Deanna Bennett’s memoir of the first year after her husband’s death. A tribute and a review.
The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas. The first anniversary with nobody to celebrate it with. Anyone who has lost a spouse knows the calendar turns into a minefield, and every holiday is a first that nobody wanted. Deanna Bennett lost her husband Tom in 2018, and she wrote her way through that year.
The Year of Firsts is the result. Deanna founded and ran the East Lake Writers’ Workshop in Palm Harbor, where I sat at her table for years, and she was a writer to the end. When her own life split in two, she did what writers do. She put it on the page.
What is The Year of Firsts about?
It’s a memoir of the emotional road through the first year after her husband’s death. As the milestone holidays pass one by one, the book traces a woman facing what Deanna called the great alone: the depths of sorrow, the return of happy memories from a long marriage, and the slow work of building a new life without him.
She didn’t only write about the big feelings. The book deals with philosophical questions, and it also deals with the mundane tasks of daily life that are suddenly different when you’re doing them alone. Anyone who’s been widowed knows those small things ambush you worse than the funeral did.
Her own description asks the question at the heart of it. What is normal after a spouse is suddenly ripped from your life? Her answer: there is no normal. There’s only what’s right for you.
In memory
Remembering Deanna Bennett: the founder of the East Lake Writers’ Workshop, the woman at the head of the table, and the writer behind the Anna books.
Why does a grief memoir like The Year of Firsts help other people?
Because grief is lonely, and a book is company. My wife Claudia died in 2005, after twelve and a half years of marriage, so I know something about that first year. People around you mean well and say the wrong things. A book written by somebody who went through it, holiday by holiday, doesn’t say the wrong things. It tells you what happened to them and lets you recognize yourself.
Deanna wrote it hoping it would give solace to people going through the same thing. That’s the best reason there is to write a grief memoir, and she earned the right to write this one the hardest way possible.
Keep reading
Can a ghostwriter help me write about losing my spouse or child?: how grief memoirs get written, and why the people who write them are the most motivated clients I have.
Who should read The Year of Firsts?
Anyone in the first year after losing a husband or wife, and anyone trying to understand a parent or friend who’s in it. Readers of Deanna’s Anna Immigration Trilogy will meet the woman behind those books in a much more personal way here. The Year of Firsts is available on Amazon.
Tom was part of Deanna’s life for a long time. The author bios on her Anna books mention him right there beside her in Palm Harbor. Then came a year of firsts, and she wrote every one of them down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Other Books From – Biography and Memoir
