Reading Time: 7 minutes None of this would have landed in my purview if I hadn’t stepped out on Christmas Eve last year with the last of my seasonal food hampers. I knew that only folks having the roughest of times would be out during Nochebuena, a holiday that finds folks here, from the poorest to the richest, with […]
grief
Posted inDeath & Dying
20 months without my son: On ruptures, migrations, transformations
Reading Time: 4 minutes A traumatic loss like my son’s suicide is a violent rupture. My beautiful boy, so uniquely alive despite his mental illness, is no longer a physical presence. The anticipation of helping him navigate the transition from adolescence into adulthood was suddenly, shockingly a dead dream.
Posted inPinn Drop with Anthony Pinn
Grieving while disbelieving | Candace Gorham
“When you are grieving, you are just at the bottom of the barrel, you have minimal energy, you have minimal life in you. Grief is such an ugly, scary, lonely thing. Don’t use your precious little resources in that moment to battle with somebody because they say ‘God bless you,’ or even “Can I pray with you?’ If somebody is trying to give you the only thing that they can think of, I don’t see the point of responding out of anger.”
Posted inDeath & Dying
‘Skeleton Tree’ and ‘Ghosteen’: Grieving with Nick Cave
Reading Time: 6 minutes Since losing my son Josh in 2021, I look for a handful of traits in art that helps me grieve. Pressured to pretend my life is back to normal, I want words, images, and music that bear witness, that affirm my loss is bottomless, that yes, it is as bad as it feels. At the […]
Posted inDeath & Dying
Imagine there’s no heaven. Is it always easy if you try?
Reading Time: 4 minutes I have my own convictions about what happens after we die. As a person with a terminal illness, I’ve had good reason to explore the topic. But do I have to insist that others join me in that conviction?
Posted inPsychology
Peter Weir’s ‘Fearless’: Grief, the superpower nobody wants
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jamie Raskin’s got it. Nick Cave, too. I’ve got it. And in Peter Weir’s 1993 classic, Fearless, Max Klein has it. Thanks to trauma and loss, we are, like the movie title says, fearless. But we’d relinquish this superpower in a heartbeat, if our lives could rewind. When US Representative Jamie Raskin was in the […]
Posted inFilm/TV
‘Aftersun’ perfectly captures the grief-memory connection
Reading Time: 6 minutes Some coincidences you can’t make up. On the day I watched Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, her masterful film on grief and memory, my daughter sent me a video of my now-deceased son Josh. He was laughing as we watched a silly YouTube cartoon on Christmas Eve a few years back. Oh, the mix of emotions this […]
Posted inTrue Story
When absence outweighs presents: Grief and the holidays
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Nothing is something, where something is meant to be.” Nick Cave wrote those lyrics for Ghosteen, his album-length conversation with his dead son Arthur, and he was spot on. Even more, sometimes that nothing is everything. And loss alters everything, including our yearly observance of holidays. For many people, Thanksgiving and Christmas are already tough. […]
Posted inDeath & Dying
Marking one year without my son: Coping with death anniversaries
Reading Time: 5 minutes This entire column, not just this entry, merits a content warning. I write about suicide, depression, post-traumatic stress, and other serious topics. If you are having suicidal thoughts, please reach out to someone you trust, establish care with a therapist, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988), or go to your nearest emergency room. Please […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
On ‘tomorrow sorrow’: How we grieve the future today
Reading Time: 7 minutes I was six years old when Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired one of its most beloved episodes, “The Inner Light.” In it, Captain Jean-Luc Picard wakes to a life not his own. He lives in a small village, where he works as an iron weaver, and everyone explains that he is recovering from […]