NONFICTION - Nov. 7, 1993

GRIEVING by Ruth Coughlin (Random House: $17; 173 pp.) These days it seems like anyone who’s had an experience of any kind feels they can write about it. As a result, there’s an abundance of poorly conceived books with titles like, “Playing the Ukulele Taught Me to Be a Winner!” However, “Grieving,” Ruth Coughlin’s account of how she dealt with her husband’s tragic death is a stunning exception to this trend. Novelist and judge Bill Coughlin was diagnosed with liver cancer in June of 1991, and died the following April. “Week after week he would talk about beating it, about getting a chance to roll the dice again, about buying a boat and maybe even a summer home. And then it got bad.”

“Grieving” alternates describing the relentless trajectory of Bill’s disease, with sections about Ruth continuing on after he dies, her feeling like, “ . . . A thermometer (that) has been dropped to the floor, the mercury scattering into a thousand pieces.” One of the remarkable things about this book (and there are many) is Coughlin’s ability to offer her husband like a gift--his courage, kindness and faults too--so that every reader will feel the loss of Bill Coughlin on a deeply personal level as if he were a close friend.

But it’s not all sad. There’s an undercurrent of love and strength running through every sentence so that after finishing the last page I had an overwhelming urge to see my favorite people, hold them close and soak in the sound of their voices because, as Ruth Coughlin says, “Today, I think the word always should be stricken from the language. It is a sham, ruse, a dirty joke . . . nothing or no one lasts forever, especially someone who was always so very happy to be alive.”

This is an exceptionally beautiful piece of work.