On Grief Memoirs

an obsession of sorts

a head’s up: This newsletter is about grief and loss . Specifically, I write about grief in the aftermath of suicide. If this is too much for you today, that’s okay. Please take care of yourself.

I think I might be obsessed with grief.

This year I am participating in a 52 book reading challenge along with my amazing book club community. One of the prompts is to read a book about a topic you are obsessed with. I figured I would read a book about rescue dogs or lesbians or cheese and call it good.

As I read books throughout the year I ask myself if I can fit them in any of the prompts for the reading challenge. It really is very fun. Like a nerdy scavenger hunt I can complete from my couch.

I recently read Sloane Crosley’s new memoir, Grief is for People. It is a powerful, darkly funny, probing account of loss and survival. I loved it. Can I count it as a book about a topic I am obsessed with? Is it okay to be obsessed with grief? Is it okay to admit to being obsessed with grief?

I didn’t mean to become a reader of grief memoirs. Somehow over the years I have accumulated a whole shelf in my heart and brain of these first hand accounts of loss. Wild by Cheryl Strayed is the first book I remember reading that felt like it told the truth about loss. Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz and A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung are two recent favorites. Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow is unforgettable. How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones. Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. These books live in me.

When I learned that Sloane Crosley’s new book is specifically a reckoning with the death of her dearest friend by suicide, I knew it was something I needed to read.

I lost my oldest sister to suicide almost twenty years ago. Ever since I have ached for honest accounts of the experience of suicide loss. I carry around the feeling that it is too sad, too dark, too heavy to unload on anyone, ever. We know it happens, but maybe we shouldn’t talk about it. And yet I think about it all the time. It is never not on my mind.

We need to talk about it. It’s a public health crisis and we need to talk about it today.

In the new memoir, Sloane Crosley tells the story of two losses - one, inconvenient and unsettling - the robbery of her Manhattan apartment in which several pieces of family jewelry were stolen, and the second - devastating beyond belief - the suicide of her best friend, Russell. At first I was wary that Sloane Crosley could tell the tale of these two losses simultaneously. One so meaningless against the horror of the other. Through the lens of her apartment robbery, though, Crosley demonstrates what it looks like to try to track down that which cannot be found, to bring back that which is gone for good, to undo that which cannot ever be undone. This searching, this endless, fruitless searching will be familiar to any of us grieving, which is to say all of us.

I read grief memoirs because I want to talk about it. I want somebody to tell the truth. Life is loss. It’s the one, terrible thing we all have in common. None of this is new.

With every grief memoir I read, every specific story of unimaginable loss made legible on the page, I am reminded that someone, somewhere got through it. The memoir itself is not proof of healing or recovery or a return to wholeness. I think any writer would probably dissuade you of this belief. Rather, the memoir is proof of the other side. Of some other side. Of some continuation. A lighthouse that says, something terrible happened and I’m still here.

The other day I told my therapist that if/when a certain terrible thing happens I won’t be okay. You can insert any terrible thing here. There are so many terrible things.

She responded, “No, you won’t be okay.”

Grief memoirs are testimonials of our not-okayness. None of us is okay but most of us are still here. As long as we are here it’s worthwhile to try to tell the truth.

Grief is For People inherits from the work of Joan Didion, whose memoirs of loss are the pillars of the genre. Sloane Crosley even writes about a time her friend Russell pranked her by impersonating Crosley’s hero, Didion, in an email. Both Crosley and Didion are careful, sharp, observers of the world. Wordsmiths who turn their fierce, unsparing attention inward. They intellectualize and question this one, human phenomenon that spares none of us.

There are no words for it is a phrase you hear around grief and loss all the time. I have read some of the greatest writers of our time put words to this one, most human experience and I can confirm that there are actually no good words for it. No words that make it better. No words that fully capture the person who is lost. That’s impossible. And still these books exist. Artifacts of the living. Artifacts of someone trying to explain that which cannot be explained.

So am I obsessed with Grief? I think maybe I am. It feels weird to say it, but here we are. I think I am afraid, in some backwards, superstitious way, that if I admit to being obsessed with grief it will only bring more grief upon me.

The fact is, I never stop missing my sister. No book has ever or could ever make sense of her death. I know for sure that there is deep and unimaginable loss ahead of me. I am afraid that my learning about grief has only just begun. How can I not be obsessed? How can I think about anything else? I don’t know, but I am going to keep reading to find out.

I love you.

I’m glad you’re here.

Love,

Rosamond