Albom’s Use of Writing in the Grieving Process

Through the course of Albom’s memoir, he describes the way he uses writing as part of his process of grieving Chika. He indicates at first he hesitated to write Chika’s memoir because he feared it was too soon. As he writes, he comes to realize that writing is a comfort to him. Despite the comfort that writing brings, Albom still feels physically ill from grief as he tries to detail the last weeks of Chika’s life.

When Chika appears to Albom the initial time, she demands to know why he has not started writing about her. Albom does not answer Chika honestly. He is not writing because he fears that “when you put your loved ones down on paper, you forever accept that reality of them, and maybe I don’t want to accept this reality, that...