Everybody has a person close to them who died, or will die someday.
Perhaps the commonality of loss is what captivates people so much about Nora McInerny Purmort's story. The universe shocked her with a triple-play of grief in late 2014 when her husband, her father, and her child all died within weeks of each other, and she became a young woman mourning on multiple fronts.
The connection between self-described "notable widow" Purmort and the packed audience Monday at the Brainerd Public Library, was obvious. She was there to do a reading/book signing for her memoir, "It's Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too)." However, people were vigorously nodding along and interjecting audible "mmhmms" and "yeahs" so emphatically in response to things she said that by Minnesota standards, the event atmosphere was more like a Gospel revival service or maybe a concert.
She said jokingly at one point she would only tell another story if the audience chanted.
But they did chant. So she told a bunch of stories, despite claiming to be tired out by her 8-month-old baby (who later made an appearance during the signing).
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She told the story of how her husband Aaron started having seizures in 2010, later to be diagnosed with a brain tumor.
"When something bad happens to you ... you can feel yourself becoming less of a person, and more of a sad story," she said. "You can just feel the pity flowing freely out of the people around you, even the people who don't know you, because pity is free and we're from the Midwest and we love a deal."
When Aaron was dying, she could tell people were looking through them rather than at them, wanting to get out of the hospital room as fast as possible, Purmort recalled. That clashed vividly with Aaron's personality, she said. He was the most alive person she'd ever met, gregarious and sweet. So to prevent her husband from becoming merely a sad story, she set out writing a blog called "My Husband's Tumor," to describe the whole picture of the two of them and how they wanted to be treated. The blog's tagline was, "It's not a cancer story, it's a love story. With some cancer."
Purmort also wrote her husband's obituary with him in advance, including jokes about how he was secretly Spider-Man and a cheeky acknowledgement of his "first wife Gwen Stefani." When Aaron died Nov. 25, 2014, the obituary went viral. The blunt and funny attitude toward death it contained is also in Purmort's later writings. The obit got the attention of the literary world, and her book was the result.
On Monday, she also talked about her father, a Recon Marine in the Vietnam War who was often exposed to defoliant chemicals during his tour, and died from esophageal cancer almost four decades later.
In addition to her written work, Purmort also created the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast for American Public Media. She and her team have tackled both aspects of her own story and that of many other people who have experienced tragedy in their lives. For example, the combat death of one of her father's squadmates in Vietnam features in the episode "Semper Fi," which tracks how the incident stuck with the rest of the squad throughout their lives.
She patiently explained what a podcast was and how to download them for the audience Monday, which was mostly older women. Purmort, in her early 30s, clearly touched something inside people who were in the final act of their life. Perhaps it was because the world had managed to pack an entire lifetime's worth of loss into the first third of her life.
The podcast is working on its second season, consisting of 18 episodes, she said. She's also writing a movie for Fox.
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As if that weren't enough, Purmort also co-created an online group called the Hot Young Widows Club, where people who have lost significant others can vent, share stories, and organize meetups in person. She also writes for a number of online publications, including Elle, Buzzfeed and Cosmopolitan.
