Grief

Throughout the short story, the author uses her first person narrator Caroline's attempts to reconcile herself with her husband's brain injury to explore the complexities of the grieving process. Though the story is titled "Grief's Garden," Caroline's response to her husband's accident and resulting condition initially resembles anger and violence. Indeed, in the opening paragraph of the story, as Caroline watches M walking away from her at Enghave Park, she says, "I felt a deep urge to shoot him in the back. I wanted to see him collapse and lie unmoving in the gravel" (1). Caroline's tonal register in this opening passage not only surprises the reader, but injects the narrative atmosphere with immediate tension. Over the course of the paragraphs that follow, Caroline’s initial emotionality mutates as the narrative shifts more frequently between scenes from the past and the present.

The more time that passes...