Under the Whispering Door

by T.J. Klune

Death has a beauty to it. We don’t see it because we don’t want to. And that makes sense. Why would we want to focus on something that takes us away from everything we know? How do we even begin to understand that there’s more than what we see?”

To me, this is the crux of the novel, the theme, the central argument. Death is scary. Of course it is! The idea that we just . . . stop—that everything stops—is as haunting as it is surreal. I can’t say that I know death better than others do, though I’ve experienced much of it in my life: people lost to violence, to illness, to accidents, to murder. I’ve known people who took their own lives because that was the only option they felt was left for them. My father and uncle died when I was five. My grandfather, a year later. Cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, acquaintances, people whom I’ve met once, only to find out later they passed. I wrote this book to understand my grief after losing someone close to me, the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. I don’t know that I got the answers I was looking for, but I did discover something about myself I did not expect: I am not afraid of death. When it is my time, I’ll go knowing I tried my best. And in that, I found the comfort I was so desperately searching for.