A family faces a tragedy no one should ever have to handle in Those We Love Most by Lee Woodruff. As Maura is walking to school with her three children near the end of the school year, she responds to a text while her nine year old bikes ahead. Tragically, he is hit by a car and a week later dies. Her father Roger is immediately called back from a “business meeting” in Tampa where he had actually been in bed with his mistress, while her brother, sister, mother, and their families rally around Maura.
Those We Love Most deals with the fallout for Maura and her husband Pete, as well as her parents Margaret and Roger. Maura feels horribly guilty, and Pete inadvertently feeds the guilt when asking how she could let that happen early in the hospital stay for their son James. Maura doesn’t handle the grief well, and it is impacting her marriage which wasn’t perfect to begin with. As Maura withdraws from the world, focusing on her youngest child, Pete increases his already potentially problematic drinking.
On the side of her parents, Margaret immediately takes charge in Maura’s household, handling childcare, cleaning, determining which meals provided by well-meaning friends to serve and the like. She is mother of her child once more, leaving Roger a limited role with the daughter who is most like him. As Roger watches his own family rally through grief, he feels his own guilt at having been with his mistress instead of focusing on his own family and wife who has always been there for him.
As time passes, the raw pain on the pages changes. We are drawn into the four completely flawed and human main characters. Each has secrets that are the part of them that they wish no one could ever see. Pete is the character who has the smallest starring role in the book, and I would have loved to see more of his turmoil through his own eyes rather than the bits and pieces gleaned from interactions with Maura, Margaret, and Roger. He is less sympathetic simply because we know less about him, and he has fascinating potential.
The other three characters keep the book moving forward, however. Maura doesn’t so much move through her grief as somehow manage to live and it blunts itself slightly. No one could imagine the pain of a mother losing her child in such a way without having lived it, but Lee Woodward does an amazing job of replicating what I can only guess is how one would feel.
Throughout the book, there are small moments where you can sense that there are pivotal moments in relationships amongst the characters. You can see them make choices that will bind them closer together or keep driving a wedge between them as they navigate the currents of their emotions and needs. They are so poignant and ones that I can feel in my own life from time to time.
This is a sad book. It’s focused on a tragedy of the loss of a child in a horrible accident. Yet it’s so much more than that. It isn’t uplifting, but it’s captivating – and not in a rubbernecking a bad traffic accident kind of way. It’s simply compelling as you root for the couples to do what’s right for themselves, their relationships, and their families as time passes and the realities of the world keep pushing against what could be.
I also wrote a post inspired by this book as part of the From Left To Write book club. See why I straddle the line – maybe not quite so finely – in an attempt to never be the object lesson for other parents.
Written by Michelle who is only more paranoid of her children riding bikes after having read this book. See what she’s up to with her own wee ones on her blog Honest & Truly! or follow along with her on Twitter where she is also @HonestAndTruly.