Bonnie Grove started writing when, as a teenager,
her parents bought a typewriter (yes, during the age of dinosaurs). She clacked
out a terrible romance novel filled with typos and bad grammar that her mom
loved, and she's been turning out improving prose ever since.
Her non-fiction, Your Best You: Discovering and Developing the Strengths God Gave You,
came out of her experience working with families in crisis. She believes people
have the knowledge and ability to make changes in their life without being told
what to do or how to do it. And, oddly enough, has managed to write a book that
helps people do just that.
Her novel, Talking
to the Dead, came out of that crazy place inside her head that has more
questions then answers. Questions about grief, love, sex, God, therapy, and how
laughter can make everything seem okay--even if just for a moment or two. It
has won a few awards, and has been internationally published in languages she
doesn't speak.
Bonnie has completed several novels since Talking to the Dead, and is currently
working her butt off to ensure they see they make their way into your hands.
Bonnie is married to a cute guy named Steve, they
have two children, and they make their home in Saskatchewan.
Now here is the excerpt from Talking to the Dead.
Chapter 1
Kevin was dead and the people in my house wouldn’t go home. They
mingled after the funeral, eating sandwiches, drinking tea, and speaking in
muffled tones. I didn’t feel grateful for their presence. I felt exactly
nothing.
Funerals exist so we can close doors we’d rather leave open. But
where did we get the idea that the best approach to facing death is to eat
Bundt cake? I refused to pick at dainties and sip hot drinks. Instead, I
wandered into the back
yard.
I knew if I turned my head I’d see my mother’s back as she
guarded the patio doors. Mom would let no one pass. As a recent widow herself,
she knew my need to stare into my loss alone.
I sat on the porch swing and closed my eyes, letting the June
sun warm my bare arms. Instead of closing the door on my pain, I wanted it to
swing from its hinges so the searing winds of grief could scorch my face and
body. Maybe I hoped to die from exposure.
Kevin had been dead three hours before I had arrived at the
hospital. A long time for my husband to be dead without me knowing. He was so
altered, so permanently changed without my being aware.
I had stood in the emergency room, surrounded by faded blue
cotton curtains, looking at the naked remains of my husband while nurses talked
in hushed tones around me. A sheet covered Kevin from his hips to his knees.
Tubes, which had either carried something into or away from his body, hung
disconnected and useless from his arms. The twisted remains of what I assumed
to be some sort of breathing mask lay on the floor. “What happened?” I said in
a whisper so faint I knew no one could hear. Maybe I never said it at all. A
short doctor with a pronounced lisp and quiet manner told me Kevin’s heart
killed him. He used difficult phrases; medical terms I didn’t know, couldn’t
understand. He called it an episode and said it was massive. When he said the
word massive, spit flew from his mouth, landing on my jacket’s lapel. We had
both stared at it.
When my mother and sister, Heather, arrived at the hospital,
they gazed speechlessly at Kevin for a time, and then took me home. Heather had
whispered with the doctor, their heads close together, before taking a firm
hold on my arm and walking me out to her car. We drove in silence to my house.
The three of us sat around my kitchen table looking at each other.
Several times my mother opened her mouth to speak, but nothing
came out. Our words had turned to cotton, thick and dry. We couldn’t work them
out of our throats. I had no words for my abandonment. Like everything I knew
to be true had slipped out the back door when I wasn’t looking.
“What happened?” I said again. This time I knew I had said it
out loud. My voice echoed back to me off the kitchen table.
“Remember how John Ritter died? His heart, remember?” This from
Heather, my younger, smarter sister. Kevin had died a celebrity’s death.
From the moment I had received the call from the hospital until
now, I had allowed other people to make all of my bereavement decisions. My
mother and mother-in-law chose the casket and placed the obituary in the paper.
Kevin’s boss at the bank, Donna Walsh, arranged for the funeral parlor and even
called the pastor from the church that Kevin had attended until he was sixteen
to come and speak. Heather silently held my hand through it all. I didn’t feel
grateful for their help.
I sat on the porch swing, and my right foot rocked on the grass,
pushing and pulling the swing. My head hurt. I tipped it back and rested it on
the cold, inflexible metal that made up the frame for the swing. It dug into my
skull. I invited the pain. I sat with it; supped with it.
I opened my eyes and looked up into the early June sky. The
clouds were an unmade bed. Layers of white moved rumpled and languid past the
azure heavens. Their shapes morphed and faded before my eyes. A Pegasus with
the face of a dog; a veiled woman fleeing; a villain; an elf. The shapes were
strange and unreliable, like dreams. A monster, a baby—I wanted to reach up to
touch its soft, wrinkled face. I was too tired. Everything was gone, lost,
emptied out.
I had arrived home from the hospital empty handed. No Kevin. No
car—we left it in the hospital parking lot for my sister to pick up later. “No
condition to drive,” my mother had said. She meant me.
Empty handed. The thought, incomplete and vague, crept closer to
consciousness. There should have been something. I should have brought his
things home with me. Where were his clothes? His wallet? Watch? Somehow, they’d
fled the scene.
“How far could they have gotten?” I said to myself. Without
realizing it, I had stood and walked to the patio doors. “Mom?” I said as I
walked into the house.
She turned quickly, but said nothing. My mother didn’t just
understand what was happening to me. She knew. She knew it like the ticking of
a clock, the wind through the windows, like everything a person gets used to in
life. It had only been eight months since Dad died. She knew there was little
to be said. Little that should be said. Once, after Dad’s funeral, she looked
at Heather and me and said, “Don’t talk. Everyone has said enough words to last
for eternity.”
I noticed how tall and straight she stood in her black dress and
sensible shoes. How long must the dead be buried before you can stand straight
again? “What happened to Kevin’s stuff?” Mom glanced around as if checking to
see if a guest had made off with the silverware.
I swallowed hard and clarified. “At the hospital. He was naked.”
A picture of him lying motionless, breathless on the white sheets filled my
mind. “They never gave me his things. His, whatever, belongings. Effects.”
“I don’t know, Kate,” she said. Like it didn’t matter. Like I
should stop thinking about it. I moved past her, careful not to touch her, and
went in search of my sister.
Heather sat on my secondhand couch in my living room, a two
seater with the pattern of autumn leaves. She held an empty cup and a napkin;
dark crumbs tumbling off onto the carpet. Her long brown hair, usually left
down, was pulled up into a bun. She looked pretty and sad. She saw me coming,
her brown eyes widening in recognition. Recognition that she should do
something. Meet my needs, help me, make time stand still. She quickly ended the
conversation she was having with Kevin’s boss, and met me in the middle of the
living room.
“Hey,” she said, touching my arm. I took a small step back,
avoiding her warm fingers.
“Where would his stuff go?” I blurted out. Heather’s eyebrows
snapped together in confusion. “Kevin’s things,” I said. “They never gave me
his things. I want to go and get them. Will you come?”
Heather stood very still for a moment, straight backed like she
was made of wood, then relaxed. “You mean at the hospital. Right, Kate? Kevin’s
things at the hospital?” Tears welled in my eyes. “There was nothing. You were
there. When we left, they never gave me anything of his.” I realized I was
trembling.
Heather bit her lower lip, and looked into my eyes. “Let me do
that for you. I’ll call the hospital—” I stood on my tiptoes and opened my
mouth. “I’ll go,” she corrected before I could say anything. “I’ll go and ask
around. I’ll get his stuff and bring it here.” “I need his things.”
Heather cupped my elbow with her hand. “You need to lie down.
Let me get you upstairs, and as soon as you’re settled, I’ll go to the hospital
and find out what happened to Kevin’s clothes, okay?”
Fatigue filled the
small spaces between my bones. “Okay.” She led me upstairs. I crawled under the
covers as Heather closed the door, blocking the sounds.
End of excerpt.
I forgot to mention, this book is on sale for a limited time for $2.51 on Kindle! Check it out!
But if I could travel back in time, I’d tell myself to do it anyway. Nothing better than Christmas in June, right?
