Thought-provoking reading today. A woman with a high-profile job has her life turned upside-down by a stalker and two widows tell of how their husbands died and their ways through grief.
“What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To”: by Mary Lucia (University of Minnesota Press, Nov. 25, $22.95)
Going out to a show was no longer an option. Not knowing who the stalker was or what he looked like — he could be anywhere. And if a mentally unstable person warns you time and again that he’s watching you and knows where you are always, you better believe it. — from “What Doesn’t Kill Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To.”
Mary Lucia (courtesy photo)
Mary Lucia was a popular afternoon drive-time DJ on Minnesota Public Radio’s music station The Current. She prided herself on connecting with listeners by sharing bits of her private life such as her love of animals, and she got great comments. Until 2014, when a package of 10 pounds of raw meat was left at the station with her name on it. So began Lucia’s terrifying years of escalating harassment, with her stalker leaving cards and other things on her doorstep and sending messages about watching her everywhere and threatening her dogs. He was so brazen that he lurked around her house.
(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)
While Lucia became more frightened, she also had to do her job interviewing rock stars, creating playlists and making public appearances. She became increasingly isolated as her family and even some close friends had a “get over it” attitude or suspected she was delusional or hysterical. And she got no help from police when she called 911. She was incredulous when one officer scolded her for having an illegal lightbulb on her porch, as if that mattered, and wanted to know if she was the stalker’s “type.”
“Paranoid or not, it wasn’t the first time there was some snide inference made based on my appearance,” she writes. “I wasn’t worthy to be stalked. I might have looked a little too punky for them to believe I could be the subject of this unwanted attention. Plus, I was in my early forties, for crying out loud. Expired goods.”
Lucia credits women with taking her seriously, including a police officer and a victims advocate. Still, she was so distraught and angry that she took a seven-month leave of absence from the station where, she writes, she got little sympathy.
Eventually her stalker slipped up, and she found evidence of his identity — Patrick Henry Kelly. There was a trial, widely covered by Twin Cities media, and Lucia was able to give her heartfelt statement in court of how she couldn’t eat or sleep and suffered panic attacks: “My whole sense of self is in question. It has left me feeling powerless.”
Kelly got five years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution. It was, Lucia believes, nothing more than “a slap on the wrist.” The man who wrote her vulgar messages was soon free to stalk a new victim, one of Lucia’s radio colleagues.
Although living in terror is the focal point of “What Doesn’t Kill Me…” Lucia also writes honestly about kicking a drug habit cold turkey and her history of self-harm by cutting. Writing in a snarky/funny style, she includes stories about her very nontraditional family, with two unhappy parents who let the kids raise themselves, as well as an anecdote about how an operating room staff had more trouble removing her belly button ring than doing the actual procedure, and how her dog ate the underside of her couch.
Lucia is now program adviser for Radio K, the University of Minnesota’s student-run radio station. For those not familiar with her musical tastes, she includes in her book the playlist for her last Current show on May 12, 2022. It begins with Keith Richards’ “Take It So Hard,” continues in the middle with T. Rex’s “Hot Love,” and ends with The Rolling Stones’ “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It).”
“In the Evening, We’ll Dance”: by Anne-Marie Erickson (Holy Cow! Press, $18.95)
During Dick’s dementia, my sense of self-esteem seemed distorted, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. I was thrown off-kilter by fear and bewilderment, as if I, too, were trapped in dementia’s warped mirror. — from “In the Evening, We’ll Dance”
(Courtesy of Holy Cow! Press)
Subtitled “A Memoir in Essays on Love & Dementia,” Erickson gives us an intelligent and thoughtful memoir of how she and her husband, Dick, found ways to live with his dementia after years of happy marriage, and her life after his death. She relates her story to language, philosophy, science of the brain, mythologies and Biblical passages. Her style is poetic, such as her lovely memory of “waltzing” with her husband as they swayed together in his hospice bed.
So many spouses are taking Erickson’s journey now, and her experiences and insight will help anyone who picks up her book.
Erickson, who lives in Grand Rapids, is a freelance writer and college composition instructor with degrees in American studies and English. She will be at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., at 7 p.m. Wednesday in conversation with Patricia Hoolihan, author of “Hands and Hearts Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers.”
“His Last Breath: A Soldier, His Wife, and the Man Who Died to Save Them”: by Michele Arnoldy (Westbow Press, $16.99)
I often collapsed into God’s presence. I would curl up in our bed, pulling the comforter over me and drawing on my only comforter, Jesus. For several minutes, sometimes hours, the man of sorrows cried with me, our tears combining into huge droplets as Jesus supernaturally comforted me in ways I don’t understand or can explain. — from “His Last Breath”
Michele Arnoldy (Courtesy of the author)
In this faith-based memoir, Michele Arnoldy writes of her and her husband’s struggles to save their marriage as they grew apart. Michelle felt she had married a man of faith but he had changed. Chris was a successful corporate executive when he voluntarily deployed to Afghanistan as a liaison between the U.S. Army and Afghan village leaders. When he returned the couple had to come to terms with his mental issues, including PTSD, depression and anxiety with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder being the predominant diagnosis. Chris eventually killed himself, leaving Michele to grieve and turn to God to heal. As she writes, “Worship is a weapon to defeat fear.”
The author has spent 18 years helping the spiritual journeys of women as they aged. She is a certified life coach, speaker and leadership trainer.
Don’t be scared to say the wrong thing (or nothing) at a funeral
Hard pass. Cold brew. Dad bod. Merriam-Webster adds over 5,000 words to ‘Collegiate’ dictionary
Five things to know about the Julia Child exhibit at the MN History Center
‘Slow Horses’ author Mick Herron reveals the secret origins of Slough House
Literary calendar for week of Sept. 21
