Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life

 

Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life by Abigail Thomas

Nonfiction - Memoir

2000

Finished on November 26, 2025

Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A beautifully crafted and inviting accounting of one woman's life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straight-forward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and tiny incidents that have shaped her: pregnancy at 18, single motherhood of three by the age of 26, the joys and frustrations of her marriages, and the death of her second husband. With startling clarity and unwavering composure, Thomas tells stories made of mistakes and loyalties, adventures and domesticities, of experience both deeply personal and universal.

This is a book in which silence speaks as eloquently as what is revealed. Openhearted and effortlessly funny, these brilliantly selected glimpses of the arc of life are, in an age of too much confession, a welcome tonic.

This is the third book that I've read by Abigail Thomas. I first discovered her memoir A Three Dog Life in 2007 after reading about it on Nan's blog (Letters from a Hill Farm). I followed up with What Comes Next and How to Like It in 2016. Safekeeping was published in 2000 and provided me with greater insight into Abigail's earlier years, but I didn't care for it as much as her later works. The vignettes jump around in time, as well as point of view (first person, third person, etc.). This slim book reads a bit like a novel, and is just shy of 200 pages, so it's a quick read, but with little take-aways. I had planned to read Still Life at Eighty as soon as I finished Safekeeping, but I think I'll hold off. Maybe I'll re-read the two I loved and then finish up with Still Life at Eighty.

"An artful scatter of snapshot moments... revealing a life that's remarkable not for its events but for the way it's recalled, with rue, insight and wit." ~ Rocky Mountain News

"Razor-sharp pieces of radiant truth.... Not so much memoir as a stained-glass window of scenes garnered from a life. This is an unforgettable portrait of a grown-up woman who has learned to rejoice in being herself. Reading it, we feel the crazy beauty of life." ~ Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird

What Comes Next and How to Like It

What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
Nonfiction - Memoir
2015 Scribner
Finished on January 4, 2016
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)
Paperback edition available April 19, 2016

Dogs don't wake up on the wrong side of the bed. There is no wrong side of the bed for a dog.

Publisher's Blurb:

What comes next? Readers who loved Abigail Thomas's memoir A Three Dog Life have been wondering. Abigail herself has wondered. What comes after the devastating loss of her husband? What form does a lifelong friendship take after certain lines are crossed? How does a mother cope with her daughter's serious illness? Or the death of a beloved dog?

And how to like it? How to accept, appreciate, enjoy? How to find solace, and pleasure? What will we do for our most trusted, valuable companions?

What comes Next and How to Like It is an extraordinarily moving memoir about many things, but at the center is the friendship between Abigail Thomas and a man she met thirty-five years ago. Through marriages, child raising, and the vicissitudes and tragedies of life, this deep, rich bond has sustained her.

What Comes Next and How to Like It is the best work yet by a woman who has already done some of the best work in the field. It's about friendship, and the shocks friendship can endure when it's true and deep. It's about the rueful pleasures (not to mention the jarring pitfalls) of getting old, and about enduring tragedy, sickness, and loss. Thomas speaks of these big things by scattering the ordinary jewelry of everyday life: loving dogs (even when they chew your most precious possessions), Googling old boyfriends, making a killer macaroni and cheese. Small speaks for large here, in a calm voice that talks to the mind while it fills the heart. So much of this book's wisdom is between the lines and in the white spaces. It may only take you two days to read, but the impact will stay with you for a long, long time. Abigail Thomas fills memory with living breath. ~ Stephen King

It's been almost nine years since I read A Three Dog Life, a wonderful memoir which I loved and look forward to reading again. I was thrilled to get an ARC of Thomas's latest book last fall and saved it for the holiday season, since I knew it was the sort of book I could pick up here and there, maybe reading a few pages every night. I marked so many passages and have enjoyed flipping through the book a second time as I compose this review.

On Aging & Memory: 

I have a bad memory. I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don't feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to her twins, and really, from the back, it looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen? I think, but, oh well, I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.

On Grief & Memory:

I don't worry about my husband, the worst that could happen to him already happened. He was hit by a car in April of 2000, and sustained permanent brain damage. Seven years later, January 1, 2007, he died. Grief is different from worry. I don't want to remember what it was like before, eating muffins and reading the paper together on the porch. I don't want to remember him planting the wild grasses that he loved, or the way he smiled at me, or his generous heart. I don't want to remember walking down Broadway holding hands. I am still shocked by what happened. I am used to never getting used to it. But grief overtakes me in the coffee aisle, or sweeping the porch, or smiling at the dogs, catching me unaware. Grief is not a pleasure, but it makes me remember, and I am grateful.

On Being an Old Lady:

All of which leads me to wonder what kind of old lady I will be. I'm already well past middle age unless I plan to live to 136, and a student recently described me as a "nice old lady with a tattoo," which startled me because I think of myself as not nice, not old, nor a lady. Didn't she see me smoking? and downing shots of tequila? Not to mention all the flirting that went on between me and that nice man to whom I took an instant liking? I don't feel like an old lady unless this is how an old lady feels.

On Forgetting:

I am becoming the kind of old lady who puts her lipstick on crooked and wears too much blush--of whom when she wakes in the morning and goes downstairs to make coffee, her daughter says, "Mom, you look crazy," and it's only partly because of her hair, which sticks up in bunches like feathers. The kind of old woman who can't remember the word "pastels" speaking of the chalk you draw with and forgets where she put her bag her keys her glasses her book but can remember Steve Buscemi's name and two of his movies: Con Air and Fargo.

On the Wrong Side of the Bed:

Here's what I love about dogs. They aren't careful not to disturb you. They don't overthink. They jump on the bed or the sofa or the chair and plop down. They come and they go. I'm not sure they love me exactly, but they count on me because I am a source of heat and food and pleasure and affection. If one of them is lying next to me and suddenly prefers the sofa, I don't take it personally. Dogs don't wake up on the wrong side of the bed. There is no wrong side of the bed for a dog.

There are so many other passages to share, but I don't want to reveal the entire book!

Photograph by Jennifer Waddell

Final Thoughts:

I loved this memoir! It can easily be read in a day, but I chose to take my time, savoring Thomas's honest views on life as a mother, wife, grandmother and friend. It was the perfect book to read during the holidays since some of the chapters are only a page, a paragraph, or even a sentence in length. I could read a few pages here and there and not let the distractions of life interfere with my enjoyment, as they might if I had been reading a novel. This is one to read over and over again!

Go here to read my review on A Three Dog Life.

A Three Dog Life

A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas
Memoir
Finished on 5/7/07
Rating: 4/5 (Very good)
Nonfiction Book Challenge #1





Publisher's Blurb:

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.

An excerpt:

This is the one thing that stays the same: my husband got hurt. Everything else changes. A grandson needs me and then he doesn’t. My children are close then one drifts away. I smoke and don’t smoke; I knit ponchos, then hats, shawls, hats again, stop knitting, start up again. The clock ticks, the seasons shift, the night sky rearranges itself, but my husband remains constant, his injuries are permanent. He grounds me. Rich is where I shine. I can count on myself with him.

I live in a cozy house with pretty furniture. Time passes here. There is a fireplace and two acres and the dogs run around and dig big holes and I don’t care. I have a 27-inch TV and lots of movies. The telephone rings often. Rich is lodged in a single moment and it never tips into the next. Last week I lay on his bed in the nursing home and watched him. I was out of his field of vision and I think he forgot I was there. He stood still, then he picked up a newspaper from a neat pile of newspapers, held it a moment, and carefully put it back. His arms dropped to his sides. He looked as if he was waiting for the next thing but there is no next thing.

and another:

Writing is the way I ground myself, what keeps me sane. Writing is the way I try and make sense of my life, try to find meaning in accident, reasons why what happens happens-even though I know that why is a distraction, and meaning you have to cobble together yourself. Sometimes just holding a pen in my hand and writing milk butter eggs sugar calms me. Truth is what I’m ultimately after, truth or clarity. I think that’s what we’re all after, truth, although I’d never have said such a thing when I was young. And I write non-fiction because you can’t get away with anything when it’s just you and the page. What would be the point? Who would you be kidding? Why bother writing at all? Once in a while you come too close to an uncomfortable truth, and your writing goes flat, and your instinct might be to change the subject. But this is the most interesting of moments. There is so much to be found out. You can either stare at the page and realize hot dog, this is a safe to be cracked, or you can crawl under the covers and take a nice nap.


I've always been fond of memoirs, but I've felt especially drawn to this area of nonfiction writing more during the past two years than ever before. As the author states, "Truth is what I'm ultimately after, truth or clarity." I previously read Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which she shares the intimate details of the tragic loss of her husband. However, Abigail Thomas' stark honesty resonated much more strongly with me than Didion's, in spite of the fact that Rich Thomas' TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) didn't result in death. Thomas' writing reflects that of one coming to terms with a grief of sorts, yet unlike Didion's, her narrative is much more provacative and intensely emotional. Perhaps because she's living the life of a wife that isn't.

The book's epigraph explains the meaning behind the title:

Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a 'three dog night.' - Wikipedia

Some favorite passages:

I seem to be leaving in the road behind me all sorts of unnecessary baggage, stuff to heavy to carry. Old fears are evaporating, the claustrophobia that crippled me for years is gone, vanished. I used to climb the thirteen flights to our apartment because I was terrified of being alone in the elevator. What if it got stuck? What if I never got out? Then there I was one Sunday morning in the hospital, Rich on the eighth floor, the elevator empty. What had for years terrified me now seemed ridiculously easy. I haven't got the time for this, I thought, and got right in. When the doors closed I kept thinking, Go ahead! Try it! What more can you possibility do to me?

I know this is something my husband and I have both experienced since the death of our daughter. We've been through the absolute worst. All the minor worries of day-to-day living are pointless.

and

One day I look out the hospital window high above Central Park, and I feel as if there's a tightrope connecting Rich's hospital room to our apartment, and all I do is walk back and forth on it, the city far below. I can almost see it shivering like a high-tension wire above the trees. This is when I learn that I have to take care of myself, even if my leaving makes him angry, or worse, sad. I need to eat and sleep. I need to do something mindless, go to a movie, fritter away an afternoon. And I realize something even more startling: I can't make everything all right. It's his body that is hurt, not mine. I can't fix it, I can't make it never have happened.

and

Time has gotten skewed, as tangled as fish line, what means what amymore? How could it be two years since the accident? I calculate it in months, weeks, but the numbers don't feel real or important. One hundred and four weeks. Twenty-four months. Whole handfuls of time have slipped through my fingers. Seasons rush by before I have grasped "winter," "spring." Somehow I have gotten to be sixty, in no time Rich will be seventy. We would have had parties to mark the place, but the last birthday slid by unnoticed, the lat anniversary. Twenty-four months since the accident. If it were a child, it would be talking, walking, climbing into everything. "Time flaps on its mast," wrote Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. For us time hangs off its mast. Sometimes I'm not even sure about the mast. Something stopped ticking April 24, 2000. Our years together ended, our future together changed. In one moment of startling clarity he told me, "My future has been dismantled."

I found myself nodding my head as I read the above passage. In many ways, it feels like we lost a huge chunk of time after Rachel's death. I've found myself in the middle of a conversation, talking about an event that took place three years ago, yet thinking it was only a couple of years past. It's as if we were living underwater, anethesitized from the real world, for almost an entire year. Time passed, but we stayed locked in our own world of grief. Of course, more time has since passed and we've returned to the real world, making plans for a new motorcycle, a kayak, road trips and living life to its fullest.

I first heard about A Three Dog Life from Nan over at Letters from a Hill Farm. Her lovely review piqued my interest and I immediately ordered a copy. Not only will I re-read this gem of a book, but I plan to buy copies of Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life and An Actual Life.