How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

this book is for the grievers this book is for the left behind this book is for every broken heart searching for a home

The last thing I said to my mom was “Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone?” And then it hits me, hard, that she’s done precisely that, and forever, really really forever, and suddenly I’m crying, great gushing waves that hurt my ribs and blur my eyes.

You feel skinned. Like whatever held you together has been peeled away. You half expect to look down and see your heart hanging out, a slow-beating, nearly dead thing.

nothing will ever be the same, because wherever you go? There will always be this emptiness inside you and beside you, where your mom is supposed to be, and only you will know the emptiness. Other people won’t be able to see it. They’ll see you, moving around the world, just like before. You’ll look alive on the outside but be dead on the inside, flicking your wings and watching everyone through the jar.

Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please come back. Please.

“All superheroes were sad kids. The sadness made them strong and then they rose up and helped people.”

But there isn’t a single word in the universe that you can think of that would describe the way you feel right now.

“What’s really important is the essence of the life lived. A college degree isn’t going to tell me how well somebody lived, now is it? Does having a boat mean you lived a good life? Or a summerhouse? What about saving each valentine your son made or even working a roadside jam stand? A million, what do they call it?—selfies—on some silly website. What does it all mean, in the end?”

Alice lost her mother when she was ten. That is a whole lifetime without a mother, to get used to not having a mother, and yet here she is. All these years later. Still grieving.

Alice said, “Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you.” She paused. “That was sixty-four years ago, and I still would like to know.”

There’s so much I wish I didn’t have to know about living.

And I do find it comforting that maybe when you die you get back all the things you’ve lost, like your legs, or your parents, or your daughters, or even your mom, and you get to eat all the ice cream you want, finally, and it doesn’t hurt one bit.