Grieving through the written word: 2 N.B. authors reveal hardships, achievements in recent books

Grief is different for everyone. Fredericton's Fawn Parker and Saint John's Nancy Cusack both published books this year related to the death of their mothers.

In Parker's case, she usedher grief after her mother's death to craft a novel inspired by true events.

"Nine a.m. When I arrived at the farmhouse, it had already happened. My mother was killed intravenously at seven in the morning by a team of two nurses and a doctor," Parker said, reading aloud from Chapter 2 of her latest book, Hi, It's Me,on Information Morning Fredericton

"Now at nine o'clock, the remaining four women tidy the house, sip coffee, spot a bird or some other movement out the windows every so often. Each act of normalcy seems a slight against my mother."

The main character talks about the heavy feeling of death in her mother's farmhouse, where she underwent medical assistance in dying, also known as MAID, after living with terminal breast cancer.

The book, published by McClelland & Stewart, was released earlier this week and delves into the grief Parker felt when she lost her mother in April 2019.

Parker, who is also a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick, has released other books before this one, including the novel,What We Both Know, and Soft Inheritance, a poetry collection.

In Hi, It's Me, Parker said the main character doesn't buy into the framework of grief that she hasbeen sold mirroring Parker's own experience.

"I saw a lot of grief on television, where mothers were sort of withering away, and they'd hold hands and have this teary-eyed final goodbye. And that wasn't it for me," Parker said.

"The last time I spoke to her we were saying goodbye, and she started to say, 'OK, well, I'll see you.' Normally, we'd say, 'I'll see you tomorrow, next week.' And then she was like, 'well, I won't.'"

As a hyper-controlled, obsessive-type person, Parker said she felt for much of her life that she could force anything career success, a certain body. And it wasn't until she was confronted with grieving her mother that she was faced with a total lack of control.

Information Morning - Fredericton15:06Fawn Parker's new book, Hi, It's Me.

What does grief look like? For Fredericton author Fawn Parker, the loss of her mother five years ago was like nothing she imagined from movies or books. She tries to channel that disorienting experience in a new novel. Fawn sat down with Jeanne Armstrong.

Writing the novel allowed her to process her grief but she admits it was very difficult to let objects that belonged to her mother go.

"My house looked like a museum of my mother, and I had her living room with her furniture recreated inside of my house, and it was just totally absurd, but I didn't see it that way," she said.

And by the time she finished the book, Parker said she no longer felt like the person whose mother had died.

"I was kind of ready to begin my life and have that be a part of me forever, but I think it was me for a while."

Yesteryear Meets Today

And while Parker's grief took her down a path of fiction, another New Brunswick writer found herself compiling non-fiction stories from her mother and relating them to her professional life.

Nancy Cusack, a licensed counselling therapist in Saint John, published Yesteryear Meets Today earlier this year.

"Growing up, the stories used to drive me nuts," said Cusackwith alaugh, on Information Morning Saint John.

"Every day, she would tell something that had to do with her growing up in Titusville, New Brunswick. So I didn't realize how much I had sort of contained in my head until after she passed away."

When her mother, Ruby, died in 2022, Cusack took all of those memories and compiled them into 20 stories about things such as attendinga one-room schoolhouse and going to shivarees with the neighbours.

And Cusack said she had a particular goal with the book, which made her rush to get it completed.

"Mom and dad both went to the same one-room schoolhouseand dad just lived a farm away, so all her stories were really his stories, too," she said.

"Dad was in a nursing home with dementia very bad when my mom died, and when I started writing, all I could think of was that dad was going to remember these stories.

And he did, Cusack said. The book came out six weeks before he died, but before that, Cusack was able to read him excerpts.

"As advanced as his dementia was, he would have expressions on his face of some of these stories," she said.

"So it was something that was really important to me to do."

Information Morning - Saint John10:39Yesteryear Meets Today

Therapist Nancy Cusack brings her late mother's stories into today's timeline. Her book, "Yesteryear Meets Today," connects Ruby Cusack's stories, using them as examples as she shares her own expertise in mental health.