Making Toast

This book is a touching and beautifully honest account that begins with the moment author Roger Rosenblatt and his wife Ginny learn of the death of their daughter. At the age of thirty-eight, Amy a devoted wife, mother of three young children, and a successful medical doctor, dies suddenly at home while her young children are present. After hearing the devastating news, the Rosenblatts rush to the home of their son-in-law and grandchildren --- fulfilling an overwhelming need to be together, to help sort out the pain, and to begin to realize the loss that they have all sustained. The days pass and this need to be together somehow becomes a permanent living arrangement. Through the following year we see this shattered family gather the pieces of their former life in an attempt to assemble something that is somewhat whole. Ginny, the grandmother, almost seamlessly moves into the role of mother; cooking, shuttling children to school activities, and singing nursery rhymes as she tucks them into bed. "Now, in her sorrow, she is in her element," writes Rosenblatt. And of this Ginny says," I think my whole life has led up to this moment". Roger offers his own substantial contribution; making toast and pouring cereal for the children's breakfast. "This is the one household duty I have mastered", he claims. This book presents a family's personal pain in a way that is tender without being sentimental and it shows us that even through heartbreak there is humor and beautiful life lessons to be learned.