This book account O'Rourke's story that is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness - and separating from her husband - left her altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of loss. After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief, an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.