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“I’ll tell you a secret about adults, Clover,” he said finally. “Even though it seems like they know what they’re doing, often they’re just trying their best to work life out as they go. And that’s especially true of parents—I think every mom and dad probably wishes they’d done things differently at some point, in some way.”
“But what I do know is that I’m very glad that you are here with me.”
I beamed up at him, curling my hand under his arm. “Me too.”
Look at the way they inhabit the world. Do they like to be noticed or do they prefer to blend in? Do they approach problems creatively or intellectually? What agitates them or calms them?”
I’d learned the hard way that when people ask you how you’re doing after a loved one’s death, they don’t really want to know. They want to hear that you’ve moved on because they can’t stand to look at your pain. And when I didn’t move on, the emails gradually trickled to nothing.
“It’s easy to be ‘good with people’ when they’re dying. I know I’m helping them and I know what they need: comfort, company, and someone to listen.”
“What kind of life are you living if you’ve never let anyone see the real you?”
Someone who trusted that you would treat their heart gently—and would take on the sacred duty of doing the same for you.
There’s nothing like being in love—even if it doesn’t last as long as you want it to.”
It frustrated me that society was so determined to quantify grief, as if time could erase the potency of love. Or, on the other hand, how it dictated that grief for someone you knew fleetingly should be equally as fleeting. But while a mother who miscarries might not have ever had the chance to hold that child, they had plenty of time to love them, to dream and hope for them. And that means their grief is twofold—they’re not just grieving the child, but the life they never got to experience. Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn’t worthy?
“You know, everyone talks about how they want to live forever, but they don’t think about what it’s like when your wife and all your friends are dead, and you’re the only one left. It’s lonely.”
As I clasped my hands around the ceramic mug, a familiar longing niggled at me. An incongruous tug-of-war between the need for solitude and the craving for emotional connection—I didn’t want company, but I didn’t want to feel alone.
they always stopped for a brief kiss during dinner, like a palate cleanser between the salad and the main course. That when they watched TV on the sofa—Reuben always to Julia’s left—he would absent-mindedly rub circles on her back while she would comb her fingers tenderly through his hair.
The truth is, the solitary life snuck up on me. Kind of like how innocuous drips of water can suddenly become a problematic puddle.
I didn’t spend all my school lunchtimes under a tree with a book because I didn’t like my classmates. I did it because reading felt like the greatest adventure—a way of traveling to new worlds and seeing life through other people’s eyes. In my mind, I was an intrepid explorer, but my classmates’ assumption was that I was a weird loner. And since they didn’t engage with me, I didn’t try to engage with them.
To be fair, my fascination with death didn’t help matters—especially during high school. It probably wasn’t smart to focus all three of my ninth-grade social studies projects on death. Or to write a poem for English class from the perspective of a mortician. But since death had shaped my life from the time I was five, I wanted to observe it, to decode it. I wanted to find sense in the thing that felt so senseless.
The room always had the same scent—the woody spice of pencil shavings competing with the wet-dog-like aroma of teenaged boys.
That was the day that I began to realize how hard it is to be anything but what the world already thinks you are.
“My grandpa died alone while I was abroad,” I said quietly. “It made me realize how many people die alone and that I could be more useful to the world by being a death doula than by being an academic who just studies death in the abstract. And I just didn’t feel like traveling much after he died—I guess I kind of lost my love for it. Staying in New York has helped me hold on to him.”
During my first couple of weeks, I’d felt overwhelmed with sadness seeing the unfortunate circumstances of these people, finding it hard to see past their debilitating illnesses and slowly wilting bodies. But I gradually began to realize that pitying them wouldn’t take away their pain. The kindest thing I could do for them was to look them in the eye and simply acknowledge their presence as human beings. That’s when I’d promised myself I’d never turn away from someone’s pain, no matter how much I wanted to.
The clanging of the mealtime bell signaled dinner in the nursing home. Ever creatures of habit, the abuelos shuffled toward the stark dining hall, taking their designated seats at the long communal tables.
