The Necklace of Occasional Dreams: A Woman's Journal of Living with Her Husband's Cancer

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

“To live, you have to get sad sometimes.” This quote from Winter’s
four-year-old daughter captures the mood of this little book: sadness
tinged with acceptance. Life must go on, and it will be richer for
having known the deceased.

Winter’s diary, kept over the two-year span of her husband’s
illness, expresses the range of emotions she experienced as his cancer
progressed. She shares her struggles to remain supportive, to provide
the best response for her child, to deal with the medical bureaucracy,
and to maintain an identity for herself outside the illness. There’s
the ebb and flow of hope followed by setbacks, of good days and
not-so-good days, of the difficulty of facing the daily routine.

The work is intensely personal and emotion-ally draining to read.
Unfortunately, it seldom rises above the personal level to universalize
the

experience. While the reader will share Winter’s grief and recognize
her bravery in sharing her diary, the work fails to build a bridge to
others who are struggling through similar situations.