The Porcelain Heart: A Mother's Memoir of Unexpected Loss

About This Audiobook

Fans of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights will find inspiration in this mother's memoir about the year following her son's sudden death. When Marcy learns her beloved forty-five-year-old son Michael, has died, she refuses to believe it. He was her only child. Later, she blames herself because she didn't recognize the signs of his illness. She has disturbing dreams about not saving him and spirals through the various stages of grief as she waits months for the coroner to render a cause. But the fifth and final stage of grief, Marcy rejects. In her mind, if she accepts Michael's death, he won't ever return. The Porcelain Heart chronicles her raw emotional journey the year following Michael's death. Marcy endures all the firsts without him—the holidays, his birthday. She joins grief groups, remembers frightening and fun times together, questions whether she was a good mother, and tries to distract herself with travel. She creates a golf scholarship in his name and commissions a stone people and pet fountain to be built on the path where he used to hike. Her journey culminates when she takes his ashes to his favorite place, a lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and finally begins moving toward acceptance.

About the Author

Marcy Kelly has worked in communications and press relations at US government agencies and has led several nonprofit organizations. She studied creative writing at UCLA and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Antioch University. Her short fiction has been published in Narrative Magazine and in a collection of short stories. Her essays on grief have appeared on Medium and in other online publications. Her cowritten script, Fool Me Twice, won the Producers Guild of America best screenplay award. Marcy lives in Los Angeles, is involved with charitable causes, and plays bridge when time permits.

Reviews

The Porcelain Heart gives grieving parents a road map for the first year after loss, but the real story here is the love affair between mother and child that continues forever.

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