Going to Death: An Interview With Amy Welborn

In a recent interview, Amy Welborn shares intimate details of writing her book Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope . The book chronicles her trip to Sicily shortly after the death of her husband Michael Dubruiel, a popular Catholic writer and speaker who died of a heart attack in 2009. The interview is an insightful prelude to her book as it highlights how her time in Sicily was helpful in understanding, and working through, the death of her husband. Highlighting how the spiritual context of grief is facilitated by earthly experiences she comments:

Sicily was far away and someplace I’d never been and never thought of going. So in a way, it was sort of like “going to” death in this sense. Although I did think about it, fearfully, it was not someplace I took seriously about traveling to—death, that is. It was also someplace that Mike would never, ever have traveled to. I could not imagine it being part of a family journey in the hypothetical land of “If Mike were still alive.” It seemed very far away from life with him, as well, and I suppose I hoped that if I went to Sicily, I wouldn’t be as burdened with the loss.? Didn’t work, of course, since, as I write in the book, even seeing a crucifix made of lava rock festooned with glitter in a souvenir shop on Mount Etna can make you miss your husband just as much as driving by the YMCA where he died back home.