Bring Us Home From Sorrow A Love Letter – Joanne Fedler

We thank him, he leaves, we set the alarm. It is a comedy of tragic errors. I make notes for Dad. He will not survive being this useless. As I go through all these motions, I remember with a startle that just a week ago, I was in the Magaliesberg. I swam naked in the clearest pools. I stood under a waterfall. I saw and touched the beauty of this world, and it touched me back.

This is a very different kind of Sunday. We are slowly being weaned into what missing my mother feels like, how her presence is everywhere, how big she is in all our lives. But we are also learning about how we will want to die when our dying comes. We are watching, we are wondering. We don’t want her to suffer.

Not for us. Then my father says something I will come back to, over and over again, when this moment is long behind us. He speaks it out loud, like a wish or a spell. He wishes something would come and take her from left field, a heart attack, something sudden so she wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of this treatment and the degeneration of the cancer taking over.

I tell him we are all facing endings. We are all approaching this grief together, from different sides. I stay the night with my father. I sleep in Carolyn’s old room, where the pictures hang skew, the windowsill is caked with dust, the bed feels itchy and scratchy, there is no bedside light, the cushions are all frilled and I am surrounded by photographs of my children as babies, Laura as a bride, Carolyn’s graduation, reminders of the length and breadth of the happinesses this house has held.

The old, fraying, breaking bits of things that hang—the curtains, the cloth over the bedside table, the doctor’s screen. Even with the big clearing out my parents did a few years back, this place is overwhelmed with disrepair; there has been no upkeep or updating or holding together. It has all just devolved. I think about how yesterday my mother apologised for ruining our day. She’s sorry that her cancer treatment is getting in the way of our relaxing weekend.

What is it like, I wonder, to be at the centre of it all? In the morning, we call the hospital to hear that my mother had a horrible night. Her nausea is not yet under control.

For my sisters Carolyn and Laura and Jess, Aidan and Jenna. And for every tender heart mourning the empty place at their table Bring Us Home From Sorrow Copyright©2026 Joanne Fedler Paperback ISBN: 978-1-76109-929-8 ebook ISBN: 978-1-76109-724-9 First published 2026 by GINNINDERRA PRESS PO Box 2 Bentleigh 3204 ginninderrapress.com.au 1kitap1.com/en Other Titles by Joanne Fedler The Whale’s Last Song, Harper Collins, 2024 Gagman, with Dov Fedler, Brio books, 2022 Unbecoming, Penguin, 2020 Your Story: how to write it so others will want to read it, Hay House, 2017 Love in the Time of Contempt, Hardie Grant, 2016 Leaning into Love, with Graeme Friedman, Random House, 2012 The Reunion, Allen & Unwin, 2012 When Hungry, Eat, Allen & Unwin, 2010 Things Without a Name, Allen & Unwin, 2008 Secret Mothers’ Business, Allen & Unwin, 2006 The Dreamcloth, Jacana Media, 2005 Connect with Joanne here: joannefedler.com Substack: https://joannefedler.substack.com/ Instagram: @joannefedlermedia.com 1kitap1.com/en Praise for Bring Us Home From Sorrow Joanne doesn’t skirt or blink the responsibilities of heartache, but carries her grief as a gift, writing so that the reader will be less lost.

This journey through grief is a mothering of culture to help navigate present-day chaos and sorrow. So many love-zingers. This book serves life, now. —Nathalie Roy, shepherdess, co-founder of Orphan Wisdom School & founder of The Scriptorium, housing Stephen Jenkinson’s collected works Invigorating and thunderous, painful, soothing and nourishing, these pages are as immersive, exacting and jubilant as the author’s own experience navigating the riptides and muscularity of the ocean she swims in every day.

You will love being in these waters; you will find solace, wisdom, courage and guidance as you accompany Joanne on her journey of loss—and renewal to the miracle that is life. —Shira Nayman, author of Awake in the Dark, and Shoreline: A memoir of wandering, friendship and finding home From a palliative care and bereavement perspective, this memoir fills an important gap. Many people struggle to articulate their grief, particularly adult children who are expected to “cope” and move on.

This book offers language, recognition, and permission. It affirms that grief is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be lived, witnessed, and integrated over time’. —Yvonne Coburn, formerly a National Champion for Palliative Care Australia Written with unflinching honesty, grace, and love, I felt my own experiences of love and loss mirrored in Joanne’s conflicted pull to be present for those suffering and yet the need to escape the claustrophobic wrench of dying.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: c4ceae307c1bd743
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,550,951 bytes (2.433 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781761099298, 9781761097249
• Pages: 207
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 320.93 minutes
• Total Words: 64,185
• Total Characters: 347,822
• Average Words per Page: 310.07
• Average Characters per Page: 1680.3

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