Dear Ann, Dear Mary: A Correspondence of Grief and Friendship

Dear Ann, Dear Mary Grief is a unique and lonely journey with no roadmap or timeframe. Dear Ann, Dear Mary is a story of two women who reach out to each other in a series of e-mails. The immediacy of electronic mail elicits unusual candor between Mary, a widow of five years who has found solace in work and meditation, and Ann, who struggles with the recent death of her husband through raw emotion and unrelenting frankness. Through the passing seasons the women share poetry, prayers, music, creative rituals, and dreams as unexpected memories drift into stream-of-consciousness exchanges. The letters also portray the nature of loving relationships and show surprising similarities as well as differences in their long marriages. Beyond the experience of loss, their correspondence chronicles the survival of the human spirit through nature and art, friendship and humor, creativity, and spirituality.