Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

This short book of only 211 pages will make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time.  This is a very personal story about the author, Kate Braestrup, who becomes a Unitarian Universalist Minister after her husband, Drew, a Maine State Trooper, dies tragically on the job in an automobile accident.

Kate isn’t sure she believes in God in the traditional sense and her story takes the reader through the grief of losing her husband and all that entails, to her decision to follow her husband’s dream in becoming a UU minister and finding god in the love and detail of daily life, and finally to the realization that life goes on.

The most moving part of the book for me was Kate’s insistence of being the person to prepare her husband’s body prior to cremation and her accompanying his body to the crematorium.  Like many things in modern life we have outsourced rituals of the most personal and intimate nature.  We have sanitized death and everything associated with it and I think we are spiritually poorer because of it. 

Read this book if you are a spiritual wanderer.  I’m certain you will find something to take away with you by the end of the book.

Tangram Bookshelves

Although I’m intrigued by the idea of these bookshelves, I’m not sure I would buy them for my house.  But they might be a neat idea for a child’s bedroom.  What do you think?