Brooklyn Bookbeat: On moving on: Park Sloper’s memoir about support group for widows
Park Slope writer Becky Aikman begins her new book by getting to the point: “I got kicked out of my widows’ support group,” she writes. “I would say that things had gone from bad to worse, except the worst, no question, had already happened. When your husband has died while you’re still in your forties, seriously, anything less and you have to laugh.”
Though she tackles a heartbreaking subject, in “Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives,” to be released this Tuesday, Jan. 22, Aikman manages to approach her writing through a lighthearted lens, reminding herself and her readers that self-awareness and humor can assuage even the most tragic of circumstances.
A year and a half after losing her husband to cancer, Aikman attended her first widows’ support group meeting. While she expected to find guidance in a community devoted to moving on, Aikman found just the opposite: she felt her desire to be happy set her apart from the other widows, whose grief seemed to amplify during the group meeting. When the group’s leader asked that she not return, Aikman got to thinking about how people go about dealing with loss. Five years later, remarried but still reflecting on her husband’s death, Aikman began her own widows’ support group. Once a month for a year, she met with five young widows on a Saturday night — none of whom knew each other before joining this group.