In Memoriam

In Memoriam (Ave Maria Press, 1980) is Henri Nouwen's account of the illness and death of his mother, Maria Nouwen, who died in the Netherlands in 1978. Written soon afterward, it recounts the days he spent at her bedside, her fear and struggle in her last illness, the family's grief, and his own effort to understand her death in the light of faith. It is a short and personal book and one of the first in which Nouwen wrote directly about his own family. A companion piece, A Letter of Consolation (1982), written to his father, was later combined with it in the volume A Sorrow Shared.