience.

My 6th-grade math teacher's husband died of cancer, and she told our class that witnessing his long, slow decline was undoubtedly much more difficult than grappling with instant death would have been (if he'd been hit by a bus or something). And I remember wondering about her certainty, like, would it REALLY be easier if he was just -- poof! -- gone one day, with no warning, no time to try to comprehend death's approach in advance? After reading O'Rourke's book I'm realizing that there is of course no objective answer to that question. The objective truth is that my teacher's husband died only once, and so it was the worst death. Meghan O'Rourke's mom died, and that was the worst.

And of course the other obvious point about "expected" vs "unexpected" death is that we are all expecting death, all the time, and that doesn't make it any easier. In the abstract we all know we're going to lose everyone. I guess maybe being unable to anticipate how that loss will feel is the only thing that keeps us going every day. But sometimes we need a book like this -- a brutal, emotional reminder of what's coming -- so we can take that extra minute to appreciate what we have.(less)

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May 12, 2011 Graeme Stokes marked it as to-read

Is Saying Goodbye Enough
When I look out my window, or sit on the porch I look up to the sky, and wonder was saying goodbye enough. Somewhere deep inside you are so much still buried deep within side of me. Not a day goes by when I don't look up to night skies, also and reminisce seeking out your laugher or pain. That's why I wonder was saying goodbye enough. "Brenda Barretto"
When my mother passed away in November 2010 I was given the opportunity to say goodbye and yet I felt the need was greater...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Rachael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Grief is a difficult topic to write about, but O'Rourke offers a description full of insight and honesty. We don't get many books like this; as O'Rourke states repeatedly, we gloss over death and grief as a society.

The honesty and straightforward writing is what makes this book. There was never a sense of "poor pity me" because O'Rourke's reactions and her search to put her grief into a larger context were honest and lacked any ulterior motives.

I eagerly added this book to my reading list beca...more

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About Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O’Rourke is the author The Long Goodbye: A Memoir (Riverhead Books, 2011), and the poetry collections Once (W. W. Norton, 2011) and Halflife (W. W. Norton, 2007). A former literary editor of Slate and poetry editor of The Paris Review, she has published essays and poems in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Best American Poetry, and other venues. She is the recipient of the 2008...more

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“Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.” — 45 people liked it

“Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.” — 8 people liked it

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