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Book helps author learn gift from her late father

May 8, 2008 12:12 am

WHEN writer Amy Hol-lingsworth was out promoting her best-selling "The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers" in 2005, she was also coping with a sense of loss that threatened to overwhelm her.

After losing a friend and father figure in the famous children's show host years earlier, the Spotsylvania County author lost her own father to cancer just months before the book came out.

As she struggled to make sense of the grief, anger and more, she sought solace in the writings of others.

She found a few sources that helped, but was distressed not to find something that addressed the process and gave her hope.

Believing that writer's best topics are subjects near to the heart, Hollingsworth decided to write about losing her father, with an eye for discovering what legacies the dying leave behind.

It was a gut-wrenching process that stretched out for more than a year. It included emotional sessions with local people who'd lost loved ones, and delivered a stirring discovery.

Namely, that those we lose leave gifts behind that help us cope with their loss.

In the 192-page "Gifts of Passage," available at major booksellers, the writer argues that these gifts have an otherworldly dimension. That's because they come when someone is dying, a time when there's an overlap between heaven and earth.

To reach that conclusion and others, Hollingsworth said it took talking to others to fully understand the gift her father had left her.

"I was extremely close to my father," she said, the dutiful daughter who had maintained close ties to him through difficult times.

"I wanted to write something that would help others deal with the sort of grief I was feeling," she said. "The book ended up being something I needed to write to help myself understand it all."

To find the others whose experiences are chronicled, the author found many of her subjects from news accounts in this newspaper.

The more people she talked to, including the mother of a local 9-year-old killed in a bicycle accident, the more she found evidence that those who leave us impart gifts that help us cope.

In one instance, she found a local couple where the husband died of a heart attack moments after having a harsh argument with the wife. Weeks later, tucked away in the pocket of a dress purchased on a shopping expedition, the wife found a silver locket he'd purchased as a surprise, a reminder of the true feelings he had for her.

Most times, she said, the gifts she found were less tangible, but just as powerful.

Describing these gifts, she noted a younger relative of hers who reached out to a grandmother to apologize for a past misdeed. Weeks later, the young woman was killed in an auto accident, something the grandmother was better able to deal with because the air had been cleared.

In an initial draft of her book, Hollingsworth planned to make her own experiences just one chapter.

But when the book moved to its eventual publisher, Thomas Nelson, Hollingsworth got what she now considers good advice.

"They told me there needed to be more of me in the book, and of the journey I took in its writing," she said.

As is, "Gifts" begins with the loss of her father, moves through experiences of others and closes with Hollingsworth finally understanding the gift her father left her.

"In that way, the whole book truly is a personal journey," she said, "one that is intended to give hope and solace to others."

She didn't disclose the secret, but it's revealed in the book.

There's an epilogue in which she mentions a moment in a local coffee shop when her daughter looks at Hollingsworth calmly and says to her, "You're the angel of death."

It came after long periods when her children witnessed discussions in many locations with people who suffered loss.

In the book, she notes how she answered her daughter--"The angel of death brings death, honey, I'm not the angel of death. I don't cause people to die."

But then added, "I just end up talking to people about their grief--a lot."

Especially--she said, noting a long listening session with a recent widow at her daughter's softball practice--"if 'the angel of death' is two chairs down."

Rob Hedelt: 540/374-5415
Email: rhedelt@freelancestar.com

GIFTS OF PASSAGE: WHAT THE DYING TELL US WITH THE GIFTS THEY LEAVE BEHIND By Amy Hollingsworth (Thomas Nelson, $19.99)