What It's Like When the Unimaginable Happens

Dear subscribers,

I’VE BEEN AWOL from this newsletter for more than two years. Those of you who read my last post will remember that my eldest daughter, Miranda, died suddenly at the age of 32 on February 16, 2024. Her death was like a meteor hitting our family. I stopped … everything. I certainly couldn’t write. I could hardly even breathe. For months every morning, consciousness brought the same first thought: Miranda is still dead. It was the opposite of waking from a nightmare—no rush of relief, no Thank God it isn’t true! The same thought haunts my awakenings still.

Gradually, the broken writer in me struggled to put into words the emotions I was experiencing. I began to try to describe those feelings. How the grief of a parent differs from any other type of grief. What it’s like when the unimaginable happens to you and not someone else. The maternal obsessions of how I might have prevented my daughter’s death (fueled by the delusion that solving it would bring her back). How the digital world randomly lobs unexpected emotional “IEDs” that blow you up upon impact (Danielle, we thought you’d enjoy these memories with Miranda from 2023! Would you like to connect to Miranda’s iPhone?) Why some friends vanish and others astonish you with their unending compassion. The unwanted advice you receive from “happiness hucksters” — influencers who insist that the worst thing that can befall someone is actually an opportunity for personal growth.

How nothing prepares you for the sight of your dead child.

Why you will never be yourself again.

And why life as you knew it will never be the same again.

I suppose I thought the exercise of writing all this down might even lead me to some sort of understanding. No book or source about grief I turned to was helpful in this regard. Instead they promised I would eventually pull “through” my grief to — what, “healing?” “Acceptance?” And how long would this take, I wondered? I needed help now. This second. I wasn’t sure I could make it to the next second (let alone to the tidy “stages” I was assured my grief would follow). For the first time in my life I saw the appeal of suicide. The promise of eternal nothingness seemed preferable to the unceasing agony of daily living.

Eventually I fashioned these observations into a memoir, Dispatches From Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, which will be published May 5 by Infinite Books. (It’s available for pre-order now: click on link above or ad at the bottom of this newsletter).

AMONG THE FIRST things I learned when I entered this wretched Alternative Universe of Grief is how well-populated it is. As I noted in Dispatches:

However unique and precious your own loss feels, you discover you’ve simply joined the limping thousands — millions —whose lives have been devastated by the routine catastrophes that befall someone somewhere every second of every day.

Surprisingly, many are people you already knew but who never told you about their losses: a sibling, a parent catastrophically early, a best friend in school, a child a decade or so before. But why would they? What can someone who hasn’t experienced this level of tragedy possibly say? “I can’t imagine.” “I’m so sorry.”

It’s not the listener’s fault, of course. Those who dwell in the Alternative Universe have had to learn another, very difficult, language. One of my ambitions for the book is to help those who are fortunate enough not to live here to better comprehend those who do — especially if they know a deportee to our miserable land.

My major goal, however, was to reach other parents — especially mothers — who struggle with their ongoing grief, often, alas, alone. Even the most sympathetic friends and relatives move on in their lives along with the rest of the world. Completely understandably BTW! Most harbor the same notions I did in the Before: that the griever will eventually adapt and adjust. It may take a few months, possibly even a year… But that’s not what happens.

In the two years since Miranda died, I’ve been fortunate to find a community of grieving mothers, online and in person. Our experiences are unfailingly similar: A mother grows self-conscious that she is not recovering on schedule. She fears she is turning into a “grief bore.” She worries about her inability to keep going forward. She is embarrassed to keep imposing upon others for support. She may well sink into even deeper depression. She might turn to addiction. She will certainly feel at times that she is losing her mind. Gradually she goes quiet, swallowed up by loneliness, viewing herself as a failure at dealing with loss.

I shared early drafts of my book with some members of this community. One wrote, “Thank you. Now I have something to show to people.” It was one of the most gratifying comments I received.

IN THE MONTH leading to the book’s launch, I’ll publish this newsletter weekly. I’ll share further observations on grief and offer my subscribers an advance excerpt from the book. I’ll recommend books and “grief-fluencers” I eventually — finally! — found who did truly offer comfort and help to people in my situation.

I’ll also include links to upcoming media appearances. (My first major interview will be on The David Frum Show podcast. Don’t ask how I managed to snag this incredible media coup, but let me tell you it took a lot of negotiation. In the end, the host agreed to veer from his usual focus on current events and politics to a deeply personal discussion about mutual loss. It also helped that I had LouLou on my side, gazing at him with her imploring, limpid eyes.) And I’m exceedingly honored that The Atlantic magazine will run an excerpt in its upcoming May issue.

Please feel free to share this newsletter with anyone you think it might help. I don’t charge a subscription fee.

Share

And also please reach out to me or leave a comment if you, too, are on a “journey through the unthinkable.” I’ll send a limited number of free signed copies to my fellow travelers once they are available.

One day soon I hope to return to writing on other topics for this newsletter. Miranda was always an original and witty source of information about the modern culture for young women (as you can read here and here). Among the many thousands of reasons I miss her was for her inevitably hilarious take on whatever was going on at the moment — usually shared over a glass of wine in a happening bar Miranda had discovered before anyone else.

It feels good to reconnect with you all again.