Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye

When Marie Mutsuki lost her American father and Japanese grandparents, she feared she would never find her happiness again. Motivated by a deep desire to have some joy to share with her young son, she travelled to Japan, the land her mother came from, to find answers. Unable to fulfill her mission to bury her grandfather's ashes because of the radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, she discovered that many of the people she met had a very different relationship to loss and to grief than she knew. Through her open, deep exploration of the beliefs surrounding her in Japan, her own perspective on the importance and beauty of grief grew. Now accepting the need and naturalness of her response to loss, she found the answers she was seeking!