Vidh: A Book of Mourning
by Phyllis Nakonechny
Paperback (Non-fiction)
7.5" x 5.5" · 120 pages
Release Date: July 2010
ISBN 9781926710068
In Vidh: A Book of Mourning, Phyllis Nakonechny hopes "to break through the unspoken code of secrecy that surrounds the experience of loss". The book contains a collection of "small moments in time that occur over a period of four years. Each is a concise representation of a brief instance occurring in the larger panorama of grief."
Vidh: A book of Mourning is a story of the loss of love and of learning to live without a partner. The experience outlined in this journey into widowhood will help others to find what they need and struggle to find in their journey into grief.
“How beautiful, how beautiful and heartbreaking! Though written in prose, this book speaks in the primal language of poetry. There is no self-pity here, no sentimentality, just a clear-eyed look at what it means to lose a beloved husband. I wept, and at the same time, I felt blessed. No one else has written about this kind of loss with such delicacy and toughness.”
Phyllis Nakonechny
Phyllis Nakonechny grew up in a small prairie town in Saskatchewan. The child of educators, she developed a love for literature at an early age. She received her Bachelor of Arts and her Bachelor of Education degrees from the University of Saskatchewan. She spent thirty years as a high school English teacher and a teacher of creative writing. She is a self-taught print maker. Her watercolour monotypes were part of the three artist show "fragments" that toured the province of Saskatchewan. Since the death of her husband from cancer in 2003, she has had to reinvent herself, but her love for language continues to shape her life. In 2008, she was awarded a CBC Literary Award in the creative nonfiction category for her meditation on the subject of grief, published in "enRoute" magazine under the title "Vidh". She is currently retired and resides in Swift Current.
