Gifts of Grief

Just days after Jacob and Kristine Watson celebrated their thirty-third wedding anniversary, Kristine unexpectedly passed away while on a family reunion. Jacob was devastated, engulfed in grief. A writer, he did the only thing he knew: he wrote. In Gifts of Grief, Watson shares his story as he describes the unexpected gifts he received, not only from friends and neighbors, but from the universe, soap bubbles, a hummingbird, a neighbor's cellar candle, green tree leaves overhead, an offshore ocean chorus, sailing on a wooden schooner, an English teapot, and monarch butterflies. Through his journaling, Watson learned more about who he was and who he was becoming as a widower. He tells how grief can't be scheduled. It has its own way. Grief is now simply a part of him. In Gifts of Grief, he offers his encouragement to others to trust grief, to acknowledge it, and to find a way to express it.