No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life

“We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other.”

Along the spectrum of losses, from the door keys to the love of one’s life, none is more unimaginable, more incomprehensible in its unnatural violation of being and time, than a parent’s loss of a child.

Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899–July 2, 1961) was in his twenties and living in France when he befriend Gerald and Sara Murphy. The couple eventually returned to America when one of their sons fell ill, but it ...