Two weeks after their wedding, the death of the author’s husband inspired her to create a book about grief. Sarah Tarlow, an archaeology professor at the University of Leicester, wrote the book after her spouse Mark’s death in May 2016.
Prof. Tarlow referred to the 63-year-old death of her spouse as an “extraordinary act of courage and love.”
Her book The Archaeology of Loss will be published by Picador this week.
Sarah Tarlow stated that her spouse, a fellow professor at the university, had committed suicide after discovering he had an autoimmune form of encephalomyelitis.
In autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the immune system assaults the brain.
“He began experiencing symptoms and abnormal scans around 2012, roughly four years before his death,” said Prof. Tarlow.
“I was not at all prepared for the arduous and prolonged experience of Mark’s illness and untimely demise.
“Anger was one of my strongest emotional responses; I was angry about how Mark died and why he had to do this alone.
It was his rational response to having a condition from which he would never recover, but I had no choice but to oppose his decision.
In her memoir, Archaeology of Loss: life, love, and the Art of Dying, she discusses her personal experience of loss, as well as assisted dying, relationships between the living and the deceased, sacrifice, and rituals surrounding death.
She stated,
“I hope it’s a book that examines issues and ideas while being held together by an honest personal history.
“I am incredibly delighted to have written a literary work and to have given Mark’s death some meaning.
“I hope that he would be proud of the book I’ve put together.”
Publisher Gillian Fitzgerald-Kelly of Picador remarked,
“It’s rare to find a book that moves you in such a delicate yet potent way.”
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