RSVP: info@ashbyvillage.org or 510-204-9200
When: Friday, October 7, 2022, 3:00 PM until 4:00 PM
Where: In person at Ashby Village office, 1821 Catalina Ave. Berkeley
Open to: All
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible
Love of Finished Years: Backstory of a Grief Memoir
Diane De Pisa, PhD, will tell the story of how her grief-and-relief memoir, Love of Finished Years, evolved from messages she wrote to her husband as he died and long after his death.
The slim volume that was published in December 2021 speaks from the heart and, uniquely, it
- addresses the deceased person directly
- probes universal issues in the context of a cross-cultural marriage
- combines journal entries with poetry
- encompasses the agony of loss and intimations of afterlife
The posthumous love story unfolds in six chapters. The first three explore both the trauma of loss and the turbulence of a forty-year relationship. The last three chapters confide spiritual and paranormal experiences: apparent signs sent by the deceased and vivid dreams of him. These are personal matters. However, Diane De Pisa was persuaded to share them, trusting that they speak to all who struggle with relationships, bereavement, and faith in higher powers.
The topic today, Love of Finished Years, is Diane De Pisa’s first book-length publication. A novel is due out later this year, a science fiction piece titled Xarbo.
Earlier publications include twenty poems in journals and three articles on Black Elk Speaks, topic of her doctoral dissertation at UCB. A novel satirizing competitiveness in academia, As Sour Grapes Ripen, was serialized in the Berkeley Times, which also carried her column "Telegraph and Beyond" featuring photos by her late husband.
Poetry Society of America awarded her for a surreal poem, “Bird Tracks: A Pantoum.” She got the grand prize at a literary festival on her native Prince Edward Island for a story from her Canadian novel, The Devil’s Darning Needle, finalist in a contest with New Rivers Press, which also recognized her science fiction novel Foundlings of Medusa.