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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
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Ben O'Mara

Keeping my dead wife’s books safe for our son helped me let go of guilt

A room filled with books
‘Pulling out her paperbacks and carrying them with me through the house connected me to something weird and cosmic,’ Ben O’Mara writes. Photograph: Horst Friedrichs/Alamy

As I removed my dead wife’s favourite novels from the bookshelf, a photo of her fell to the ground and a wave of guilt swamped me.

The photo was of my wife with her sister in the 1980s. They were toddlers. My wife’s eyes, wide and bright, and her hair, blond and shaggy, looked just like our four-year-old son. But I felt no joy in seeing her beauty and genes passed on. I felt as though I was suddenly drowning.

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