My Book Launch on the Day of My Mother's Funeral

I had such a wonderful time at my ‘soft’ book launch two weeks ago (actual launch date is June 21). People from all walks of my life were there—family, friends from high school and college, from writing workshops and work. So much fun. However, the road to this launch was pretty crazy. I wrote an essay about that path. And while, after writing the essay, I decided on cupcakes with little book decorations on them (easier to serve and eat than a cake), this is a true story.My Book Launch on the Day of My Mother's FuneralorLet Us Eat CakeMy collection of feminist short fiction was scheduled to launch on the Ides of March 2021. Inauspicious, perhaps, but I wasn’t superstitious—nor was I Julius Caesar. I was an emerging author, happiness humming within.Story collections are a hard sell for an unknown writer, so I was grateful when the micro press Los Nietos selected mine for publication. Many of the stories had landed in literary journals, but gathered as a book, they signaled my transition from writer to author. I’d throw a kick-off party, ordering a cake with the image of the book cover. Among loved ones, I’d realize my dream.What I didn’t anticipate was that just as the manuscript was accepted, the COVID-19 pandemic set in. At the same time, my father began his death journey. My mother, more than a decade into dementia, was also approaching her end. My two sisters and I had been providing care daily. Now we were blocked at the check-in to their assisted living apartments.By registering as self-employed caretakers, we dodged a then common reality: parents dying alone in nursing homes, visitors barred. We took turns being trapped inside with them.My dad, mostly deaf, blasted TV conspiracy theorist Lou Dobbs at top volume for hours. Dobbs’ screeds about the party of hate, which included me, were painful. Dejected over being called a terrible person all day while attending to my parents’ needs, I felt I’d been dropped into an unnamed circle of hell. Pandemic rules didn’t permit me to hang out in the building’s hallways. I used earplugs to drown out the noxious noise and focused on my publisher’s editing suggestions. We discussed the cover design by email. Chaperoning my parents’ dance with death, I was also bringing my dream to life.I briefly entertained the idea of sharing my publication news with my parents. They would be gone before the book arrived, so it was a now-or-never thing. Yet, who was I to my mother now? When a home care nurse asked, my mother guessed, eventually landed on ‘my daughter,’ and was rewarded with our glee. Her victory was short lived. She was then asked my name.No matter. Even if her mind had been sound, she wouldn’t have liked the dark humor of my work, which poked at her sacred cows, including the Catholic Church and pre-marital sexual purity. I hadn’t written it for her.Instead, as she had no short-term memory, I surprised her twice a day, delivering what she wanted—my special recipe chocolate, toffee, and pecan cookies.My father disdained fiction (except, it seemed, on TV). Besides, he had started to hallucinate. He’d point out an imagined dog in the living room and greet dead family members. “Florence?” he’d ask the corner of the room. Our journeys separating, I kept mine to myself.While there was no physical escape, I envisioned the end of the pandemic. An edited copy of my stories, sent for my approval, allowed me to imagine communal celebration.When my father died in April 2020, I briefly sat with his body to say goodbye, recalling, as one does at a death, his better self and his joy in his grandchildren. The following morning, my mother began asking, on a loop, where he had gone.The frenzy of COVID deaths created a cremation backlog at the local mortuary as well as a burial waiting list at the cemetery. In August, masked and limited in number, we interred our father’s ashes. Our Mom continued questioning his whereabouts.As the months of caring for my mother in isolation dragged on, my publisher and I both approved of the new title, the cover, and the final draft of Acts of Contrition. It was a real book, fully formed.When my mother died in December 2020, the pandemic still raged. The earliest openings in the cemetery were for the following March. Only March 15—my book launch date—would work for one of her grandkids, who had to travel.A box of books arrived from the publisher. I’d seen many small press authors make a show of opening their advanced copies and, much like ordering the book-cover bedecked cake, thought it celebratory. I fetched my son to record me ripping away the packing tape. I would post the video on social media.When I came back to the box, it was open, a box cutter alongside. My husband, who sat at the kitchen counter, said, “Your books look great!”I could have resealed the box, but the fakery didn’t suit me. I let go of the fantasy.Weeks before my mother’s funeral, my husband’s younger sister was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She died—suddenly, unexpectedly—on March 5.Though California was in the throes of an extreme drought, in San Diego on March 15, it poured. Masked, we gathered for the funeral under an outdoor pavilion while blasting wind drove the rain under the roof. The benches held pools of water. We stood, soaking and freezing, through the prayers and eulogy, warmed only by the thought of our mother looking down and chuckling at the mad spectacle. Our aunt later reminded us of the Irish proverb, “Blessed is the corpse that rains falls upon.”After our mother had been blessed in abundance, my siblings offered condolences on the death of my sister-in-law. As if it had been specially ordered for Mom, the rain stopped when we left for lunch. We were still in the outdoor-seating-only phase of the pandemic. With winter jackets on, we were ushered into a large plastic tent, the only people at the restaurant. As we toasted Mom, I snapped a photo, the only thing I would share that day. Between my mom’s funeral and my sister-in-law’s death, who was I to be celebrating the birth of my book? Instead, I worked to reconcile myself to a number of losses.Back in 2020, a few months before my father died, I’d had to euthanize my fifteen-year-old Labrador retriever. She followed my sixteen-year-old wolfish rescue dog in crossing the rainbow bridge. Because I was often away taking care of my parents, I intended to live for a few years without dogs. The daily desolation proved too much. I wanted to break through the miasma of grief surrounding me. Though rescue puppies were hard to come by, in the period between my parents’ deaths, my husband and I found a chestnut-colored hound mix 120 miles from our home. As we chatted with the rescue employees, they mentioned that the people who’d intended to adopt Clove’s sister came over 200 miles the day before, but didn’t feel a connection with her. Since we’d had two dogs for many years, we took her home as well.I later wrote a chapbook about the experience, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans. When it launched in February 2023, the world was still on fire and wasn’t going to change soon. Celebrating a 70-page experiment felt self-indulgent. And yet its purpose was to help others move on from grief to embrace both memories and new experiences. I needed to take my own advice. Enough time had passed that I could.I wrote a hopeful novel with the kind of escape I dreamed of when locked down with my parents.In June 2025, my book about a girl working to escape a patriarchal cult will launch. It has a happy-tears ending. The characters celebrate their freedom with two rituals—one traditional and one made up on the spot.I’ve had time to reflect on how national events entwined with my grief to launch the unexpected journey I’m on. I learned from my novel’s characters that recognizing milestones with ritual engenders emotional and psychological health. I’ll continue to write work that addresses real life. But I’m also looking forward to having my cake at the novel’s launch, frosted with the image of a stunning book cover.Keep Sweet is a book that bucked some trends (“Your protagonist needs a boyfriend,” one agent told me.) Here’s a related article that writers might find helpful: Trust Your Instincts: Why Writing for Yourself Leads to Better Books from Jane Friedman.Summer ReadingI’ve seen a lot of talk about the AI-hallucinated summer reading list of nonexistent books published by the Chicago Sun-Times, mostly discussing the downside of using AI and admonishing the writer who generated the list. You’ve likely seen this, too. But I am interested in this idea: Media—both legacy media like the Sun-Times and others—don’t pay writers enough money to do the work they are asking for. If we want humans to create, we need them to be paid fairly.Here’s a post by Abra McAndrew that hits that note quite nicely:And here’s Ron Charles in the WaPo Book Club newsletter, whose post is really making a plea for teaching critical thinking:But those imaginary titles — and other whoppers — appeared last week on a summer reading list generated by AI and blithely published by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer (cringe).Many Statements of Concern were issued, but the literati haven’t had this much fun since the White House announced that Trump was going to Israel to “promote the possibility of lasting peach.” And honestly, given the ocean of errors, lies and inanities we’re paddling in, a summer reading list of fake books feels no worse than stage-9 cancer.As to how this all fits into a plea for critical thinking:AI’s ever-evolving facility with language integrated with massive stores of our personal data will soon enable a few powerful tech companies to manipulate, persuade and inspire us in ways no dictator has ever dreamed.We have one tool with which to resist that grim possibility: our capacity for critical thinking. And yet the ways we teach critical thinking are melting away faster than the North Pole.What’s on your summer reading list? Do you have any suggestions for me or others? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com