FREE: A year and a Day Paperback

The listing, A year and a Day Paperback has ended.

Michael Corrigan personifies the romanticized vision of what an Irishman should be: musical, humorous, a gifted performer and wordsmith, blessed by the blarney stone and the love of his life. The last thing he expected was to lose his adoring wife, an accomplished professional and beautiful, compassionate woman whose "bright light was blown out forever."

When Karen Lea Smith Corrigan died unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm in September 2005, life as he knew it ended. The day of her death he prays for lightning to strike and incinerate him. When that relief does not come, he continues as a grieving ghost -- stunned, numb, shattered, separated from reality, and alone in his grief. From that awful beginning of life without Karen, he embarks on a year and a day of traditional Irish mourning. His existence without her is all raw nerve endings and aches and pains. Somehow, he survives the early days of her loss. Corrigan returns to teaching at the University. He sees a grief therapist and begins a journal in hopes of helping others cope with such awful loss. With compelling honesty, he questions her death and struggles with memories:
"I wish her soul would return on All Souls Day, or any time. I would tell her I loved her and probably should have said it more often... She often mentioned that others admired her work and I think she expected me to say, 'Yes, you are the consummate professional.' I did believe that but never felt the need to say it. She didn't need validation for her gifts, or so I thought. Perhaps that was a mistake. After such sudden death, there is that 'What if?' syndrome and the nagging question: Why didn't I praise her more or tell her the truth -- that I worshipped her this side of idolatry?