“I couldn’t help feeling guilty, as if somehow, by reading this book about death, I had caused my grandfather to die,” explained Lieberman. “When I grew up and became a psychiatrist, I learned that this is called ‘magical thinking,’ and it helped put some of my guilt to rest – though not completely.”

Your loved one was dying…what were you reading?

It’s not exactly a conversation starter for cocktail parties, but maybe good fodder for therapy or a grim, self-help book club. What you read does not always impact you so much as the context surrounding your experience of reading it. So in what ways does a book become immortalized when you read it during a period of tremendous grief?

For many people, unlike Lieberman, the act of choosing a book to read during these times is just that — an act. It’s generally not a passive experience — “oh, I just grabbed whatever off the bookshelf” — they seek out books in which they can find, or imbue, hope, significance and meaning.

USA Today recently featured a book club which consisted of only two people — a man and his dying mother. Between the time of the woman’s terminal diagnosis and her death, the two read 50 books together, in what the son later dubbed the “End of Your Life Book Club.”

Author Carla J. Hanna shared some insights with The Protagonist about what she was reading at a particularly difficult time in her life.

“My uncle, a monstrously large and socially inappropriate gold miner, died one week after my dad’s other brother, a former track and field star athlete who spent the last years of his life confined to a wheelchair from spinal injury,” said Hanna. “The two brothers passed before they reconciled from a disagreement.”

It almost sounds like the sort of juxtaposition only an author of fiction could invent.

“I read Portraits of Hope, a wonderful survey of hope from famous cancer survivors,” she explained.

The whole family came together at Hanna’s uncle’s gold mine to mourn, despite their differences, and differences they did have.

What resulted was something of a horror show: “His Christian conservative preacher-son did the ceremony with his Tammy Fae-like leopard-printed wife by his side while my uncle’s gay son held hands with his Prada-clad partner who worried that the mine tailings might ruin his wing-tipped loafers,” Hanna said.

After the funeral proceedings, while flying home, she reread Portraits of Hope. She said she finally understood its universal message of “forgiveness and acceptance.”

The practice of sometimes compulsively rereading a literary work is common in times of coping with grief.

Another novelist, Elaine Wolf, read 8 Plus 1, a collection of Robert Cormier stories, while her mother was dying.

“I re-read ‘The Moustache,’ my favorite story, at least a dozen times while caring for my mother,” she said. “There’s a line in [it] about how our parents exist outside of their relationships with us. That powerful story got me thinking about the rich life my mother had outside of her relationship with me. I was able to see her in a broader context.”

For some however, like Margaret Miller, they do just unintentionally stumble upon something  that seems fitting in times of great pain.

“Inspired by my grandfather, who was blind and listened to recorded books, I became a volunteer at Taping for the Blind,” explained Miller. “My first assignment was to read Billy Graham’s book Facing Death and the Life After.”

“About halfway through the book my father was diagnosed with colon cancer,” said Miller. “I found it extraordinary timing to be reading this book aloud for someone who couldn’t see at a time that I needed this message most.”

It’s not just the loved ones of the dying who seek something from books during these times.

Megory Anderson sits with people who are dying and often reads to them. “Children’s stories are wonderful. I have often read The Little Prince, Winnie the Pooh, and Goodnight Moon,” she said.

“Sometimes the books are spiritual, but more often than not, a dying person wants one that he or she has a deep connection to,” explained Anderson. “I was asked once to read A Passage to India. Did she once live there? I don’t know. Perhaps it was only a life-long desire.”

Photo by edenpictures. Via Flickr Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

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*Update*: An NYPD spokesperson announced on Wednesday that Greg Smith was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.

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South Village resident Jessica Dworkin, 58, was killed on Monday morning when the rear of a tractor trailer hit her and dragged her two blocks under its back wheels. According to witnesses, she attempted to cross Sixth Avenue on a foot scooter at the same time the 18-wheeler was making a right turn onto the avenue from West Houston Street. The truck swept her into its wheels.

Witnesses attempted to alert the unaware driver, Greg Smith, who finally stopped at Carmine Street.

“There were a dozen people running up the street screaming and telling him to stop,” witness Christian Cruz told the Daily News. “He didn’t notice. I saw all the blood and couldn’t look anymore.”

Another witness told the Daily News that once Smith realized what was going on, he rushed out of the truck. “He put his hands on his head like, ‘What did I do?’ He started screaming and crying.”

According to police, Smith is not expected to be charged. Dworkin was pronounced dead at the scene.

Soho Alliance director Sean Sweeney said that “everyone knew” Dworkin around Soho and Greenwich Village. Craig Walker, a longtime resident and friend of hers, told DNAinfo that she moved into her Thompson Street apartment back in the 1970′s.

Dworkin was an eccentric and sociable artistic type who spent a lot of time traveling the street on her scooter, according to Sweeney. Her taste for thrift store clothing made her easily stand out.

“She had a shabby finery to her clothing,” Sweeney told New York Press. “She was a bit of a hoarder — very fashion conscioius, in her own unique way.”

She was even known to change her outfits as many as four times a day, according to Michael Robinson, a Soho store manager who saw her almost daily for 23 years. She was a “fixture in the neighborhood,” he told DNAinfo.

One Soho resident who wished to remain anonymous mentioned rumors that Dworkin had recently been fighting eviction because of hoarding, but that neighbors came to her support and helped her to stay.

“She was well liked,” affirmed Sweeney. “She was a real neighborhood character who gave flavor to the neighborhood.”

“It’s shocking,” murmured one audience member. “She was the person we all wanted to be and never found a way.”

Board member Barbara Adler spoke of Pinder’s success in putting together a high-powered advisory committee at Lincoln Neighborhood Center, where she served as executive director.

“She was dynamic, intelligent, humble,” Adler said. “People came to her meetings because they cared about her and what she was trying to achieve. And she did achieve.”

As noted in her Jan. 7 obituary, Pinder joined the center in 1999 and worked to improve services to senior citizens. Under her tenure, the center developed its senior outreach, childcare and teen programs.

“The responsiveness of her organization was like clockwork,” said board member Mark Diller. “One could only hope that the effectiveness she brought to community organizing can be brought to civic government.”

Council Member Gale Brewer remembered Pinder as a tireless worker.

“She was friendly,” Brewer said over the phone, the day after the remembrance. “I saw her there seven days a week. She was tough but her staff liked her.”

She paused for a moment and then, with greater emphasis, she added, “And the community loved her.”

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donation be made to the Lehigh University Winifred A. and James J. Duane, Jr. Scholarship Fund, 27 Memorial Drive West, Bethlehem, P.A. 18015, or to Daughters of Wisdom, 385 Ocean Ave., Islip, N.Y. 11751.

Condolences can be sent to Sen. Duane’s district office at 322 Eighth Ave., Suite 1700, New York, N.Y. 10001.