Book Reviews
Sometimes,
Memories
Are
All
We
Have
by
Shari
Edwards
Essays
of
life-
changing
experiences
and
the
healing
process
In Sometimes, Memories Are All We Have, the reader will visit the places Shari needed to go in the dark days while she searched for the light. We get a glimpse of the people who gave her love and courage to face each day. Her aunt Liddy and uncle Artie whose love story Shari can never forget. Her father, who taught her to see the beauty of a moon-calling her outside to see the quicksilver ball sitting in a black winter night. Her friend Daniel, who encouraged her the way Ted always did, and then Michael, the stranger on the train who made her look at her journey. You will get to know AJ and Cripple Crow who gave her comfort and joy. Shari will share the paranormal experience that set her free and taught her she could let go and still hold onto the precious moments of Ted. You may feel the wetness of her tears when she makes a major mistake and suffers a broken heart. Finally, you can watch as she slowly picks up the pieces and puts her life together. She understands her book as a work in progress in which God plays a major role. There is no quick fix from the pain that comes with loss. But, eventually, you will find peace.
"On December 17, 2002," writes Shari Edwards, "my husband Ted passed way, leaving me behind in a world I had not faced alone in twenty-five years. I went into the desert--into a cave." Her story is told with clarity and deep emotion in Sometimes, Memories Are All We Have. (
The book is divided into sections that chronicle a journey of bereavement. It begins in the desert, fighting "grief monsters" (her father died a year later), living "a bat-like existence" in an emotional cave. "Sometimes there are too many memories, their fingers around my throat. . . . Sometimes there would be a knock on the cave door. I would lie still, not responding. But eventually, friends and family just walked in, uninvited, holding a candle against the dark, looking for me."
Gradually Edwards emerged and started to write again. But the passage to the light led through an emotional swamp that she and her daughter had to travel together.
Though the author was raised a Catholic, Edwards writes that Ted believed in a "metaphysical" world in which "loved ones who had passed over" could be reached. The author visited a medium in Chico and became convinced that Ted was telling her to "move on." "I planted ninety tiny zinnias. . . . By summer's end I will have a ribbon of bright colors."
But then came a "wrong turn," an intense affair with someone she had known since kindergarten. She trusted, fell in love, planned for marriage, then he suddenly dropped it all. Her heart was "stomped on . . . without a conscience." Yet she survived. "With a new understanding that our time on earth is short I rush to right wrongs, to love better. . . . Now, I am more comfortable with my mortality. I do not fear it, but in this autumn of my life I do not celebrate it." She asks God for more time. "I am not finished yet." --Dan Barnett, "Biblio File," Chico Enterprise-Record
Click to hear an interview with Shari Edwards on "Nancy's Bookshelf," KCHO radio.
