Odyssey of Ashes - Cheryl Krauter

Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go by Cheryl Krauter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the review published 16 November, 2023 in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat as "Grief & Gratitude" covering the “Mystery, Magic and Meaning of Transformation” She Writes Press’ reading at Book Passage in June of 2023.

“Yet these are the cards that have been laid before me, and I know I will play the hand I’ve been dealt.” (Krauter p. 43).

      I’m glad moderator Cheryl Krauter sent me her 2021 Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go, sensitively and honestly chronicling her husband’s sudden death, her thoughts, feelings and responses then, leading up to and through her pilgrimage to a Montana fly-fishing stream where she takes his ashes, and then through her thoughts and changes as she celebrates Día de Los Muertos and contemplates how she has changed, her “myth,” self-concept and mortality.

“We leave behind all that we were once and become --- what? Air? Sky? Stars? Do our souls, the essence of our being, travel in swirling patterns of light and color in corners of the universe we cannot comprehend, only to circle back and touch others lightly in the heart?” (Krauter, p. 125). (YES! wc)     

She talks to a woman friend’s picture on the Muertos altar, asking forgiveness for “not understanding the devastating grief of losing (her husband) Joe…I wish she were here with me. We’d agree that the loss of a partner does not get easier… Like a river meandering along its path, sparkling in the sunlight, beneath the surface, the water is always made of tears.” (Krauter, p. 134). When she finds $560 in cash in “the mess of John’s office,” she hears “him saying to me, “Don’t pay bills with this. Take it for yourself; do something frivolous.” It’s one of those bittersweet moments then I feel how he lives in me.”

The dead inhabit our consciousness, giving us “messages from the grave.” "All we need to do is suspend the rational mind and they’re right there, where they’ve been all along.” 

I felt like I was automatically on a first-name basis with all these women after hearing them and reading their books.

I hear Larry say “I’m excited,” in that odd, deadpan way he had. I feel better. Not “so sad.” Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you… <3 br="">

https://www.cherylkrauter.com/

https://shewritespress.com/product/odyssey-of-ashes/


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