Minerva's Owl: Afterthoughts on Love and Loss

A moving, deeply honest account of great love and loss – this small book is a tender companion for those who are grieving.

After “nine days in which we thought you would recover and then eight days in palliative care,” Carol Matthew’s husband of more than forty years passed away suddenly. Through the shock and grief that follows, Carol writes and writes, with love and anger and honesty and heartbreak, as she comes to an understanding of bereavement as not the end, but as a stage of married love.

The owl of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, spreads its wings only at twilight. In Minerva’s Owl, Carol Matthews finds solace in reflecting back on a marriage, a life, a person – in lyrical prose, in devastating honesty, and with hard-won insight.

Structured in six sections – grieving, longing, belonging, mourning, cleaving, and surviving – Minerva’s Owl offers not a step-by-step guide to grief, but an understanding companion to walk with the reader through dark days. Part grief memoir, part love story, this book is a gift for anyone who has lost someone they loved. This new second edition of the book provides a new epilogue that reflects on loss more than a decade later, and a new introduction from Maria Coffey, author of Fragile Edge: Loss on Everest.