Author Laurie Burrows Grad On Grief, Widowhood and Recovering from Tragic Loss
The Joke’s Over, You Can Come Back Now — How This Widow Plowed Through Grief and Survived
Laurie Burrows Grad and Peter Grad at Night at Sardi’s fundraiser, 2005/Photo: Alex Berliner©Berliner Studio/BEImages
By Stacey Gualandi/May 2, 2018
We have a BRAND NEW interview on The Women’s Eye Radio that you will not want to miss!
Food writer and cookbook author Laurie Burrows Grad has written an emotional memoir, The Joke’s Over, You Can Come Back Now — How This Widow Plowed Through Grief and Survived,and candidly shares her heartbreaking journey from “normal” to “acceptably different” with honesty and her well-known sense of humor in tact.
Burrows Grad and Peter, her husband of 47 years, shared a tremendous bond; theirs was a true love story. “We called each other five times a day!” When Peter died suddenly in 2015, Burrows Grad was thrust into widowhood, the life she knew forever altered.
My parents were also soulmates who were married 47 years when my father died over 8 years ago. I wanted to read this book in order to better understand not only how Burrows Grad coped in the wake of her tragic loss, but also to help my mother accept the grief she still feels.
Inspired and encouraged to journal by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg, who also lost her husband David unexpectedly, Burrows Grad wrote a blog for Huffington Post titled Demoted to Lunch in reference to a shift in her social status as a widow.
Laurie and Peter on their wedding day/1968
The post went viral, which led to three years full of articles (earning her the new moniker “Grief Blogger”) and ultimately this book.
Burrows Grad said writing about the taboo topic of grief gave her an unexpected mission:
“Creating meaning from loss is my resurrection from the debris of my heartache.”
With The Joke’s Over… she provides the ultimate grief toolbox of tips, the “3 H’s: Honesty, Humor — and Chutzpah,” and even the daunting challenge of dating (as Laurie calls it, “dumpster diving!”)
And while she will never lose the connection to her dear husband, Burrows Grad devotes a chapter to You Know You’re Getting Better When…
This is one of the definitive self-help guides on grief as “the great equalizer” for widows of any age and will be a great aid for anyone suffering a difficult loss.
Our House Grief Support Center
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