“HERE IF YOU NEED ME,” Kate Braestrup, Little, Brown and Co., August 2007, 224 pages.

In “Here If You Need Me,” due out in August, Kate Braestrup without reserve opens the deep wound of her husband’s unexpected death and gives us the privilege of watching how she and her four children, left behind, began to heal.

It is, indeed, a privilege: In her retelling of her husband Drew’s passing, her schooling at Bangor Theological Seminary and her work as chaplain for the Maine Warden Service, Braestrup reveals herself as a woman of remarkable poise and wit, even through that which we fear the most – the loss of the ones we can’t live without.

Braestrup weaves together stories of her time after Drew’s fatal car crash – of preparing his body for cremation with her own hands, of the casseroles brought to her doorstep by concerned neighbors, of becoming suddenly a single parent – with tales from her work as chaplain for the state’s search-and-rescue teams.

Drew once had aspirations of becoming a clergyman, and after his death, Braestrup followed that calling. As chaplain, Braestrup draws on her own struggle to support others facing great loss, describing those most difficult moments – waiting with the parents of the little girl lost in the Maine woods; stroking the hair of the woman in the neck brace after telling her that her boyfriend didn’t make it; listening to the warden who, after seeing a pair of little red gloves by a child-size break in the ice, couldn’t help but think of his own little ones at home. Her voice throughout the memoir bleeds with genuineness and fragility.

The contrast – Braestrup as a victim, supported by her community, then Braestrup as a supporter of the accident victims – brings mortality and how we view it into a fascinating and often comforting light.

The stories tighten the throat and weight the gut – the pages at times blur when the reader’s tears come too steadily – but Braestrup skillfully balances the details of her anguish with a sense of humor so uplifting that even though “Here If You Need Me” has tragedy at its root, it’s ultimately quite hopeful.

But what makes this work so moving isn’t its theme; Braestrup could have dusted off plenty of gray cliches to expound on the anguish of death and the merits of community. No, what makes this work moving is that Braestrup is not speaking in absolute terms of some vague, far-off concept; instead, she disrobes the details of her own intimate grief, and for that, we trust her, we believe her, and we believe, therefore, in her unbelievable hope.

Though Braestrup punctuates some moments in the book with Bible quotes and religious references, she never alienates those who might not be religious. She does not preach; her humility is itself humbling. It’s made clear that this journey is one taken by us all, not just by those who worship.

For sure, her thoughts on grief are at times explained using biblical passages, but much more often, she speaks through the hallowed moments of her own life, as when she, a fresh widow, mere hours after she learns that her husband is gone, takes his cereal spoon out of the kitchen sink and puts it into her mouth. How divinely human.

“Here If You Need Me” is a fresh retelling of the 23rd Psalm – “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me” – that may well have been one stepping stone toward healing for Braestrup, who is now remarried. It certainly could be the same for others in grief.

Tracy Collins is a BDN copy editor.