In Lieu Of Flowers, A Conversation For the Living

Certain books just stick with you, long after you turn the last pages and put them back on the shelf. In Lieu of Flowers, A Conversation for the Living by Nancy Cobb is one of those books for me. I read it many years ago, and as I pull it off my bookcase, overflowing with books about loss, it still remains as lightweight and sun filled as I remember. I find myself once again drawn into its collection of compelling, enjoyable short stories. Cobb shares with us her own moments of losing family and friends, along side the perspectives of others. Love is the overriding thread that ties these stories together with surprising clarity. Her stories are vividly full of life and completely in the moment. Cobb brings a new, and much needed, tenderly analytic slant to the experience of loss.

The magic of In Lieu of Flowers lies in the naturalness and everyday quality Cobb’s writing offers to her memories and the genre of loss. Her book is light, candid and refreshingly void of any heavy or dark references. She writes in the same vein in which we actually live and reflect life after loss, were it not so compartmentalized. In my role of representing SevenPonds, I commonly find that people immediately open up to me upon mention of our subject matter, spilling out their most inner heartfelt story. This book is exactly that: deep personal conversations of healthy meaningful memories and the desire to understand and add richness to our lives.

As poetic and gentle as the title suggests, this book offers its readers the gift of words over a loss, in lieu of flowers. A delicious way to spend a weekend healing through its thoughtful words while curled up in a chair by a sun-raked floor. It’s a perfect condolence gift to a family or friend who is grieving, perhaps – in lieu of flowers.