Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

by Suleika Jaouad

For the person facing death, mourning begins in the present tense, in a series of private, preemptive goodbyes that take place long before the body’s last breath.

We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.

Death never comes at a good time, but getting a death sentence when you’re young is a breach of contract with the natural order of things.

Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. It fills your chest with shards of glass. It interrupts you mid-laugh when you’re at a party, chastising you that, just for a moment, you’ve forgotten. It haunts you until it becomes a part of you, shadowing you breath for breath.

There is no restitution for people like us, no return to days when our bodies were unscathed, our innocence intact. Recovery isn’t a gentle self-care spree that restores you to a pre-illness state. Though the word may suggest otherwise, recovery is not about salvaging the old at all. It’s about accepting that you must forsake a familiar self forever, in favor of one that is being newly born. It is an act of brute, terrifying discovery.

To be well now is to learn to accept whatever body and mind I currently have.

“Grief isn’t meant to be silenced,” she says, “to live in the body and be carried alone.”

May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.