Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 171 of 263 · 20 per page

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities who am ageless and half-grown and still seeking my sisters witches in Dahomey wear me inside their coiled cloths as our mother did mourning. I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic and the noon’s new fury with all your wide futures promised I am woman and not white. Coniagui Women The Coniagui women wear their flesh like war bear children who have eight days to choose their mothers it is up to the children who must decide to stay. Boys burst from the raised loins twisting and shouting from the bush secret they run beating the other women avoiding the sweet flesh hidden near their mother’s fire but they must take her blood as a token the wild trees have warned them beat her and you will be free on the third day they creep up to her cooking pot bubbling over the evening’s fire and she feeds them yam soup and silence. “Let us sleep in your bed” they whisper “Let us sleep in your bed” they whisper “Let us sleep in your bed” but she has mothered before them. She closes her door. They become men. Chain News item: Two girls, fifteen and sixteen, were sent to foster homes, because they had borne children by their natural father. Later, they petitioned the New York courts to be returned to their parents, who, the girls said, loved them. And the courts did so. I Faces surround me that have no smell or color no time only strange laughing testaments vomiting promise like love but look at the skeleton children advancing against us beneath their faces there is no sunlight no darkness no heart remains no legends to bring them back as women into their bodies at dawn. Look at the skeleton children advancing against us we will find womanhood in their eyes as they cry which of you bore me will love me will claim my blindness as yours and which of you marches to battle from between my legs? II On the porch outside my door girls are lying like felled maples in the path of my feet I cannot step past them nor over them their slim bodies roll like smooth tree trunks repeating themselves over and over until my porch is covered with the bodies of young girls. Some have a child in their arms. To what death shall I look for comfort? Which mirror to break or mourn? Two girls repeat themselves in my doorway their eyes are not stone. Their flesh is not wood nor steel but I can not touch them. Shall I warn them of night or offer them bread or a song? They are sisters. Their father has known them over and over.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Colin sur la banquise. This business of the ice floes is familiar to me. I did not need Baby Animals and Their Mothers to bring the image of the ice floes alive. In the first year of Quintana’s hospitalizations I had watched ice floes from her hospital windows: ice floes on the East River from her windows at Beth Israel North, ice floes on the Hudson from her windows at Columbia Presbyterian. I think now of those ice floes and imagine having seen, floating past on one or another slab of breaking ice, a baby polar bear and its mother, heading for the Hell Gate Bridge. I imagine having shown the baby polar bear and its mother to Quintana. Colin sur la banquise. Just let me be in the ground. I resolve to forget the ice floes. I have thought enough about the ice floes. Thinking about the ice floes is like thinking about the transporter being called to take her to the morgue. I walk into Central Park and sit for a while on a bench to which is attached a brass plaque indicating that a memorial contribution has been made to the Central Park Conservancy. There are now in the park many such brass plaques, many such benches. “Quintana Roo Dunne Michael 1966–2005,” the plaque on this bench reads. “In summertime and wintertime.” A friend had made the contribution, and asked me to write out what I wanted the plaque to read. The same friend had come to visit Quintana when she was doing therapy in the neuro-rehab unit at UCLA, and after she saw Quintana had a cafeteria lunch with me in the hospital patio. It did not occur to either of us on the day we had the cafeteria lunch in the hospital patio at UCLA that Quintana’s recovery would end at this bench. So we still thought of that year. Quintana’s “recovery.” We had no idea then how rare recovery can be. No idea that “recovery,” like “adoption,” remains one of those concepts that sounds more plausible than it turns out to be. Colin sur la banquise. The wheelchair. The detritus of the bleed, the neurosurgery. In summertime and wintertime. I wonder if in those revised circumstances she remembered The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, what it meant to her then. She did not want to talk about those revised circumstances. She wanted to believe that if she did not “dwell” on them she would wake one morning and find them corrected. “Like when someone dies,” she once said by way of explaining her approach, “don’t dwell on it.” 29 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  She had managed even a priest, a wedding mass. She had kept referring to the priest as “Father Dan.” It was only when he stood to actually do the ceremony that I realized that “Father Dan” was Daniel Berrigan, one of the activist Berrigan brothers. It seemed that Daniel Berrigan had been an advisor on Roland Joffé’s The Mission. It seemed that Liam had played a role in The Mission. Tasha had designed the entire event, in other words, as a piece of theater, the very kind of moment Tony liked best in the world. He particularly would have liked Tasha forgetting the wafers for the mass, tearing up long baguettes to pass in their place, but Tony was dead by the day of that wedding. Tasha died in March 2009. This was never supposed to happen to her. On her twenty-first birthday her father had made a film of the lunch he gave in her honor at Linda Lovelace’s former house on Kings Road. John had wished her happy birthday, on film. Quintana and Fiona Lewis and Tamara Asseyev had sung “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” on film. After lunch we had untied rafts of white balloons and watched them drift over the Hollywood hills, on film. These are the lines from W. H. Auden that Tony quoted that afternoon as “the best twenty-first birthday wish you can make for anyone”: So I wish you first a Sense of theatre; only Those who love illusion And know it will go far— Tasha and her father and John and Quintana and the whippets and the parrots and the white balloons, all still there, on film. I have a copy of the film. So I wish you first a sense of theatre— So her father would have said at the wedding in Millbrook. The second such warning, this one not at all sudden, came in April 2009. Because I had been showing symptoms of neuritis, or neuropathy, or neurological inflammation (there seemed no general agreement on what to call it), an MRI was done, then an MRA. Neither suggested a definitive reason for the symptoms at hand but images of the Circle of Willis showed evidence of a 4.2 mm by 3.4 mm aneurysm deep in that circle of arteries—the anterior cerebral, the anterior communicating, the internal carotid, the posterior cerebral, and the posterior communicating—at the base of my brain. This finding, the several neurologists who examined the images stressed, was “entirely incidental,” had “nothing to do with what we’re looking for,” and was not even necessarily significant. One of the neurologists ventured that this particular aneurysm “doesn’t look ready to blow”; another suggested that “if it does blow, you won’t live through it.”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  After the remains of my mascara finished streaming down my face, I felt a sense of relief similar to when medicine kicks in, giving you a break from a hallucinogenic fever. I’d somehow overlooked how cleansing it could be to let my feelings rip. After this happened a few more times (shout-out to Home Depot and their decision to pipe Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” through their stereo system), I’d started to realize that these breaks helped me survive. They made me realize that the only way through my sadness was to allow the waves of big feelings to move through my body—something I’d been hell-bent on avoiding, for fear I would drown. If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why had I been so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing these hints of catharsis felt, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where else in my life have I been avoiding grief? Did that avoidance have anything to do with the strange existential angst that had been creeping up on me over the last few years, where I sensed that I was not, in fact, living as fully as I could be? The more I thought about it, the instinct to avoid grief made perfect sense to me. As well-meaning as my family friend’s advice was, Keep that mascara intact, honey was not going to help me heed my soul’s call to grow. For that, I would need to surrender to my grief and other big emotions. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO FEELWhile we may not want to even think about grief, loss, or unexpected (and unwanted) change, in order to feel less alone, less broken, less crazy (you’re not!), we need to talk about and tend to our most tender feelings. We also need to find the right kind of support for our emotions and ourselves in the process. Only then will we be able to pick up the pieces of our shattered hearts and lives and put ourselves back together. Only then can we heal. That is what this book is all about: learning how to be a Mourning Person when we’d rather stay under the covers and go back to sleep. That said, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: grief sucks—and it isn’t a solo flier. Grief rolls with an entourage of complicated friends, who all demand bottle service at the club—emotions like weariness, judgment, shame, jealousy, self-loathing, and all the other not-so-glamorous feelings we don’t want people to know we’re experiencing.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The same friend had come to visit Quintana when she was doing therapy in the neuro-rehab unit at UCLA, and after she saw Quintana had a cafeteria lunch with me in the hospital patio. It did not occur to either of us on the day we had the cafeteria lunch in the hospital patio at UCLA that Quintana’s recovery would end at this bench. So we still thought of that year. Quintana’s “recovery.” We had no idea then how rare recovery can be. No idea that “recovery,” like “adoption,” remains one of those concepts that sounds more plausible than it turns out to be. Colin sur la banquise . The wheelchair. The detritus of the bleed, the neurosurgery. In summertime and wintertime . I wonder if in those revised circumstances she remembered The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , what it meant to her then. She did not want to talk about those revised circumstances . She wanted to believe that if she did not “dwell” on them she would wake one morning and find them corrected. “Like when someone dies,” she once said by way of explaining her approach, “don’t dwell on it.” 29 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone , Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone , Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come . Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead , Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves , Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves . He was my North, my South, my East and West , My working week and my Sunday rest , My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong . The stars are not wanted now; put out every one , Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun , Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good . So go W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” sixteen lines that, during the days and weeks immediately after John died, spoke directly to the anger—the unreasoning fury, the blind rage—that I found myself feeling. I later showed “Funeral Blues” to Quintana. I told her that I was thinking of reading it at the memorial service she and I were then planning for John. She implored me not to do so. She said she liked nothing about the poem. She said it was “wrong.” She was vehement on this point. At the time I thought she was upset by the tone of the poem, its raw rhythms, the harshness with which it rejects the world, the sense it gives off of a speaker about to explode. I now think of her vehemence differently.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  WELCOME YOUR GRIEF HOMELosing a parent is devastating at any age. For better or worse, our parents inform who we are and how we live and love. A parent’s death prompts a cascade of existential angst, right alongside the grief we experience. Despite the magnitude of this kind of loss, most of us never really talk about this experience. It’s as if there’s an unspoken rule that parents die first. It’s the natural order of things, so we should just keep quiet about the storms that may be brewing inside. Once the memorial is over and we’ve finished eating the shrimp casserole the neighbor dropped off, we move on. Back to the grind and the groceries. But what happens when the groceries remind us of that time we made root beer floats together and watched the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908? I’ll tell you, we crack wide open and don’t feel OK or normal talking about our anguish. Instead, we go radio silent. For me, there was this sense that if I talked about my grief past an acceptable period of time (whatever that is), I would seem childish and immature or, worse, tedious. Those beliefs kept me silenced. I didn’t want to be a burden or a bummer; no one does. In the wake of my dad’s passing, there’s a part of me that will never be OK. There’s a hole in my heart that will always need my care and attention. I can’t fully move on and I never will. But in embracing my grief, I can begin to imagine what moving forward might look like. While there’s no time limit on grief, we also don’t want it to dominate our lives to the point that there isn’t room for much else. The hope is to extend grief an ongoing invitation to come home whenever it needs comfort—just like a loving parent would offer their child when they needed support. Even when we’re grown-ass humans, we all still have moments of feeling like little kids on the inside. When we ache, we want to be soothed, especially by our primary caregivers. We want to know that it will be OK, and so will we. The loss of our parents is one of the most destabilizing and emotionally significant experiences we will ever go through. It kicks up deep feelings of fear and abandonment, wounds and behaviors that are passed down in our very DNA. It changes both our lives and our brains (which we’ll explore in a coming chapter). It’s OK to actually feel the immensity of this loss. It doesn’t go away, just like our love doesn’t go away. But over time, the waves get easier to surf. Especially when we remember the love as much as, if not more than, the grief. CASH-ONLY BARSometime after the jackhammer incident, when the veil kept getting thinner by the day, Dad caught me as I was walking out of his room.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  He was still full of life and love and possibility—but his body was failing, and his time was slowly coming to an end. We checked in with our vet, who reassured us that he didn’t think it was time yet. He also praised our efforts and reassured us that it was OK to let go if we couldn’t handle the care anymore. No, we told him, we could. Then one day, he was ready. Though we had some damn good times in those last months, Buddy started letting go. I watched as he retreated back to the internal cocoon-like state he was in when we first found him. His spark was replaced by anxiety and frustration. He had had enough. It was time. That afternoon we made a love fort out of pillows in the middle of the living room. We held Buddy close and told him how much we loved him. Right before he passed, with the help of our wonderful vet, he popped his head up and looked straight into my eyes. In that moment, I felt his immense love, gratitude, and full presence. Then he peacefully left his body. In the end, Buddy lived a year and a half longer than the vets expected, a year and a half of more love. He was a light when we grappled with our own big questions and made peace with our answers. Loving Buddy was some of the best loving I’ve had the opportunity to experience. He helped us create our unique pack. He reminded us to champion our sensitivity and let our personalities shine—at our own pace. He showed us a greater capacity for love. And he reminded us that all beings deserve a chance to live the one life they’ve been given. Love comes in all shapes and sizes. Little bundles of joy, big furry hound dogs, and scrappy beautiful mutts. GRIEF IS GRIEF The bond between animals and their humans is real, so when an animal dies and their daily dose of unconditional love becomes a memory, it’s brutal. After Buddy died, Brian and I were devastated. Our boy was gone. The porch had no mayor. The air in our house was thick with sadness. Lola sat by the front door, waiting for Buddy to come home. He wasn’t coming, though. As with all grief, the only way out was through. Unfortunately, a lot of the grief literature and resources out there often overlook pet loss, or pay minimal lip service to it. But our furry, feathered, and scaly babies deserve better. And so do we. I recently read a book that lists an actual “hierarchy of grief,” as if the excruciating ache of loss can be simplified into neat categories of “importance.”

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Of course, some of these situations will take time to resolve and it’s unreasonable and unfair to expect people to suddenly become less angry simply because you apologized. Forgiveness can take time and energy and even the most deep and sincere apology doesn’t undo the potential damage. Not Every Angry Person Lets You Know It Of course, not every angry person wants to communicate. As you know already, anger can be expressed in a lot of different ways and sometimes angry people shut down and go silent. How do you deal with an angry person who simply won’t communicate with you? What do you do if they won’t even admit to you that they are mad? We’ll take that on in the next chapter. * For whatever reason, I have a hard time admitting in the moment that I forgot to turn off a light. I know I have a bad habit of leaving lights on, but when my wife tells me I left one on, I try desperately to find ways to deny it. I will do all sorts of cognitive gymnastics to blame it on someone else. As I write this, unencumbered by defensiveness because I’m not in the moment, I can tell you that it’s a totally and completely unreasonable feeling to have and position to take. In that moment, though, I find all sorts of ways to deflect. Honestly, if I could reasonably blame it on the dog, I would. * This explains the leaving the lights on example earlier. I like to think of myself as a responsible person who cares about the environment. As minor as it is, this habit of leaving lights on is really inconsistent with the person I want to be, so I get defensive about the fact that I can’t seem to fix it. * I have noticed it is sometimes an intentional strategy for people to focus on the behaviors of angry people in order to minimize the justified anger behind those feelings. Protesters, for instance, are often maligned for their tactics as a way to diminish their concerns. You hear it in the expressions of journalists and politicians who say things like, “I understand their concerns, but I wish they would voice those concerns in a different way.” CHAPTER 11 STRATEGY SIX: FIND WAYS TO REACH THOSE WHO REFUSE TO COMMUNICATE Cutting Off Contact A client, Anne, once came to talk to me because she had alienated a friend and didn’t know what to do about it. It had started over something small, but had escalated into a bigger fight, and Anne had hurt her friend’s feelings. Her friend then completely disconnected from her. She stopped responding to calls and texts (this was in the era before social media, but I suspect she would have unfriended her on Facebook as well), and when they bumped into each other on her college campus, the friend just walked past her without saying anything or making eye contact. Anne was devastated.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  We were anatomy partners in dissecting a cadaver and roomed together during our internships. The three of us with our wives vacationed together in many places: the Poconos, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Hudson Valley, Cape May, and Napa Valley. We loved the days and nights we spent together talking, biking, playing games, and sharing meals. Larry had a long career as a cardiac surgeon in Rochester, New York, but then, after thirty years of practice, switched fields, obtaining a PhD in the history of medicine at Stanford. In his final years he taught literature to undergraduates and medical students before dying suddenly of a ruptured aortic aneurism. In my brief eulogy at his funeral, I tried to add a lighter note by describing a vacation trip the six of us had taken in the Poconos at a time when Larry was in his bad-clothes phase and had worn a beaten-up, wrinkled T-shirt to a fancy restaurant. We all harangued him about his appearance until he stood up and left the table. He returned ten minutes later looking quite dapper: he had just bought the shirt off our waiter’s back! (The waiter, fortunately, had a spare one in his locker.) Though I wanted to lighten the atmosphere with this tale at the funeral, I choked up and struggled to get the words out. Herb, who had trained as a gynecologist and then as an oncologist, gradually developed dementia. He lived his last years in a state of such confusion and physical pain that I felt, as with my sister, that I had lost him long before he died. I was too ill with the flu to travel to Washington, DC, for his funeral, but sent my remarks with a friend to be read at the graveside. I felt relief for him and for his family, and yet, at the precise time of his funeral, I grew agitated, took a brief walk in San Francisco, and unexpectedly broke into tears, recalling a scene I hadn’t thought of in many years. When Herb and I were in college and medical school, we had often played pinochle on Sundays with his Uncle Louie, a bachelor who lived with Herb’s family. Louie, an endearing man with a tendency toward hypochondriasis, always started the evening by announcing that he wasn’t sure he could play well that night because there was “something wrong upstairs,” pointing to his head. That was the cue for each of us to whip out our brand new stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs and, for a five-dollar fee, take his blood pressure, listen to his heart, and pronounce him healthy. Louie was such a good player that we didn’t hang on to our five dollars very long: almost always, by the end of the evening, he had recouped his money and then some. I loved those evenings.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  They were all there parading before me as of yore—with their tics, their grimaces, their supplications, their sly little tricks. Every day they were dumped on my desk out of a huge flour sack, it seemed—they, their troubles, their problems, their aches and pains. Maybe when I was selected for this odious job someone had tipped off the big Scrabblebuster and said: “Keep this man good and busy! Put his feet in the mud of reality, make his hair stand on end, feed him bird lime, destroy his every last illusion!” And whether he had been tipped off or not, that old Scrabblebuster had done just that. That and a little more. He made me acquainted with grief and sorrow. However … among the thousands who came and went, who begged, whistled and wept before me naked, bereft, making their last call, as it were, before turning themselves in at the slaughter-house, there appeared now and then a jewel of a guy, usually from some far-off place, a Turk perhaps or a Persian.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  HILARY. It could not be that they were not who seemed now dead, but by glorious martyrdom they were advanced to eternal life; and consolation is for those who have suffered loss, not for those who have reaped a gain. Rachel affords a type of the Church long barren now at length fruitful. She is heard weeping for her children, not because she mourned them dead, but because they were slaughtered by those whom she would have retained as her first-born sons. RABANUS. Or, The Church weeps the removal of the saints from this earth, but wishes not to be comforted as though they should return again to the struggles of life, for they are not to be recalled into life. GLOSS. (ord.) She will not be comforted in this present life, for that they are not, but transfers all her hope and comfort to the life to come. RABANUS. Rachel is well set for a type of the Church, as the word signifies ‘a sheep’ or ‘seeing;’ (vid. note i, p. 19.) her whole thought being to fix her eye in contemplation of God; and she is the hundredth sheep that the shepherd layeth on his shoulder. 2:19–2019. But when Herod was dead, behold, an Angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20. Saying, Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young Child’s life. EUSEBIUS. (Eccles. Hist. i. 8.) For the sacrilege which Herod had committed against the Saviour, and his wicked slaughter of the infants of the same age, the Divine vengeance hastened his end; and his body, as Josephus relates, was attacked by a strange disease; so that the prophets declared that they were not human ailments, but visitations of Divine vengeance. Filled with mad fury, he gives command to seize and imprison the heads and nobles out of all parts of Judæa; ordering that as soon as ever he should breathe his last, they should be all put to death, that so Judæa though unwillingly might mourn at his decease. Just before he died he murdered his son Antipater, (besides two boys put to death before, Alexander and Aristobulus.) Such was the end of Herod, noticed in those words of the Evangelist, when Herod was dead, and such the punishment inflicted. JEROME. Many here err from ignorance of history, supposing the Herod who mocked our Lord on the day of His passion, and the Herod whose death is here related, were the same. But the Herod who was then made friends with Pilate was son of this Herod and brother to Archelaus; for Archelaus was banished to Lyons in Gaul, and his father Herod made king in his room, as we read in Josephus.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  When I see that brother behind my eyes his irises are bloodless and without colour his tongue clicks like yellow coins tossed up on this shore where we share the same corner of an alien and corrupted heaven and whenever I try to eat the words of easy blackness as salvation I taste the colour of my grandmother’s first betrayal. I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. But I do not whistle this man’s name at the shrine of Shopona I cannot bring down the rosy juices of death upon him nor forget Orishala is called the god of whiteness who works in the dark wombs of night forming the shapes we all wear so that even cripples and dwarfs and albinos are sacred worshippers when the boiled corn is offered. Humility lies in the face of history and I have forgiven myself for him for the white meat we all consumed in secret before we were born we shared the same meal. When you impale me upon your lances of narrow blackness before you hear my heart speak mourn your own borrowed blood your own borrowed visions singing through a foreign tongue. Do not mistake my flesh for the enemy do not write my name in the dust before the shrine of the god of smallpox for we are all children of Eshu god of chance and the unpredictable and we each wear many changes inside of our skin. Armed with scars healed in many different colours I look into my own faces as Eshu’s daughter crying if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves the self that we hate in others soon we shall all lie in the same direction and Eshidale’s priests will be very busy they who alone can bury all those who seek their own death by jumping up from the ground and landing upon their heads. from The Black Unicorn (1978) For Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde and Frederick Byron Lorde The Face Has Many Seasons A Woman Speaks Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  18 James Baldwin thoughtthat Iwas grieving for her. And I may have been, butif that isso, then I am grievingstill. My fatherand myaunt got onvery badly and, without ever knowing howor why I felt it,I felt thattheir long battle had everything to dowithmydead mother. Iremember when I was very young how,inthe big living room ofthehouse inSan Francisco, my mother's photograph,which stood allby itself onthe mantelpiece,seemed torulethe room. It was asthoughherphotograph proved howher spirit dominatedthat airand controlled usall. I rememberthe shadowsgathering in the far comers of thatroom, inwhich I never felt at home,and myfatherwashed inthegold hght whichspilled downon him from thetalllamp whichstoodbeside hiseasy chair. He would bereading hisnewspaper, hiddenfrom me behind hisnewspaper,sothat, desperateto conquer hisattention, I sometimesso annoyed himthat our duelended with me being carried fromtheroom in tears. Or I remember him sitting bent forward,hiselbows on his knees, staringtowardsthe great window which held back the inkynight. I used to wonder whathe was thinking.In theeye ofmy memory he alwayswearsa grey, sleeveless sweaterand he has loosened his tie,and hissandy hairfalls forward over a square, ruddy face. Hewas one of those people who, quickto laugh, areslow to anger; sothat their anger, whenit comes, is allthe more impressive, seeming to leap from GIOVANNI'SROOM 19 some unsuspected crevice likea firewhichwill bring thewhole house down. And hissister Ellen, a Uttle olderthanhe, a little darker,always overdressed, overmade-up, witha face and figure beginningto harden,and withtoo much jewelryeverywhere, clanging and banging inthe light,sitsonthesofa, read- ing; shereada lot,all the newbooks, and she used to goto themoviesa great deal.Or she knits. It seems to me thatshe was always carrying a greatbagfull of dangerous-looking knitting needles, orabook, or both.And I don't know whatshe knitted, though I suppose she must, at leastoccasionally, haveknittedsome- thing for my father, orme.But Idon'tremem- berit, anymorethan I remember thebooksshe read. It might alwayshavebeenthesame book and she might havebeenworking onthesame scarf, or sweater, orGod knows what,allthe years I knew her. Sometimes sheandmy father played cards — this was rare; sometimes they talked together in friendly, teasing tones, butthis was dangerous. Their banter nearly always ended in a fight. Sometimes there was company and I was often allowed towatch them drink their cocktails. Then my father was athis best, boyish and expansive, moving about through the crowded room with a glassinhis hand, refilling people's drinks, laughing alot, handling all the men as though they were his brothers, and flirting with the women. Or no, not flirting with them, strutting like acock before them. Ellen always seemed to be watch-

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  He didn’t force himself to trudge through another evening out because so-and-so would be disappointed when what he really needed was to sink into his La-Z-Boy and watch golf. I was lucky to have a front-row seat to his heart as he shed tears, had vulnerable conversations, and tied up worldly loose ends. I watched as he forgave himself and others, and slowly swatted away old nagging regrets, like tiny gnats buzzing around his shoulder. He was open about finally letting go of the chronic anxiety that had plagued him throughout his life—the big stuff he’d spent years wishing he could change, as well as the “agonizing reappraisals,” or what he called ARs for short, those cringey moments you wish you could take back. Like when you have one too many champagne cocktails at a party and tell the obnoxious hostess what you really think of her. It took a lot of guts for him to become more himself as he neared death—faults, fragilities, tumors, and all. The emotional shifts he made during this time gave me a beautiful example of what self-acceptance actually looks like. And that was striking, especially considering the formidable challenges brought on by his illness. Here he was riddled with cancer, unable to feed or bathe himself, sporting magic underwear (my name for his adult diapers), and yet becoming more OK and more loving toward himself with each fleeting day. In my career as an author and speaker, I’ve had the privilege of sharing some of the biggest stages with the titans of transformation. But in those final years of his life, Dad’s presence and wisdom went far beyond anything I’d ever experienced. WELCOME YOUR GRIEF HOME Losing a parent is devastating at any age. For better or worse, our parents inform who we are and how we live and love. A parent’s death prompts a cascade of existential angst, right alongside the grief we experience. Despite the magnitude of this kind of loss, most of us never really talk about this experience. It’s as if there’s an unspoken rule that parents die first. It’s the natural order of things, so we should just keep quiet about the storms that may be brewing inside. Once the memorial is over and we’ve finished eating the shrimp casserole the neighbor dropped off, we move on. Back to the grind and the groceries. But what happens when the groceries remind us of that time we made root beer floats together and watched the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908? I’ll tell you, we crack wide open and don’t feel OK or normal talking about our anguish. Instead, we go radio silent. For me, there was this sense that if I talked about my grief past an acceptable period of time (whatever that is), I would seem childish and immature or, worse, tedious. Those beliefs kept me silenced.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  I suddenly see myself in the uniform of an officers’ training school: we are strolling again villageward, in 1916, and (like Maurice Gerald and doomed Henry Pointdexter) have exchanged clothes—Yuri is wearing my white flannels and striped tie. During the short week he stayed that year we devised a singular entertainment which I have not seen described anywhere. There was a swing in the center of a small circular playground surrounded by jasmins, at the bottom of our garden. We adjusted the ropes in such a way as to have the green swingboard pass just a couple of inches above one’s forehead and nose if one lay supine on the sand beneath. One of us would start the fun by standing on the board and swinging with increasing momentum; the other would lie down with the back of his head on a marked spot, and from what seemed an enormous height the swinger’s board would swish swiftly above the supine one’s face. And three years later, as a cavalry officer in Denikin’s army, he was killed fighting the Reds in northern Crimea. I saw him dead in Yalta, the whole front of his skull pushed back by the impact of several bullets, which had hit him like the iron board of a monstrous swing, when having outstripped his detachment he was in the act of recklessly attacking alone a Red machine-gun nest. Thus was quenched his lifelong thirst for intrepid conduct in battle, for that ultimate gallant gallop with drawn pistol or unsheathed sword. Had I been competent to write his epitaph, I might have summed up matters by saying—in richer words than I can muster here—that all emotions, all thoughts, were governed in Yuri by one gift: a sense of honor equivalent, morally, to absolute pitch. 2I have lately reread The Headless Horseman (in a drab edition, without pictures). It has its points. Take, for instance, that barroom in a log-walled Texan hotel, in the year of our Lord (as the captain would say) 1850, with its shirt-sleeved “saloon-clerk”—a fop in his own right, since the shirt was a ruffled one “of finest linen and lace.” The colored decanters (among which a Dutch clock “quaintly ticked”) were like “an iris sparkling behind his shoulders,” like “an aureole surrounding his perfumed head.” From glass to glass, the ice and the wine and the monongahela passed. An odor of musk, absinthe, and lemon peel filled the saloon. The glare of its camphine lamps brought out the dark asterisks produced on the white sand of its floor “by expectoration.” In another year of our Lord—namely 1941—I caught some very good moths at the neon lights of a gasoline station between Dallas and Fort Worth.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  If that happens, there’s a chance we can catch it. We just don’t know if we can put it back on top of the mountain—which is where you’re the safest. There are just too many unknowns, so think hard before you potentially wake the sleeping giant inside you.” Brian and I talked long and hard about this dilemma. Though we loved the idea of having kids, we weren’t willing to put my life on the line to do it. Kids weren’t a make-it-or-break-it part of our vision for a life well lived. Plus, the last thing I wanted was to abandon a child and a partner. I knew what growing up in an environment of absence and loss felt like, and I didn’t want to pass that experience down the genetic chain. Contemplating mortality helps you get real clear, fast. We talked about adoption, but I was more open to the idea than Brian was—likely because I had such a positive experience with my own adopted father. Adoption isn’t for everyone. It’s also a lot harder for a stage IV cancer patient to qualify as a candidate. If my health deteriorated or I died, it would create more trauma for a kid who already experienced a painful and difficult start. Together, we arrived at a place where we believed that while kids might have been an added joy, not having them didn’t make us joyless or “childless” (such a belittling term). Quite the contrary. Our lives are filled with both joy and freedom. Brian and I are grateful for the time we have to explore our own desires, grow our relationship, and run an impactful business. We have amazing nieces and nephews, a hilarious godchild, and friends with adorable kids we love. We get to play and enjoy their curiosity, imagination, and priceless questions. We also get to leave and go out to dinner or watch a great movie when they melt down. Tantrums are our exit music. But even though we’ve made peace and found a way to enjoy both worlds, we still needed to mourn this decision. We still needed to grieve our dreams of what might have been. And we still feel sad from time to time—all of which is normal. Plus, as much as I know everyone has their own baggage (which is more about them than me), I also still get hurt when I allow the occasional nasty comment from a random social media follower to burrow into my head. Random follower (let’s call her Betsy): “You’ll never know real love if you don’t have children.” Me: “Really, Betsy?” Every human can know real love. Every single one of us. The humans with kids and the ones without them. Even the a-holes like Betsy. LOVE COMES IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES Once we closed the door on the kids’ chapter, I naturally poured my energy into my childhood love: animals.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  We passed the whole day together and when he heard how I spent my days in casual reading and occasional speaking and my Topsy-turvey nights, he urged me to throw up the law and go to Europe to make myself a real scholar and thinker. But I could not give up Sophy and my ultra-pleasant life. So I resisted, told him he overrated me: I’d easily be the best advocate in the State, I said, and make a lot of money and then I’d go back and do Europe and study as well. He warned me that I must choose between God and Mammon; I retorted lightly that Mammon and my senses gave me much that God denied: “I’ll serve both”, I cried, but he shook his head. “I’m finished, Frank”, he declared at length, “but I’d regret life less if I knew that you would take up the work I once hoped to accomplish, won’t you?” I couldn’t resist his appeal: “All right”, I said, after choking down my tears, “give me a few months and I’ll go, round the world first and then to Germany to study.” He drew me to him and kissed me on the forehead: I felt it as a sort of consecration. A day or so afterwards he took train for Denver and I felt as if the sun had gone out of my life. I had little to do in Lawrence at this time except read at large and I began to spend a couple of hours every day in the town library. Mrs. Trask, the librarian, was the widow of one of the early settlers who had been brutally murdered during the Quantrell raid when Missourian bandits “shot up” the little town of Lawrence in a last attempt to turn Kansas into a slave-owning state. Mrs. Trask was a rather pretty little woman who had been made librarian to compensate her in some sort for the loss of her husband. She was well-read in American literature and I often took her advice as to my choice of books. She liked me, I think, for she was invariably kind to me and I owe her many pleasant hours and some instruction. After Smith had gone West I spent more and more time in the library for my law-work was becoming easier to me every hour. One day about a month after Smith had left, I went into the library and could find nothing enticing to read. Mrs. Trask happened to be passing and I asked her: “What am I to read?” “Have you read any of that?” she replied pointing to Bohn’s edition of Emerson in two volumes. “He’s good!” “I saw him in Concord”, I said, “but he was deaf and made little impression on me.” “He’s the greatest American thinker”, she retorted, “and you ought to read him.”

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Rome, a city of narrow streets and high wooden tenements, was in real danger of being wiped out. The fire burned for three days and three nights, was halted, and then broke out again with redoubled violence. The Roman populace had no doubt who was responsible, and put the blame on the emperor. Nero had a passion for building, and they believed that he had deliberately taken steps to obliterate Rome so that he could rebuild it. Nero's responsibility must remain forever in doubt; but it is certain that he watched the raging inferno from the tower of Maecenas and expressed himself as charmed with the flower and loveliness of the flames. It was freely said that those who tried to extinguish the fire were deliberately hindered and that men were seen to rekindle it again when it was likely to subside. The people were overwhelmed. The ancient landmarks and the ancestral shrines had vanished; the Temple of Luna, the Ara Maxima, the great altar, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the shrine of Vesta, their very household gods were gone. They were homeless; and, in the phrase of the Dean of Canterbury, F. W. Farrar, there was `a hopeless brotherhood of wretchedness'. The resentment of the people was bitter. Nero had to divert suspicion from himself; a scapegoat had to be found. The Christians were made the scapegoat. Tacitus, the Roman historian, tells the story (Annals, 15:44): Neither human assistance in the shape of imperial gifts, nor attempts to appease the gods, could remove the sinister report that the fire was due to Nero's own orders. And, so, in the hope of dissipating the rumour, he falsely diverted the charge on to a set of people to whom the vulgar gave the name of Chrestians, and who were detested for the abominations they perpetrated. The founder of the sect, one Christus by name, had been executed by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; and the dangerous superstition, though put down for the moment, broke out again, not only in Judaea, the original home of the pest, but even in Rome, where everything shameful and horrible collects and is practised. Clearly, Tacitus had no doubt that the Christians were not to blame for the fire and that Nero was simply choosing them to be the scapegoats for his own crime. Why did Nero pick on the Christians, and how was it possible even to suggest that they were responsible for the fire of Rome? There are two possible answers. (i) The Christians were already the victims of certain slanders. (a) In popular opinion, they were connected with the Jews. Anti-semitism is no new thing, and it was easy for the Roman mob to attach any crime to the Jews and, therefore, to the Christians. (b) The Lord's Supper was secret, at least in a sense.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As a result, she stayed with him unhappily for five very important years. But it went deeper. Lisa’s father also stood in her way. “What do you mean that you couldn’t do to your mom what your dad did?” I wondered if Lisa knew something about her parents’ divorce that I didn’t. “I love my dad,” Lisa said, “but we don’t talk openly to each other. We both avoid conflict. We communicate a lot through our shared love of music, especially chamber music. He plays in a quartet with his friends and sends me the music reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle. We’re on e-mail every couple of days, mostly talking about music. It’s a bonding thing for us. I know he loves me more than anything and that he’s proud of me. He wants to protect me. And I want to protect him. So we tiptoe around each other and try and take care of each other and we never really talk.” “What do you need to protect him from?” Her response startled me. “I never want him to feel guilty about leaving his first marriage.” “And this puts you on guard in your dealings with him?” “Yes. Always.” “What would you like to say to him if you could be totally honest?” This question unleashed a torrent in Lisa. Tears streamed down her face as she said, “There’s always been a deep dark secret in our family. Even though everyone walks around it, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Did my dad have an affair while he was still married to my mom? Did something happen that I should know about? I know that my parents met in college and fell in love. They’re both decent, hardworking people. So why did a good man like my dad break his marriage vows and walk away from his wife? I suppose it’s silly, but I want to think of my dad as a good person. But is he?” She wiped away the tears. “You see it’s not enough that he loves me. I need to respect him. My relationship with him is not separate from my relationship with my mom just because they divorced when I was four. Why doesn’t he say that a long time ago he hurt my mom a lot and that he’s sorry? I know my mom was hurt whether she says so or not. I know that she loved him and probably still does. Why did he walk out?” Lisa, in her elegant business suit, was sobbing . At some point in her growing up, probably in adolescence, Lisa decided that her father had violated a fundamental moral code in leaving his wife and daughter to marry another woman. Because she dearly loves her father, she never discussed her conclusions with him. Undoubtedly he would have suffered greatly had his beloved daughter directly accused him of infidelity.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The answer we give is unclear, evasive, even guilty. Right now when I answer this question I find myself doubting my own accuracy, rechecking the increasingly undoable arithmetic (born December 5 1934, subtract 1934 from 2009, do this in your head and watch yourself get muddled by the interruption of the entirely irrelevant millennium), insisting to myself (no one else particularly cares) that there must be a mistake: only yesterday I was in my fifties, my forties, only yesterday I was thirty-one. Quintana was born when I was thirty-one. Only yesterday Quintana was born. Only yesterday I was taking Quintana home from the nursery at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. Enveloped in a silk-lined cashmere wrapper. Daddy’s gone to get a rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunny in. What if you hadn’t been home when Dr. Watson called? What would happen to me then? Only yesterday I was holding her in my arms on the 405. Only yesterday I was promising her that she would be safe with us. We then called the 405 the San Diego Freeway. It was only yesterday when we still called the 405 the San Diego, it was only yesterday when we still called the 10 the Santa Monica, it was only the day before yesterday when the Santa Monica did not yet exist. Only yesterday I could still do arithmetic, remember telephone numbers, rent a car at the airport and drive it out of the lot without freezing, stopping at the key moment, feet already on the pedals but immobilized by the question of which is the accelerator and which the brake. Only yesterday Quintana was alive. I disengage my feet from the pedals, first one, then the other. I invent a reason for the Hertz attendant to start the rental car. I am seventy-five years old: this is not the reason I give. A 26 doctor to whom I occasionally talk suggests that I have made an inadequate adjustment to aging. Wrong, I want to say. In fact I have made no adjustment whatsoever to aging. In fact I had lived my entire life to date without seriously believing that I would age. I had no doubt that I would continue to wear the red suede sandals with four-inch heels that I had always preferred. I had no doubt that I would continue to wear the gold hoop earrings on which I had always relied, the black cashmere leggings, the enameled beads. My skin would develop flaws, fine lines, even brown spots (this, at seventy-five, was what passed for a realistic cosmetic assessment), but it would continue to look as it had always looked, basically healthy. My hair would lose its original color but color could continue to be replaced by leaving the gray around the face and twice a year letting Johanna at Bumble and Bumble highlight the rest.