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The Answer Was Me - Student Essay from The Struggle to be Strong

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The Answer Was Me - Student Essay from The Struggle to be Strong

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Instagram teen sensation poet

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5 TED Talks on handling grief

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5 TED Talks on creative ways to handle grief

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Be inspired by these speakers who found comfort in transforming grief and sadness into action, art and progress.

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Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, writes about his experiencing finding hope after the devastation of war.

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A list of books to read about grief and loss

The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord
The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
The Astonishing Color Of After by Emily X.R. Pan
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Good-bye Days by Jeff Zentner
My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
Willow by Julia Hoban
By the Time You Read This, I'll be Dead by Julie Ann Peters
I Was Here by Gayle Forman
The Upside of Unrequited-Becky Albertalli
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman
How it Ends-Catherine Lo
Forgive Me Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
The Memory of Light by Francisco X Stork
The Weight of Zero by Karen Fortunati
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

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An essay describing how grief changes over time.

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Thirteen Reasons Why - Excerpt from a novel

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Thirteen Reasons Why - Excerpt from a novel

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A shocking package arrives

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ONE HOUR AFTER SCHOOl A shoebox-sized package is propped against the front door at an angle. Our front door has a tiny slot to shove mail through, but anything thicker than a bar of soap gets left out

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Using Your Grief to Help Others - And Heal Yourself - Blog

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Using Your Grief to Help Others - And Heal Yourself - Blog

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How to use grief as a catalyst of change

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I have an odd kind of superpower. I can look at people who are suffering and feel immediate empathy for them. I'm not bragging here; it's true.

It's because I've been through my own brand of hell.

Six years ago we lost our 16-year-old son, our only child, in a car accident. When I tell someone this -- and I avoid telling people, believe me -- the most frequent response is, "I can't imagine."

This is shorthand for, "I can't imagine the depth of your pain. I can't imagine the bleakness of your life. How empty your house must seem. How endless each and every day."

They're right; they can't. Fortunately, time is indeed the great healer. My pain, bleakness, and emptiness have mostly receded. They may come swimming right back to the surface, though, if I see someone else in pain.

The question then becomes how I respond. Do I allow these feelings to overwhelm me, and retreat into the dark sorrow I know so well? Sometimes, yes, I do. But more often--I've been working hard on this -- I try to stand silently for a moment, letting myself feel the other person's pain. I ask myself if there's something I can do to help.

Often the best thing I can do for the person is simply to listen to his story. To ask questions like I'm really interested, which I am. To stay with her until my heart tells me it's okay to leave.

All this can be a powerful balm for someone who's having a terrible moment, or a terrible day. I know from experience. And when I comfort others, simply by being present for them, it's also a powerful balm for me.

I'm like everyone else, though, when it comes to having too much to do. Often I'll see a person in need and speed right by. The world is full of pain. I can't take it all on. No one is asking that I try.

It's my belief that I'm simply being asked to pay attention to suffering, and to step in when I sense an opportunity.

I might well have taken a different approach. People tell me I'm a strong woman, and after Reid's death my first impulse was to declare war on my grief. For a time I tried pushing through, powering on with my life despite all. But there was one sentiment I couldn't wrestle to the ground: My life had lost its meaning.

Gradually I realized that I might be able to find meaning and purpose again if I set out to help people make it through their own empty moments. To my amazement, I found that simple acts of kindness and compassion helped me rekindle the light that lives deep inside me.

I've often wondered why comforting others makes me feel so much more alive. Recently I've realized that having walked through the fire, I may be specially equipped to help others make the passage, and survive.

Grief has taught me that I can reach out, if only I dare. This is the source of my "superpower": The willingness to look at suffering full on, without flinching. We'd rather not be confronted by deep pain in this culture. We'd rather keep it hidden, and hide it within ourselves. But by hiding it, we imprison ourselves in the loneliest kind of solitary confinement. Breaking out, taking a chance and extending a hand to others, has been for me both a lifesaver and a way to honor Reid.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I keep my eyes peeled for people in pain or trouble. I simply try to stay aware of my surroundings, and to be open to engagement with those around me. This is the complete opposite of how I moved through my world right after Reid's death, hooding my eyes, struggling just to carry the stone that had become my heart. It feels liberating now to be open to possibility, to lightness, and to wielding the immensely healing -- for me -- power that lies within three simple words: Can I help?

This post is part of Common Grief, a Healthy Living editorial initiative. Grief is an inevitable part of life, but that doesn't make navigating it any easier. The deep sorrow that accompanies the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage or even moving far away from home, is real. But while grief is universal, we all grieve differently. So we started Common Grief to help learn from each other. Let's talk about living with loss. If you have a story you'd like to share, email us at strongertogether@huffingtonpost.com.

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healthy living dealing with grief coping with grief common grief grief

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Using Your Grief to Help Others -- And Heal Yourself

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I have an odd kind of superpower. I can look at people who are suffering and feel immediate empathy for them. I'm not bragging here; it's true. It's because I've been through my own brand of hell. Six years ago we lost our 16-year-old son, our only child, in a car accident.

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Read-aloud of a children's book about recovering after loss

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The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers | Read Aloud Book for Kids

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A poem about realizing those you've lost are always with you.

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Survivors network discusses the dangers of guilt for friends and family members of suicide victims.

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Battling Guilt - Survivors of Suicide Loss San Diego

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Jeffrey Jackson * Guilt is the one negative emotion that seems to be universal to all survivors of suicide, and overcoming it is perhaps our greatest obstacle on the path to healing. Guilt is your worst enemy, because it is a false accusation.

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Making Your Own Memory Box - How To Video

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Making Your Own Memory Box - How To Video

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Video that describes how to memorialize a person with a memory box

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"A Temporary Matter" - Excerpt from Interpreter of Maladies

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"A Temporary Matter" - Excerpt from Interpreter of Maladies

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By JHUMPA LAHIRI CHAPTER ONE
Interpreter of Maladies
Stories

Houghton Mifflin Company
Read the Review

A Temporary Matter

The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M. A line had gone down in the last snowstorm, and the repairmen were going to take advantage of the milder evenings to set it right. The work would affect only the houses on the quiet tree-lined street, within walking distance of a row of brick-faced stores and a trolley stop, where Shoba and Shukumar had lived for three years.

"It's good of them to warn us," Shoba conceded after reading the notice aloud, more for her own benefit than Shukumar's. She let the strap of her leather satchel, plump with files, slip from her shoulders, and left it in the hallway as she walked into the kitchen. She wore a navy blue poplin raincoat over gray sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-three, like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble.

She'd come from the gym. Her cranberry lipstick was visible only on the outer reaches of her mouth, and her eyeliner had left charcoal patches beneath her lower lashes. She used to look this way sometimes, Shukumar thought, on mornings after a party or a night at a bar, when she'd been too lazy to wash her face, too eager to collapse into his arms. She dropped a sheaf of mail on the table without a glance. Her eyes were still fixed on the notice in her other hand. "But they should do this sort of thing during the day."

"When I'm here, you mean," Shukumar said. He put a glass lid on a pot of lamb, adjusting it so only the slightest bit of steam could escape. Since January he'd been working at home, trying to complete the final chapters of his dissertation on agrarian revolts in India. "When do the repairs start?"

"It says March nineteenth. Is today the nineteenth?" Shoba walked over to the framed corkboard that hung on the wall by the fridge, bare except for a calendar of William Morris wallpaper patterns. She looked at it as if for the first time, studying the wallpaper pattern carefully on the top half before allowing her eyes to fall to the numbered grid on the bottom. A friend had sent the calendar in the mail as a Christmas gift, even though Shoba and Shukumar hadn't celebrated Christmas that year.

"Today then," Shoba announced. "You have a dentist appointment next Friday, by the way."

He ran his tongue over the tops of his teeth; he'd forgotten to brush them that morning. It wasn't the first time. He hadn't left the house at all that day, or the day before. The more Shoba stayed out, the more she began putting in extra hours at work and taking on additional projects, the more he wanted to stay in, not even leaving to get the mail, or to buy fruit or wine at the stores by the trolley stop.

Six months ago, in September, Shukumar was at an academic conference in Baltimore when Shoba went into labor, three weeks before her due date. He hadn't wanted to go to the conference, but she had insisted; it was important to make contacts, and he would be entering the job market next year. She told him that she had his number at the hotel, and a copy of his schedule and flight numbers, and she had arranged with her friend Gillian for a ride to the hospital in the event of an emergency. When the cab pulled away that morning for the airport, Shoba stood waving good-bye in her robe, with one arm resting on the mound of her belly as if it were a perfectly natural part of her body.

Each time he thought of that moment, the last moment he saw Shoba pregnant, it was the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering. It was cavernous compared to their own car. Although Shukumar was six feet tall, with hands too big ever to rest comfortably in the pockets of his jeans, he felt dwarfed in the back seat. As the cab sped down Beacon Street, he imagined a day when he and Shoba might need to buy a station wagon of their own, to cart their children back and forth from music lessons and dentist appointments. He imagined himself gripping the wheel, as Shoba turned around to hand the children juice boxes. Once, these images of parenthood had troubled Shukumar, adding to his anxiety that he was still a student at thirty-five. But that early autumn morning, the trees still heavy with bronze leaves, he welcomed the image for the first time.

A member of the staff had found him somehow among the identical convention rooms and handed him a stiff square of stationery. It was only a telephone number, but Shukumar knew it was the hospital. When he returned to Boston it was over. The baby had been born dead. Shoba was lying on a bed, asleep, in a private room so small there was barely enough space to stand beside her, in a wing of the hospital they hadn't been to on the tour for expectant parents. Her placenta had weakened and she'd had a cesarean, though not quickly enough. The doctor explained that these things happen. He smiled in the kindest way it was possible to smile at people known only professionally. Shoba would be back on her feet in a few weeks. There was nothing to indicate that she would not be able to have children in the future.

These days Shoba was always gone by the time Shukumar woke up. He would open his eyes and see the long black hairs she shed on her pillow and think of her, dressed, sipping her third cup of coffee already, in her office downtown, where she searched for typographical errors in textbooks and marked them, in a code she had once explained to him, with an assortment of colored pencils. She would do the same for his dissertation, she promised, when it was ready. He envied her the specificity of her task, so unlike the elusive nature of his. He was a mediocre student who had a facility for absorbing details without curiosity. Until September he had been diligent if not dedicated, summarizing chapters, outlining arguments on pads of yellow lined paper. But now he would lie in their bed until he grew bored, gazing at his side of the closet which Shoba always left partly open, at the row of the tweed jackets and corduroy trousers he would not have to choose from to teach his classes that semester. After the baby died it was too late to withdraw from his teaching duties. But his adviser had arranged things so that he had the spring semester to himself. Shukumar was in his sixth year of graduate school. "That and the summer should give you a good push," his adviser had said. "You should be able to wrap things up by next September."

But nothing was pushing Shukumar. Instead he thought of how he and Shoba had become experts at avoiding each other in their three-bedroom house, spending as much time on separate floors as possible. He thought of how he no longer looked forward to weekends, when she sat for hours on the sofa with her colored pencils and her files, so that he feared that putting on a record in his own house might be rude. He thought of how long it had been since she looked into his eyes and smiled, or whispered his name on those rare occasions they still reached for each other's bodies before sleeping.

In the beginning he had believed that it would pass, that he and Shoba would get through it all somehow. She was only thirty-three. She was strong, on her feet again. But it wasn't a consolation. It was often nearly lunchtime when Shukumar would finally pull himself out of bed and head downstairs to the coffeepot, pouring out the extra bit Shoba left for him, along with an empty mug, on the countertop.

Shukumar gathered onion skins in his hands and let them drop into the garbage pail, on top of the ribbons of fat he'd trimmed from the lamb. He ran the water in the sink, soaking the knife and the cutting board, and rubbed a lemon half along his fingertips to get rid of the garlic smell, a trick he'd learned from Shoba. It was seven-thirty. Through the window he saw the sky, like soft black pitch. Uneven banks of snow still lined the sidewalks, though it was warm enough for people to walk about without hats or gloves. Nearly three feet had fallen in the last storm, so that for a week people had to walk single file, in narrow trenches. For a week that was Shukumar's excuse for not leaving the house. But now the trenches were widening, and water drained steadily into grates in the pavement.

"The lamb won't be done by eight," Shukumar said. "We may have to eat in the dark."

"We can light candles," Shoba suggested. She unclipped her hair, coiled neatly at her nape during the days, and pried the sneakers from her feet without untying them. "I'm going to shower before the lights go," she said, heading for the staircase. "I'll be down."

Shukumar moved her satchel and her sneakers to the side of the fridge. She wasn't this way before. She used to put her coat on a hanger, her sneakers in the closet, and she paid bills as soon as they came. But now she treated the house as if it were a hotel. The fact that the yellow chintz armchair in the living room clashed with the blue-and-maroon Turkish carpet no longer bothered her. On the enclosed porch at the back of the house, a crisp white bag still sat on the wicker chaise, filled with lace she had once planned to turn into curtains.

While Shoba showered, Shukumar went into the downstairs bathroom and found a new toothbrush in its box beneath the sink. The cheap, stiff bristles hurt his gums, and he spit some blood into the basin. The spare brush was one of many stored in a metal basket. Shoba had bought them once when they were on sale, in the event that a visitor decided, at the last minute, to spend the night.

It was typical of her. She was the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad. If she found a skirt or a purse she liked she bought two. She kept the bonuses from her job in a separate bank account in her name. It hadn't bothered him. His own mother had fallen to pieces when his father died, abandoning the house he grew up in and moving back to Calcutta, leaving Shukumar to settle it all. He liked that Shoba was different. It astonished him, her capacity to think ahead. When she used to do the shopping, the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil, depending on whether they were cooking Italian or Indian. There were endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats from the Muslim butchers at Haymarket, chopped up and frozen in endless plastic bags. Every other Saturday they wound through the maze of stalls Shukumar eventually knew by heart. He watched in disbelief as she bought more food, trailing behind her with canvas bags as she pushed through the crowd, arguing under the morning sun with boys too young to shave but already missing teeth, who twisted up brown paper bags of artichokes, plums, gingerroot, and yams, and dropped them on their scales, and tossed them to Shoba one by one. She didn't mind being jostled, even when she was pregnant. She was tall, and broad-shouldered, with hips that her obstetrician assured her were made for childbearing. During the drive back home, as the car curved along the Charles, they invariably marveled at how much food they'd bought.

It never went to waste. When friends dropped by, Shoba would throw together meals that appeared to have taken half a day to prepare, from things she had frozen and bottled, not cheap things in tins but peppers she had marinated herself with rosemary, and chutneys that she cooked on Sundays, stirring boiling pots of tomatoes and prunes. Her labeled mason jars lined the shelves of the kitchen, in endless sealed pyramids, enough, they'd agreed, to last for their grandchildren to taste. They'd eaten it all by now. Shukumar had been going through their supplies steadily, preparing meals for the two of them, measuring out cupfuls of rice, defrosting bags of meat day after day. He combed through her cookbooks every afternoon, following her penciled instructions to use two teaspoons of ground coriander seeds instead of one, or red lentils instead of yellow. Each of the recipes was dated, telling the first time they had eaten the dish together. April 2, cauliflower with fennel. January 14, chicken with almonds and sultanas. He had no memory of eating those meals, and yet there they were, recorded in her neat proofreader's hand. Shukumar enjoyed cooking now. It was the one thing that made him feel productive. If it weren't for him, he knew, Shoba would eat a bowl of cereal for her dinner.

Tonight, with no lights, they would have to eat together. For months now they'd served themselves from the stove, and he'd taken his plate into his study, letting the meal grow cold on his desk before shoving it into his mouth without pause, while Shoba took her plate to the living room and watched game shows, or proofread files with her arsenal of colored pencils at hand.

At some point in the evening she visited him. When he heard her approach he would put away his novel and begin typing sentences. She would rest her hands on his shoulders and stare with him into the blue glow of the computer screen. "Don't work too hard," she would say after a minute or two, and head off to bed. It was the one time in the day she sought him out, and yet he'd come to dread it. He knew it was something she forced herself to do. She would look around the walls of the room, which they had decorated together last summer with a border of marching ducks and rabbits playing trumpets and drums. By the end of August there was a cherry crib under the window, a white changing table with mint-green knobs, and a rocking chair with checkered cushions. Shukumar had disassembled it all before bringing Shoba back from the hospital, scraping off the rabbits and ducks with a spatula. For some reason the room did not haunt him the way it haunted Shoba. In January, when he stopped working at his carrel in the library, he set up his desk there deliberately, partly because the room soothed him, and partly because it was a place Shoba avoided.

Shukumar returned to the kitchen and began to open drawers. He tried to locate a candle among the scissors, the eggbeaters and whisks, the mortar and pestle she'd bought in a bazaar in Calcutta, and used to pound garlic cloves and cardamom pods, back when she used to cook. He found a flashlight, but no batteries, and a half-empty box of birthday candles. Shoba had thrown him a surprise birthday party last May. One hundred and twenty people had crammed into the house - all the friends and the friends of friends they now systematically avoided. Bottles of vinho verde had nested in a bed of ice in the bathtub. Shoba was in her fifth month, drinking ginger ale from a martini glass. She had made a vanilla cream cake with custard and spun sugar. All night she kept Shukumar's long fingers linked with hers as they walked among the guests at the party.

Since September their only guest had been Shoba's mother. She came from Arizona and stayed with them for two months after Shoba returned from the hospital. She cooked dinner every night, drove herself to the supermarket, washed their clothes, put them away. She was a religious woman. She set up a small shrine, a framed picture of a lavender-faced goddess and a plate of marigold petals, on the bedside table in the guest room, and prayed twice a day for healthy grandchildren in the future. She was polite to Shukumar without being friendly. She folded his sweaters with an expertise she had learned from her job in a department store. She replaced a missing button on his winter coat and knit him a beige and brown scarf, presenting it to him without the least bit of ceremony, as if he had only dropped it and hadn't noticed. She never talked to him about Shoba; once, when he mentioned the baby's death, she looked up from her knitting, and said, "But you weren't even there."

It struck him as odd that there were no real candles in the house. That Shoba hadn't prepared for such an ordinary emergency. He looked now for something to put the birthday candles in and settled on the soil of a potted ivy that normally sat on the windowsill over the sink. Even though the plant was inches from the tap, the soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the candles would stand straight. He pushed aside the things on the kitchen table, the piles of mail, the unread library books. He remembered their first meals there, when they were so thrilled to be married, to be living together in the same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more eager to make love than to eat. He put down two embroidered place mats, a wedding gift from an uncle in Lucknow, and set out the plates and wineglasses they usually saved for guests. He put the ivy in the middle, the white-edged, star-shaped leaves girded by ten little candles. He switched on the digital clock radio and tuned it to a jazz station.

"What's all this?" Shoba said when she came downstairs. Her hair was wrapped in a thick white towel. She undid the towel and draped it over a chair, allowing her hair, damp and dark, to fall across her back. As she walked absently toward the stove she took out a few tangles with her fingers. She wore a clean pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt, an old flannel robe. Her stomach was flat again, her waist narrow before the flare of her hips, the belt of the robe tied in a floppy knot.

It was nearly eight. Shukumar put the rice on the table and the lentils from the night before into the microwave oven, punching the numbers on the timer.

"You made rogan josh," Shoba observed, looking through the glass lid at the bright paprika stew.

Shukumar took out a piece of lamb, pinching it quickly between his fingers so as not to scald himself. He prodded a larger piece with a serving spoon to make sure the meat slipped easily from the bone. "It's ready," he announced.

The microwave had just beeped when the lights went out, and the music disappeared.

"Perfect timing," Shoba said.

"All I could find were birthday candles." He lit up the ivy, keeping the rest of the candles and a book of matches by his plate.

"It doesn't matter," she said, running a finger along the stem of her wineglass. "It looks lovely."

In the dimness, he knew how she sat, a bit forward in her chair, ankles crossed against the lowest rung, left elbow on the table. During his search for the candles, Shukumar had found a bottle of wine in a crate he had thought was empty. He clamped the bottle between his knees while he turned in the corkscrew. He worried about spilling, and so he picked up the glasses and held them close to his lap while he filled them. They served themselves, stirring the rice with their forks, squinting as they extracted bay leaves and cloves from the stew. Every few minutes Shukumar lit a few more birthday candles and drove them into the soil of the pot.

"It's like India," Shoba said, watching him tend his makeshift candelabra. "Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and cried. It must have been so hot."

Their baby had never cried, Shukumar considered. Their baby would never have a rice ceremony, even though Shoba had already made the guest list, and decided on which of her three brothers she was going to ask to feed the child its first taste of solid food, at six months if it was a boy, seven if it was a girl.

"Are you hot?" he asked her. He pushed the blazing ivy pot to the other end of the table, closer to the piles of books and mail, making it even more difficult for them to see each other. He was suddenly irritated that he couldn't go upstairs and sit in front of the computer.

"No. It's delicious," she said, tapping her plate with her fork. "It really is."

He refilled the wine in her glass. She thanked him.

They weren't like this before. Now he had to struggle to say something that interested her, something that made her look up from her plate, or from her proofreading files. Eventually he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not to mind the silences.

"I remember during power failures at my grandmother's house, we all had to say something," Shoba continued. He could barely see her face, but from her tone he knew her eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on a distant object. It was a habit of hers.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America. I don't know why the information was so interesting to them. The last time I saw my aunt she asked after four girls I went to elementary school with in Tucson. I barely remember them now."

Shukumar hadn't spent as much time in India as Shoba had. His parents, who settled in New Hampshire, used to go back without him. The first time he'd gone as an infant he'd nearly died of amoebic dysentery. His father, a nervous type, was afraid to take him again, in case something were to happen, and left him with his aunt and uncle in Concord. As a teenager he preferred sailing camp or scooping ice cream during the summers to going to Calcutta. It wasn't until after his father died, in his last year of college, that the country began to interest him, and he studied its history from course books as if it were any other subject. He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India.

"Let's do that," she said suddenly.

"Do what?"

"Say something to each other in the dark."

"Like what? I don't know any jokes."

"No, no jokes." She thought for a minute. "How about telling each other something we've never told before."

"I used to play this game in high school," Shukumar recalled. "When I got drunk."

"You're thinking of truth or dare. This is different. Okay, I'll start." She took a sip of wine. "The first time I was alone in your apartment, I looked in your address book to see if you'd written me in. I think we'd known each other two weeks."

"Where was I?"

"You went to answer the telephone in the other room. It was your mother, and I figured it would be a long call. I wanted to know if you'd promoted me from the margins of your newspaper."

"Had I?"

"No. But I didn't give up on you. Now it's your turn."

He couldn't think of anything, but Shoba was waiting for him to speak. She hadn't appeared so determined in months. What was there left to say to her? He thought back to their first meeting, four years earlier at a lecture hall in Cambridge, where a group of Bengali poets were giving a recital. They'd ended up side by side, on folding wooden chairs. Shukumar was soon bored; he was unable to decipher the literary diction, and couldn't join the rest of the audience as they sighed and nodded solemnly after certain phrases. Peering at the newspaper folded in his lap, he studied the temperatures of cities around the world. Ninety-one degrees in Singapore yesterday, fifty-one in Stockholm. When he turned his head to the left, he saw a woman next to him making a grocery list on the back of a folder, and was startled to find that she was beautiful.

"Okay" he said, remembering. "The first time we went out to dinner, to the Portuguese place, I forgot to tip the waiter. I went back the next morning, found out his name, left money with the manager."

"You went all the way back to Somerville just to tip a waiter?"

"I took a cab."

"Why did you forget to tip the waiter?"

The birthday candles had burned out, but he pictured her face clearly in the dark, the wide tilting eyes, the full grape-toned lips, the fall at age two from her high chair still visible as a comma on her chin. Each day, Shukumar noticed, her beauty, which had once overwhelmed him, seemed to fade. The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.

"By the end of the meal I had a funny feeling that I might marry you," he said, admitting it to himself as well as to her for the first time. "It must have distracted me."

The next night Shoba came home earlier than usual. There was lamb left over from the evening before, and Shukumar heated it up so that they were able to eat by seven. He'd gone out that day, through the melting snow, and bought a packet of taper candles from the corner store, and batteries to fit the flashlight. He had the candles ready on the countertop, standing in brass holders shaped like lotuses, but they ate under the glow of the copper-shaded ceiling lamp that hung over the table.

When they had finished eating, Shukumar was surprised to see that Shoba was stacking her plate on top of his, and then carrying them over to the sink. He had assumed she would retreat to the living room, behind her barricade of files.

"Don't worry about the dishes," he said, taking them from her hands.

"It seems silly not to," she replied, pouring a drop of detergent onto a sponge. "It's nearly eight o'clock."

His heart quickened. All day Shukumar had looked forward to the lights going out. He thought about what Shoba had said the night before, about looking in his address book. It felt good to remember her as she was then, how bold yet nervous she'd been when they first met, how hopeful. They stood side by side at the sink, their reflections fitting together in the frame of the window. It made him shy, the way he felt the first time they stood together in a mirror. He couldn't recall the last time they'd been photographed. They had stopped attending parties, went nowhere together. The film in his camera still contained pictures of Shoba, in the yard, when she was pregnant.

After finishing the dishes, they leaned against the counter, drying their hands on either end of a towel. At eight o'clock the house went black. Shukumar lit the wicks of the candles, impressed by their long, steady flames.

"Let's sit outside," Shoba said. "I think it's warm still."

They each took a candle and sat down on the steps. It seemed strange to be sitting outside with patches of snow still on the ground. But everyone was out of their houses tonight, the air fresh enough to make people restless. Screen doors opened and closed. A small parade of neighbors passed by with flashlights.

"We're going to the bookstore to browse," a silver-haired man called out. He was walking with his wife, a thin woman in a windbreaker, and holding a dog on a leash. They were the Bradfords, and they had tucked a sympathy card into Shoba and Shukumar's mailbox back in September. "I hear they've got their power."

"They'd better," Shukumar said. "Or you'll be browsing in the dark."

The woman laughed, slipping her arm through the crook of her husband's elbow. "Want to join us?"

"No thanks," Shoba and Shukumar called out together. It surprised Shukumar that his words matched hers.

He wondered what Shoba would tell him in the dark. The worst possibilities had already run through his head. That she'd had an affair. That she didn't respect him for being thirty-five and still a student. That she blamed him for being in Baltimore the way her mother did. But he knew those things weren't true. She'd been faithful, as had he. She believed in him. It was she who had insisted he go to Baltimore. What didn't they know about each other? He knew she curled her fingers tightly when she slept, that her body twitched during bad dreams. He knew it was honeydew she favored over cantaloupe. He knew that when they returned from the hospital the first thing she did when she walked into the house was pick out objects of theirs and toss them into a pile in the hallway: books from the shelves, plants from the windowsills, paintings from walls, photos from tables, pots and pans that hung from the hooks over the stove. Shukumar had stepped out of her way, watching as she moved methodically from room to room. When she was satisfied, she stood there staring at the pile she'd made, her lips drawn back in such distaste that Shukumar had thought she would spit. Then she'd started to cry.

He began to feel cold as he sat there on the steps. He felt that he needed her to talk first, in order to reciprocate.

"That time when your mother came to visit us," she said finally. "When I said one night that I had to stay late at work, I went out with Gillian and had a martini."

He looked at her profile, the slender nose, the slightly masculine set of her jaw. He remembered that night well; eating with his mother, tired from teaching two classes back to back, wishing Shoba were there to say more of the right things because he came up with only the wrong ones. It had been twelve years since his father had died, and his mother had come to spend two weeks with him and Shoba, so they could honor his father's memory together. Each night his mother cooked something his father had liked, but she was too upset to eat the dishes herself, and her eyes would well up as Shoba stroked her hand. "It's so touching," Shoba had said to him at the time. Now he pictured Shoba with Gillian, in a bar with striped velvet sofas, the one they used to go to after the movies, making sure she got her extra olive, asking Gillian for a cigarette. He imagined her complaining, and Gillian sympathizing about visits from in-laws. It was Gillian who had driven Shoba to the hospital.

"Your turn," she said, stopping his thoughts.

At the end of their street Shukumar heard sounds of a drill and the electricians shouting over it. He looked at the darkened facades of the houses lining the street. Candles glowed in the windows of one. In spite of the warmth, smoke rose from the chimney.

"I cheated on my Oriental Civilization exam in college," he said. "It was my last semester, my last set of exams. My father had died a few months before. I could see the blue book of the guy next to me. He was an American guy, a maniac. He knew Urdu and Sanskrit. I couldn't remember if the verse we had to identify was an example of a ghazal or not. I looked at his answer and copied it down."

It had happened over fifteen years ago. He felt relief now, having told her.

She turned to him, looking not at his face, but at his shoes - old moccasins he wore as if they were slippers, the leather at the back permanently flattened. He wondered if it bothered her, what he'd said. She took his hand and pressed it. "You didn't have to tell me why you did it," she said, moving closer to him.

They sat together until nine o'clock, when the lights came on. They heard some people across the street clapping from their porch, and televisions being turned on. The Bradfords walked back down the street, eating ice-cream cones and waving. Shoba and Shukumar waved back. Then they stood up, his hand still in hers, and went inside.

Somehow, without saying anything, it had turned into this. Into an exchange of confessions - the little ways they'd hurt or disappointed each other, and themselves. The following day Shukumar thought for hours about what to say to her. He was torn between admitting that he once ripped out a photo of a woman in one of the fashion magazines she used to subscribe to and carried it in his books for a week, or saying that he really hadn't lost the sweater-vest she bought him for their third wedding anniversary but had exchanged it for cash at Filene's, and that he had gotten drunk alone in the middle of the day at a hotel bar. For their first anniversary, Shoba had cooked a ten-course dinner just for him. The vest depressed him. "My wife gave me a sweater-vest for our anniversary," he complained to the bartender, his head heavy with cognac. "What do you expect?" the bartender had replied. "You're married."

As for the picture of the woman, he didn't know why he'd ripped it out. She wasn't as pretty as Shoba. She wore a white sequined dress, and had a sullen face and lean, mannish legs. Her bare arms were raised, her fists around her head, as if she were about to punch herself in the ears. It was an advertisement for stockings. Shoba had been pregnant at the time, her stomach suddenly immense, to the point where Shukumar no longer wanted to touch her. The first time he saw the picture he was lying in bed next to her, watching her as she read. When he noticed the magazine in the recycling pile he found the woman and tore out the page as carefully as he could. For about a week he allowed himself a glimpse each day. He felt an intense desire for the woman, but it was a desire that turned to disgust after a minute or two. It was the closest he'd come to infidelity.

He told Shoba about the sweater on the third night, the picture on the fourth. She said nothing as he spoke, expressed no protest or reproach. She simply listened, and then she took his hand, pressing it as she had before. On the third night, she told him that once after a lecture they'd attended, she let him speak to the chairman of his department without telling him that he had a dab of pâté on his chin. She'd been irritated with him for some reason, and so she'd let him go on and on, about securing his fellowship for the following semester, without putting a finger to her own chin as a signal. The fourth night, she said that she never liked the one poem he'd ever published in his life, in a literary magazine in Utah. He'd written the poem after meeting Shoba. She added that she found the poem sentimental.

Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again. The third night after supper they'd sat together on the sofa, and once it was dark he began kissing her awkwardly on her forehead and her face, and though it was dark he closed his eyes, and knew that she did, too. The fourth night they walked carefully upstairs, to bed, feeling together for the final step with their feet before the landing, and making love with a desperation they had forgotten. She wept without sound, and whispered his name, and traced his eyebrows with her finger in the dark. As he made love to her he wondered what he would say to her the next night, and what she would say, the thought of it exciting him. "Hold me," he said, "hold me in your arms," By the time the lights came back on downstairs, they'd fallen asleep.

The morning of the fifth night Shukumar found another notice from the electric company in the mailbox. The line had been repaired ahead of schedule, it said. He was disappointed. He had planned on making shrimp malai for Shoba, but when he arrived at the store he didn't feel like cooking anymore. It wasn't the same, he thought, knowing that the lights wouldn't go out. In the store the shrimp looked gray and thin. The coconut milk tin was dusty and overpriced. Still, he bought them, along with a beeswax candle and two bottles of wine.

She came home at seven-thirty. "I suppose this is the end of our game," he said when he saw her reading the notice.

She looked at him. "You can still light candles if you want." She hadn't been to the gym tonight. She wore a suit beneath the raincoat. Her makeup had been retouched recently.

When she went upstairs to change, Shukumar poured himself some wine and put on a record, a Thelonius Monk album he knew she liked.

When she came downstairs they ate together. She didn't thank him or compliment him. They simply ate in a darkened room, in the glow of a beeswax candle. They had survived a difficult time. They finished off the shrimp. They finished off the first bottle of wine and moved on to the second. They sat together until the candle had nearly burned away. She shifted in her chair, and Shukumar thought that she was about to say something. But instead she blew out the candle, stood up, turned on the light switch, and sat down again.

"Shouldn't we keep the lights off?" Shukumar asked. She set her plate aside and clasped her hands on the table. "I want you to see my face when I tell you this," she said gently.

His heart began to pound. The day she told him she was pregnant, she had used the very same words, saying them in the same gentle way, turning off the basketball game he'd been watching on television. He hadn't been prepared then. Now he was.

Only he didn't want her to be pregnant again. He didn't want to have to pretend to be happy.

"I've been looking for an apartment and I've found one," she said, narrowing her eyes on something, it seemed, behind his left shoulder. It was nobody's fault, she continued. They'd been through enough. She needed some time alone. She had money saved up for a security deposit. The apartment was on Beacon Hill, so she could walk to work. She had signed the lease that night before coming home.

She wouldn't look at him, but he stared at her. It was obvious that she'd rehearsed the lines. All this time she'd been looking for an apartment, testing the water pressure, asking a Realtor if heat and hot water were included in the rent. It sickened Shukumar, knowing that she had spent these past evenings preparing for a life without him. He was relieved and yet he was sickened. This was what she'd been trying to tell him for the past four evenings. This was the point of her game.

Now it was his turn to speak. There was something he'd sworn he would never tell her, and for six months he had done his best to block it from his mind. Before the ultrasound she had asked the doctor not to tell her the sex of their child, and Shukumar had agreed. She had wanted it to be a surprise.

Later, those few times they talked about what had happened, she said at least they'd been spared that knowledge. In a way she almost took pride in her decision, for it enabled her to seek refuge in a mystery. He knew that she assumed it was a mystery for him, too. He'd arrived too late from Baltimore - when it was all over and she was lying on the hospital bed. But he hadn't. He'd arrived early enough to see their baby, and to hold him before they cremated him. At first he had recoiled at the suggestion, but the doctor said holding the baby might help him with the process of grieving. Shoba was asleep. The baby had been cleaned off, his bulbous lids shut tight to the world.

"Our baby was a boy," he said. "His skin was more red than brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds. His fingers were curled shut, just like yours in the night."

Shoba looked at him now, her face contorted with sorrow. He had cheated on a college exam, ripped a picture of a woman out of a magazine. He had returned a sweater and got drunk in the middle of the day instead. These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise.

Shukumar stood up and stacked his plate on top of hers. He carried the plates to the sink, but instead of running the tap he looked out the window. Outside the evening was still warm, and the Bradfords were walking arm in arm. As he watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew.

(C) 1999 Jhumpa Lahiri All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-395-92720-X

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By JHUMPA LAHIRI CHAPTER ONE Interpreter of Maladies Stories Houghton Mifflin Company Read the Review A Temporary Matter The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.

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Loss and grieving have no age floor or ceiling; the death of a loved one, be they friend or family or the rare person who manages to straddle that line, hits all of us hard. But the ways we deal with loss vary greatly, especially since all relationships have their own complexities, and one of the beautiful things about grieving books in YA is how they manage to capture so many different emotions, reactions, and paths for moving forward. Here are some of our favorites.

, by Jason Reynolds
Working in a funeral home might seem like a morbid choice of profession for a teenage boy, but for Matt, sitting through other people's funerals is the only thing that makes him feel just a little less isolated about the recent death of his own mother. Then he meets Lovey, and it turns out, there's more than one thing out there that inspires him after all. Lovey regularly displays the kind of strength Matt aches to have, seemingly stoic in the face of all life has thrown at her. Matt may not be built to be that guy, but as his father becomes increasingly distant and unreliable, he sure as hell wants to be, and Lovey is the one person in his life now who just might help him figure out how.

, by Kekla Magoon
Ellis has been without her dad's active presence in her life for two years now, but even in a coma, he's still there, and there's still officially a chance he could wake up. So when her mother decides the time has come to pull the plug, Ellis is destroyed, and no one seems to get what she's going through. Only the resurgence of an old friend seems to provide any comfort at all, but with that friendship comes...more, including feelings Ellis never expected to have. But with things in her life changing as drastically as they are, perhaps it's impossible for Ellis to cling to who she used to be, and everything she thought she was.

, by E. Katherine Kottaras
For Georgia, the loss of her mother was a truly life-altering one, and as she works to pick up the pieces, the hardest one to figure out might be who she is now that the closest person in the world to her is gone. Georgia doesn't want to fade away; she wants to live. So what better way than to make a list of all the things she's always wanted to do and to go ahead and do them, no matter how much they scare her? As Georgia embarks on her bucket list, her brave endeavors definitely have mixed results. But real life is made up of both triumphs and failures, and Georgia will have to experience a whole lot of both to find herself along the way.

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Loss and grieving have no age floor or ceiling; the death of a loved one, be they friend or family or the rare person who manages to straddle that line, hits all of us hard.

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A man tries to talk to others about his grief

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THE TWILIGHT OF evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off.... His little mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to think.

It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came out of the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But now the shades of evening are falling on the town. The pale light of the street lamps changes to a vivid color, and the bustle of the street grows noisier.

'Sledge to Vyborgskaya!' Iona hears. 'Sledge!'

Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.

'To Vyborgskaya,' repeats the officer. 'Are you asleep? To Vyborgskaya!'

In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and hesitatingly sets of....

'Where are you shoving, you devil?' Iona immediately hears shouts from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. 'Where the devil are you going? Keep to the r-right!'

'You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right,' says the officer angrily.

A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why he was there.

'What rascals they all are!' says the officer jocosely. 'They are simply doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet. They must be doing it on purpose.'

Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips.... Apparently he means to say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.

'What?' inquires the officer.

Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily: 'My son... er... my son died this week, sir.'

'H'm! What did he die of?'

Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:

'Who can tell! It must have been from fever.... He lay three days in the hospital and then he died.... God's will.'

'Turn round, you devil!' comes out of the darkness. 'Have you gone cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!'

'Drive on! drive on!...' says the officer. 'We shan't get there till to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!'

The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.... Again the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour passes, and then another....

Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up, railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their goloshes.

'Cabby, to the Police Bridge!' the hunchback cries in a cracked voice. 'The three of us,... twenty kopecks!'

Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is a rouble or whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now so long as he has a fare.... The three young men, shoving each other and using bad language, go up to the sledge, and all three try to sit down at once. The question remains to be settled: Which are to sit down and which one is to stand? After a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they come to the conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the shortest.

'Well, drive on,' says the hunchback in his cracked voice, settling himself and breathing down Iona's neck. 'Cut along! What a cap you've got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all Petersburg....'

'He-he!... he-he!...' laughs Iona. 'It's nothing to boast of!'

'Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to drive like this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the neck?'

'My head aches,' says one of the tall ones. 'At the Dukmasovs' yesterday Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us.'

'I can't make out why you talk such stuff,' says the other tall one angrily. 'You lie like a brute.'

'Strike me dead, it's the truth!...'

'It's about as true as that a louse coughs.'

'He-he!' grins Iona. 'Me-er-ry gentlemen!'

'Tfoo! the devil take you!' cries the hunchback indignantly. 'Will you get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her well.'

Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice of the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by little to be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he chokes over some elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is overpowered by his cough. His tall companions begin talking of a certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them. Waiting till there is a brief pause, he looks round once more and says:

'This week... er... my... er... son died!'

'We shall all die...' says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping his lips after coughing. 'Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us there?'

'Well, you give him a little encouragement... one in the neck!'

'Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands on ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you hear, you old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say?'

And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.

'He-he!... ' he laughs. 'Merry gentlemen.... God give you health!'

'Cabman, are you married'?' asks one of the tall ones.

'I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the damp earth.... He-ho-ho!....The grave that is!... Here my son's dead and I am alive.... It's a strange thing, death has come in at the wrong door.... Instead of coming for me it went for my son....'

And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that point the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank God! they have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks, Iona gazes for a long while after the revelers, who disappear into a dark entry. Again he is alone and again there is silence for him.... The misery which has been for a brief space eased comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery.... His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....

Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to address him.

'What time will it be, friend?' he asks.

'Going on for ten.... Why have you stopped here? Drive on!'

Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives himself up to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to people. But before five minutes have passed he draws himself up, shakes his head as though he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the reins.... He can bear it no longer.

'Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!'

And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to trotting. An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty stove. On the stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people snoring. The air is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at the sleeping figures, scratches himself, and regrets that he has come home so early....

'I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even,' he thinks. 'That's why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his work,... who has had enough to eat, and whose horse has had enough to eat, is always at ease....'

In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.

'Want a drink?' Iona asks him.

'May it do you good.... But my son is dead, mate.... Do you hear? This week in the hospital.... It's a queer business....'

Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees nothing. The young man has covered his head over and is already asleep. The old man sighs and scratches himself.... Just as the young man had been thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech. His son will soon have been dead a week, and he has not really talked to anybody yet.... He wants to talk of it properly, with deliberation.... He wants to tell how his son was taken ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died.... He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to the hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter Anisya in the country.... And he wants to talk about her too.... Yes, he has plenty to talk about now. His listener ought to sigh and exclaim and lament.... It would be even better to talk to women. Though they are silly creatures, they blubber at the first word.

'Let's go out and have a look at the mare,' Iona thinks. 'There is always time for sleep.... You'll have sleep enough, no fear....'

He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather.... He cannot think about his son when he is alone.... To talk about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is insufferable anguish....

'Are you munching?' Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes. 'There, munch away, munch away.... Since we have not earned enough for oats, we will eat hay.... Yes,... I have grown too old to drive.... My son ought to be driving, not I.... He was a real cabman.... He ought to have lived....'

Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:

'That's how it is, old girl.... Kuzma Ionitch is gone.... He said good-by to me.... He went and died for no reason.... Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother to that little colt.... And all at once that same little colt went and died.... You'd be sorry, wouldn't you?...'

The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's hands. Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.

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THE TWILIGHT OF evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost.

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Short film about the confusion we feel after loss. (Click to expand details for transcript of poem)

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COCOON - A Short Film About Grief & Loss

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Iconic poem about the loss of a friend.

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Short film showing how people grieve di

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As featured on: Upworthy, Vimeo Staff Picks, Short of the Week, Laughing Squid, The Awesomer, Sopitas and many more... (visit www.goodgrief.tv/press)

Good Grief is a short stop motion animated documentary that explores the lessons we learn from dealing with grief and loss. Five real people share their true stories of losing something precious and what it has taught them about living.
 
Made in 2012, Good Grief has screened at 19 festivals worldwide and won numerous awards. Inspired by the loss of her own mother and the grief that ensued, director Fiona Dalwood went about finding out how the experience of loss transforms us. With a shoestring budget and months of hard work, she made Good Grief, a beautiful short film that has been described as “adorable and heartfelt”. Accessible to children and adults alike, it is being used in educational programs as a starting point to discuss the process of grief and what some of the positive outcomes of grief can be.

If you like this film please consider contributing to our tip jar - all funds raised will offset the cost of production.

Watch Good Grief with French subtitles (Regarder Good Grief avec sous-titres français) http://vimeo.com/91157089
(5 May, 2014) Coming Soon—Spanish subtitles

To find out more visit www.goodgrief.tv
Keep up to date with news about the film on Facebook www.facebook.com/goodgriefanimation
Follow Good Grief on Twitter twitter.com/goodgriefmovie
Good Grief on IMDB (We love votes!) www.imdb.com/title/tt2583460/
Email director@goodgrief.tv or producer@goodgrief.tv

If you would like to write about the film or have any questions, please get in touch with the film-makers via the emails above. A media kit and photos are available for download on our press page (www.goodgrief.tv/press)

Written, directed and animated by Fiona Dalwood (www.fionadalwood.com/about)
Produced by Jonno Katz (www.jonnokatz.com)
Music by Matthew Nicholson (www.invisibleaudio.com.au)
Sound by Livia Ruzic
Voice cast (interview subjects): Dan Michael, Alex De Vos, Sarah De Vos, Andrew O'Sullivan, Dana Katz
© 2012 VCA School of Film & Television, The University of Melbourne, Australia (vca.unimelb.edu.au/ftv)

Good Grief has screened at the following festivals:
- Official Selection: ECU The European Independent Film Festival (April 2014, Paris, France)
- Official Selection: Tricky Women (March 2014, Vienna, Austria)
- Official Selection: Made in Melbourne Film Festival (November 2013, Melbourne, Australia)
- Official Selection: Animpact (November 2013, Korea/Japan/China)
- Official Selection: Clare Valley Film Festival (November 2013, South Australia, Australia) 
- Official Selection: London International Animation Festival (October 2013, London, UK) 
- Official Selection: Dok Leipzig (November 2013, Germany)
- Official Selection: Anim'Est (November 2013, Bucharest, Romania)
- Official Selection: Cut Out Fest (November 2013, Mexico)
- Official Selection: Canberra Short Film Festival (September 2013, Canberra, Australia)
- Official Selection: Animanima (September 2013, Cacak, Serbia) 
- Official Selection: Just People/Chalice Films for Change (July 2013, Melbourne, Australia) 
- Official Selection: Heart of Gold Film Festival (July 2013, Gympie, QLD, Australia) 
- Official selection: Melbourne International Animation Festival (June 2013, Melbourne, Australia) 
- Official Selection: Warburton Film Festival 'Show Us Your Shorts' (June 2013, Warburton, Victoria, Australia) 
- Official Selection: Brooklyn Film Festival (May-June 2013, United States of America) 
- Official Selection: St Kilda Film Festival (May 2013, Melbourne, Australia) 
- Official Selection: Mo&Friese Children's ShortFilmFestival, as part of the International ShortFilmFestival Hamburg (June 2013, Hamburg, Germany) 
- Official selection: Australian International Animation Festival (May 2013, Australia) 
- Participation by Invitation: Berlinale Online Short Film Cloud 2013 (Feb 2013, Berlin, Germany)

Good Grief has been recognised with the following awards and nominations…
- Winner: Best Australian Student Film, Clare Valley Film Festival 2013
- Nominee: ATOM Awards 2013 - Best Tertiary Animation 
- Highly Commended: Melbourne International Animation Festival 2013 
- Winner: Senior Commendation Award (2013 Warburton Film Festival Show Us Your Shorts, Warburton, Victoria Australia) 
- Nominee: BEST STUDENT FILM 2013 (Australian Directors Guild Awards) 
- Winner: Best Masters Animation 2012 (Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne Australia) 
- Winner: Orloff Family Charitable Trust Script Award 2012 (Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne Australia)

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Finding peace in memory

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Browse different poems, written for Teens, about grief and loss

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Browse poems about different kinds of grief and mourning, including poems about the loss of parents, loved ones, and friends.more poetry for teens"Farewell" by Francisca AguirreTo say goodbye means so little..."Equinox" by Elizabeth AlexanderNow is the time of year when bees are wild...

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Sometimes having one powerful quote is all you need.

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2966 quotes have been tagged as loss: John Green: 'Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.', Chuck Palahniuk: 'It's only after we've lost every...

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Passengers on a train argue about who has experienced more grief and loss

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The passengers who had left Rome by the night express had had to stop until dawn at the small station of Fabriano in order to continue their journey by the small old-fashioned "local" joining the main line with Sulmona.

At dawn, in a stuffy and smoky second-class carriage in which five people had already spent the night, a bulky woman in deep mourning, was hoisted in-almost like a shapeless bundle. Behind her-puffing and moaning, followed her husband-a tiny man, thin and weakly, his face death-white, his eyes small and bright and looking shy and uneasy.

Having at last taken a seat he politely thanked the passengers who had helped his wife and who had made room for her; then he turned round to the woman trying to pull down the collar of her coat and politely enquired:

"Are you all right, dear?"

The wife, instead of answering, pulled up her collar again to her eyes, so as to hide her face.

"Nasty world," muttered the husband with a sad smile.

And he felt it his duty to explain to his traveling companions that the poor woman was to be pitied for the war was taking away from her her only son, a boy of twenty to whom both had devoted their entire life, even breaking up their home at Sulmona to follow him to Rome where he had to go as a student, then allowing him to volunteer for war with an assurance, however, that at least for six months he would not be sent to the front and now, all of a sudden, receiving a wire saying that he was due to leave in three days' time and asking them to go and see him off.

The woman under the big coat was twisting and wriggling, at times growling like a wild animal, feeling certain that all those explanations would not have aroused even a shadow of sympathy from those people who-most likely-were in the same plight as herself. One of them, who had been listening with particular attention, said:

"You should thank God that your son is only leaving now for the front. Mine has been sent there the first day of the war. He has already come back twice wounded and been sent back again to the front."

"What about me? I have two sons and three nephews at the front," said another passenger.

"Maybe, but in our case it is our only son," ventured the husband.

"What difference can it make? You may spoil your only son with excessive attentions, but you cannot love him more than you would all your other children if you had any. Paternal love is not like bread that can be broken into pieces and split amongst the children in equal shares. A father gives all his love to each one of his children without discrimination, whether it be one or ten, and if I am suffering now for my two sons, I am not suffering half for each of them but double...."

"True ... true ..." sighed the embarrassed husband, "but suppose (of course we all hope it will never be your case) a father has two sons at the front and he loses one of them, there is still one left to console him ... while ..."

"Yes," answered the other, getting cross, "a son left to console him but also a son left for whom he must survive, while in the case of the father of an only son if the son dies the father can die too and put an end to his distress. Which of the two positions is the worse? Don't you see how my case would be worse than yours?"

"Nonsense," interrupted another traveler, a fat, red-faced man with bloodshot eyes of the palest gray.

He was panting. From his bulging eyes seemed to spurt inner violence of an uncontrolled vitality which his weakened body could hardly contain.

"Nonsense," he repeated, trying to cover his mouth with his hand so as to hide the two missing front teeth. "Nonsense. Do we give life to our children for our own benefit?"

The other travelers stared at him in distress. The one who had had his son at the front since the first day of the war sighed: "You are right. Our children do not belong to us, they belong to the Country...."

"Bosh," retorted the fat traveler. "Do we think of the Country when we give life to our children? Our sons are born because ... well, because they must be born and when they come to life they take our own life with them. This is the truth. We belong to them but they never belong to us. And when they reach twenty they are exactly what we were at their age. We too had a father and mother, but there were so many other things as well ... girls, cigarettes, illusions, new ties ... and the Country, of course, whose call we would have answered-when we were twenty-even if father and mother had said no. Now, at our age, the love of our Country is still great, of course, but stronger than it is the love for our children. Is there any one of us here who wouldn't gladly take his son's place at the front if he could?"

There was a silence all round, everybody nodding as to approve.

"Why then," continued the fat man, "shouldn't we consider the feelings of our children when they are twenty? Isn't it natural that at their age they should consider the love for their Country (I am speaking of decent boys, of course) even greater than the love for us? Isn't it natural that it should be so, as after all they must look upon us as upon old boys who cannot move any more and must stay at home? If Country exists, if Country is a natural necessity like bread, of which each of us must eat in order not to die of hunger, somebody must go to defend it. And our sons go, when they are twenty, and they don't want tears, because if they die, they die inflamed and happy (I am speaking, of course, of decent boys). Now, if one dies young and happy, without having the ugly sides of life, the boredom of it, the pettiness, the bitterness of disillusion ... what more can we ask for him? Everyone should stop crying: everyone should laugh, as I do ... or at least thank God-as I do-because my son, before dying, sent me a message saying that he was dying satisfied at having ended his life in the best way he could have wished. That is why, as you see, I do not even wear mourning...."

He shook his light fawn coat as to show it; his livid lip over his missing teeth was trembling, his eyes were watery and motionless, and soon after, he ended with a shrill laugh which might well have been a sob.

"Quite so ... quite so ..." agreed the others.

The woman who, bundled in a corner under her coat, had been sitting and listening had-for the last three months-tried to find in the words of her husband and her friends something to console her in her deep sorrow, something that might show her how a mother should resign herself to send her son not even to death but to a probable danger of life. Yet not a word had she found amongst the many which had been said ... and her grief had been greater in seeing that nobody-as she thought-could share her feelings.

But now the words of the traveler amazed and almost stunned her. She suddenly realized that it wasn't the others who were wrong and could not understand her but herself who could not rise up to the same height of those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves, without crying, not only to the departure of their sons but even to their death.

She lifted her head, she bent over from her corner trying to listen with great attention to the details which the fat man was giving to his companions about the way his son had fallen as a hero, for his King and his Country, happy and without regrets. It seemed to her that she had stumbled into a world she had never dreamt of, a world so far unknown to her and she was so pleased to hear everyone joining in congratulating that brave father who could so stoically speak of his child's death.

Then suddenly, just as if she had heard nothing of what had been said and almost as if waking up from a dream, she turned to the old man, asking him:

"Then ... is your son really dead?"

Everybody stared at her. The old man, too, turned to look at her, fixing his great, bulging, horribly watery light gray eyes, deep in her face. For some little time he tried to answer, but words failed him. He looked and looked at her, almost as if only then-at that silly, incongruous question-he had suddenly realized at last that his son was really dead ... gone forever ... forever. His face contracted, became horribly distorted, then he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket and, to the amazement of everyone, broke into harrowing, heart-rending, uncontrollable sobs.

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The passengers who had left Rome by the night express had had to stop until dawn at the small station of Fabriano in order to continue their journey by the small old-fashioned "local" joining the main line with Sulmona.

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151 songs to connect, comfort and inspire.

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Everyone's grief is different, so please don't put yourself on an artificial timetable. What takes one person several years may take another six months. Many factors influence grief including:

1) the nature of your relationship with the deceased (e.g., child, parent, friend) and the level of closeness between you

2) any key unresolved issues between you and the deceased

3) circumstances surrounding your loved one's death

4) your age, personality, coping style, and your past experience with bereavement

5) your social support system

6) other losses you've recently experienced (e.g., several deaths in rapid succession, also losing your job or home in a compressed time frame).

Give yourself room to experience the loss of your loved one and make meaning of it by

1) talking with friends, relatives, and others in your support network. Talk about your loved one to remember them and make sense of their passing

2) accepting your feelings about their loss, including sadness, anger, regret, confusion, and weariness

3) maintaining your daily routine. Take care of both yourself and your family each day so that you keep moving forward. Eat healthy food, exercise regularly, and get plenty of sleep. Avoid alcohol and drugs.

4) reaching out to others in your support network to support them in how they are dealing with the mutual loss.

5) finding a special way to honor the memory of your deceased loved one.

There is no shame in asking for professional help, so don't be afraid to consult a qualified counselor or psychologist if you feel you are having trouble coping with your loss. Some of the signs that you may need to seek a professional's help include:

* You don't start to feel any better as time passes.

* Inability to enjoy life

* Problems accepting the death

* Bitterness about your loss

* Preoccupation with your sorrow

* Feeling that life holds no meaning or purpose

* Extreme focus on the loss and reminders of the loved one

* Intense longing or pining for your deceased loved one

* You start to think about hurting yourself or others.

* You have ongoing trouble eating or sleeping (too much or too little).

* Your feelings begin to disrupt your daily life.

* You turn to drugs or alcohol for coping.

* Numbness or detachment

* Depression or deep sadness

* Trouble carrying out normal routines

* Withdrawing from social activities

* Irritability or agitation

* Lack of trust in others

Be easy on yourself and know that others care and can identify with your feelings of pain.

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151 Songs About Sorrow, Grief, and Lost Loved Ones

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Everyone's grief is different, so please don't put yourself on an artificial timetable. What takes one person several years may take another six months.

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A poem about the loss of a pet.

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All the Bright Places - Excerpt from a novel

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All the Bright Places - Excerpt from a novel

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A girl contemplates if this is the day she should die

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Excerpt from All the Bright Places | Penguin Random House Canada

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The beloved New York Times bestseller that Entertainment Weekly described as "sparkling" and says "get[s] under your skin." You won't soon forget this heart-wrenching, unflinching story of love shared, life lived, and two teens who find each other while standing on the edge. Theodore Finch is fascinated by death.

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Discussion of the Mexican holiday celebrating the lives of loved ones.

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Excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere-Ya Novel

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Excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere-Ya Novel

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How does one handle the death of a fiery, dynamic sister like Bailey? Lennie has no idea where to start, but Bailey’s boyfriend, Toby, is probably not the right place.

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The Sky is Everywhere by , and | Excerpt | Teenreads

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"Thank you," I say, and every available inch of his face busts into a smile-whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o'-lantern happy, which couldn't be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect.

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Stories from teens about struggling with life's ups and downs.

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UMatter focuses specifically on teens that are struggling. Under the guidance of Rabbi Yarden Blumstein, UMatter operates on a peer-to-peer model of teens helping their peers overcome stigmas and other obstacles related to mental health.

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How to heal

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Six years inside complicated grief taught me many things. Five of them I can put into words and onto paper. I have a feeling I will be learning from her the rest of my life.

Grief taught me that sometimes I don't have to let it go. I just have to let it out.

Through writing, through words, through movement, through tears, through screaming at the top of my lungs or whispering to the wind. The way into grief was very narrow, but the way through was up to me.

Grief taught me that releasing is not the same as relinquishing.

My grief is mine forever. When I release her into the world through words or conversation or tears, she is free to leave for a while or return right away, the same or changed but always welcome in this heart.

Grief taught me what it means to be vulnerable.

Not in the ways we choose to be vulnerable. The ways life tears down every wall we've built, every label we've claimed, every role we've identified with and reveals a broken, beating heart that is not sure if it wants to live or die.

With practice I realized that beyond the flood of tears there is the dock of another human heart waiting to hear what I have to say. And if I can brave the flood that makes me feel so exposed and vulnerable I will receive the gift of being seen and being heard.

Grief taught me I am not alone.

I didn't realize it then, but looking back I understand that even when no human could comfort me, mother nature was soothing me with her bright moons, wild oceans and dancing flowers. She was teaching me something about human nature, about darkness and light, about the cycle of life.

She was taking my words and echoing them back to me, blurring their edges on the journey so they sat a little softer in my soul upon returning.

Grief taught me loss expands before it shrinks.

The list of what I've lost is not just one line but pages long sometimes. Because I didn't just lose a human being I loved. I lost the sound of their feet in the hallway, the water running as they brush their teeth, the sight of their face down the hall, the sound of their voice on the phone, the ability to reach out and touch them.

Everyone's list is unique and endless. I try to honor the living by not turning away from their list of loss, by not telling them what it should contain, by not comparing my list to theirs.

This grief, she's like a mother to me. She birthed me into an experience I never asked for and many times was not sure I would survive. But together we make it through this life, stumbling and learning, mourning and celebrating, each step teaching us all we need to know about what it means to live, to love and to lose.

Monique Minahan writes about grief, loss and being human. She teaches yoga as a form of movement medicine. She believes in standing up to live before sitting down to write and listens to her heart before writing to keep her words alive and authentic. Connect with her at moniqueminahan.com and on social media here and here.

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healthy living death mourning loss grief

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Six years inside complicated grief taught me many things. Five of them I can put into words and onto paper. I have a feeling I will be learning from her the rest of my life. Grief taught me that sometimes I don't have to let it go.

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It’s winter break and Marin is completely alone at school, just the way she’s engineered it. How can she possibly talk to people from her old life after everything and everyone she’s lost?

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Excerpt from We Are Okay | Penguin Random House Canada

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Winner of the 2018 Michael L. Printz Award - An achingly beautiful novel about grief and the enduring power of friendship."Short, poetic and gorgeously written." -The New York Times Book Review"A beautiful, devastating piece of art." -BookpageYou go through life thinking there's so much you need. . . .

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Tennyson struggles with the idea if love is worth the cost of loss

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In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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A poet discusses the death of her sister

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Carole Radiziwill (journalist) tells her story of marrying an actual Prince, his battle with cancer, and the death of her close friends John F. Kennedy Jr and his wife. Carole was also famously a Real Housewife of New York.

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A poem about who we are written in English and then in Spanish

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Excerpt from History is All You Left Me--YA novel

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Excerpt from History is All You Left Me--YA novel

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Griffin wasn’t Theo’s boyfriend anymore when Theo died—that honor went to Jackson—but it doesn’t mean he was never gonna be again.   So what does it mean for the rest of Griffin’s life now that Theo is gone?

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TODAY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20TH, 2016

You're still alive in alternate universes, Theo, but I live in the real world, where this morning you're having an open-casket funeral. I know you're out there, listening. And you should know I'm really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are. It hurts even more because this isn't the first promise you've broken.

I'll break down the details of this promise again. You made it last August. Trust me when I say I'm not talking down to you as I recall this memory, and many others, in great detail. I doubt it'll even surprise you since we always joked about how your brain worked in funny ways. You knew enough meaningless trivia to fill notebooks, but you occasionally slipped on the bigger things, like my birthday this year (May 17th, not the 18th), and you never kept your night classes straight even though I got you a cool planner with zombies on the cover (which you-know-who probably forced you to throw out). I just want you to remember things the way I do. And if bringing up the past annoys you now—as I know it did when you left New York for California—know that I'm sorry, but please don't be mad at me for reliving all of it. History is all you left me.

We made promises to each other on the day I broke up with you so you could do your thing out there in Santa Monica without me holding you back. Some of those promises took bad turns but weren't broken, like how I said I'd never hate you even though you gave me enough reasons to, or how you never stopped being my friend even when your boyfriend asked you to. But on the day we were walking to the post office with Wade to ship your boxes to California, you walked backward into the street and almost got hit by a car. I saw our endgame—to find our way back to each other when the time was right, no matter what—disappear, and I made you promise to always take care of yourself and never die.

"Fine. I'll never die," you said as you hugged me.

If there was a promise you were allowed to break, it wasn't that one, and now I'm forced to approach your casket in one hour to say goodbye to you.

Except it's not going to be goodbye.

I'll always have you here listening. But being face-to-face with you for the first time since July and for the last time ever is going to be impossible, especially given the unwanted company of your boyfriend.

Let's leave his name out of my mouth as long as possible this morning, okay? If I'm going to have any chance of getting through today, tomorrow, and all the days that follow, I think I need to go back to the start, where we were two boys bonding over jigsaw puzzles and falling in love.

It's what comes after you fell out of love with me that it all goes wrong. It's what comes after we broke up that's making me so nervous. Now you can see me, wherever you are. I know you're there, and I know you're watching me, tuned in to my life to piece everything together yourself. It's not just the shameful things I've done that are driving me crazy, Theo. It's because I know I'm not done yet.

HISTORY

SUNDAY, JUNE 8TH, 2014

I'm making history today.

Time is moving faster than this L train, but it's all good since I'm sitting to the left of Theo McIntyre. I've known him since middle school, when he caught my eye at recess. He waved me over and said, "Help me out, Griffin. I'm rebuilding Pompeii." A puzzle of Pompeii made up of one hundred pieces, obviously. I knew nothing of Pompeii at the time; I thought Mount Vesuvius was the hidden lair of some comic book overlord. Theo's hands had entranced me, sorting the puzzle pieces into groups according to shades before beginning, separating the granite roads from the demolished, ash-coated structures. I helped with the sky, getting the clouds all wrong. We didn't get very far with the puzzle that day, but we've been tight ever since.

Excerpted from History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera. Copyright © 2017 by Adam Silvera. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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History Is All You Left Me Excerpt: Read free excerpt of History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

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TODAY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20TH, 2016 You're still alive in alternate universes, Theo, but I live in the real world, where this morning you're having an open-casket funeral. I know you're out there, listening. And you should know I'm really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are.

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The storstory behind the semicolon project.

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Choose to Keep Going; | Remembering T.J. - Our Story

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Project SemicolonDealing with a brain disorder like depression or anxiety is often a lifelong journey. There is no quick fix or miracle cure. Sometimes, every

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Working in a funeral home might seem like a morbid choice of profession for a teenage boy, but for Matt, sitting through other people’s funerals is the only thing that makes him feel just a little less isolated about the recent death of his own mother.

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The Boy in the Black Suit

Chapter 1

EVERYTHING IS BACKWARD

IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of school. Actually, it was the nineteenth day of school, but it was my first day, and all I could think about was how happy I was that I had already missed three weeks, and that this would be the last first day in this place I would ever have. Thank God. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate school. I just wasn't really in the mood to be lugging books around, or learning stuff that didn't really matter to me, or even worse, being around people that I didn't really matter to. I know, I know-I sound like a prime candidate for black fingernails and emo poetry, but I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I just wasn't feeling too social. Scratch that-I wasn't feeling social at all. Lockers slamming, sneakers screeching and squeaking on the floor as every kind of teenager ran through the hallways laughing and shouting on their way to class-it was all like one big nail on an even biggerchalkboard. Everyone was zipping by, bumping me, as I sort of floated through the halls like some kind of zombie.

It was like I was living in a different world where everything was backward. Ms. Harris, the principal who normally spent most of her time hiding from students in her office, offered to actually walk me to my locker. Meanwhile, kids I was cool with-at least I thought I was cool with-like James Skinner, totally ignored me. See what I mean? Backward.

The last time I saw James was during the summer when our whole class had to meet up at the school to have our senior pictures taken. Me and James joked about how much we hated taking photos, and how our crazy moms were obsessed about the whole thing. I told him how my mother begged me to smile, but I knew I wouldn't. I couldn't. Not because I didn't want to, it's just that every time a camera was pointed at me, I never knew what to do with my face. Some people can smile on cue. You say "smile," and they go ear to ear, flashing every tooth in their mouth. And some people . . . can't. I was one of those. So, I knew in my senior pictures I would look just like I did in my junior, sophomore, and freshman pictures-like a robot. Except this time, it would be a robot face in a cap and gown, which is even worse.

The point is, I had just seen my so-called friend James-had just joked about this corny senior picture crap with him-and now he was acting like he didn't even know me. I guess that's what happens when people find out your mom just died. You become invisible. At least I did. To everybody. Well, almost everybody.

"Yo, Matt, I'm so sorry about your moms, man." Chris Hayes, my best friend, slid up behind me while I tried to stuff myself into my locker. He was one of those guys who was supercool, crazy fly, and girls had a thing for his shaved head. He'd probably be voted "Best Dressed" or something dumb like that, and if he wanted to, he'd have a fair shot at prom king. And to top it all off, he was trying hard to be sympathetic to me, his pretty normal, now really sad homeboy. I appreciated it even though it did no good. But at least he had enough heart to come up to me and say something, instead of just avoiding me, like death was some kind of disease that anyone could catch just by speaking to me. Everybody else was either staring at me or trying way too hard to not look at me at all.

"Y'know . . . Mrs. Miller was like a second mom to me, and I'm so, so sorry I couldn't make the funeral," Chris went on.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church-which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner-sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

That's what I wanted to say, but I didn't because Chris didn't deserve all that. I knew he would've been there if he could've. Buthe just couldn't do it. I get that. So I turned around to look at him and said, "It's all good, man." I swallowed hard and reached out for a five, holding back my tears. Do. not. cry. Not in school.

Chris grabbed my hand and pulled me close for a man-hug. And right at that moment, with perfect high-school timing, Shawn Bowman ran up behind Chris, slapped him on the ass, and rambled off some dumb joke, calling us gay or whatever. And of course, after Shawn said that, the girl he was with-Michelle something-smacked him on the arm and sucked her teeth. She yanked Shawn close and whispered in his ear, and I could tell she told him my mom had just died because his face went from blue-black to-well, it stayed blue-black, but if he could've turned red he would've been a walking stop sign. Chris had turned around and glared at Shawn. He had his fists balled up and I could tell he was pissed.

"Asshole," Chris growled. Shawn just slinked away, embarrassed, which, judging by Chris's tone, was a good idea.

It was like all of sudden high school became . . . high school. A bunch of immature, irresponsible teens who felt invincible only because they'd never really been through nothing. The ones who had didn't act like everybody else. Like Shante Jansen. When she got pregnant our sophomore year, she changed big-time. That baby grew her up, and certain things about high school suddenly seemed a lot less important. She just wanted to do her work and go home. No time for the extra silliness. That's how I felt. Like all of a sudden I was way too old for high school, even though I really wasn't. Such a strange feeling.

Luckily, I didn't have to be in school too long. Because I had done pretty good my freshman, sophomore, and junior years, I had a short schedule and could leave at noon everyday. Of course, I was a little behind, but Ms. Harris had all the teachers create make-up assignments for me so that I could catch up on the work I missed. I wasn't really worried too much though. School was always pretty easy for me. A lot easier than smiling, that's for sure.

The original plan was to go to school from eight forty-five to noon, then work at the bank from one to five thirty, as a part of the work-study program. I wasn't too gassed about working at a bank, just because it seemed like it would be boring as hell, sitting behind that thick glass counting other people's money all day. The paycheck, however, I was definitely excited about. But because I missed the first few weeks of school, I also missed the first few weeks of work, and the bank filled my spot with another student. So I was left without a job and nothing to do after class.

My father and I talked when I got word that my spot was being given away, and he told me not to worry about it, but that I should definitely try to find some work, especially since I was going to have so much time on my hands. When he said that, my mother hadn't passed yet. Now that she had, I really wanted to find a job, not just to keep busy, but also to try to help him out with the bills. And even though I considered myself to be pretty smart, I didn't have any work experience, at least not any that was on the books. Sweeping Ms. Jones's steps didn't really count.

So I did what anybody in my position would do. I tried to get a job at a fast-food joint. Cluck Bucket. The grimiest spot inthe hood. But they were known for paying pretty good. At least more than most of the other fast-food spots. Everybody said it was because it was owned by some rich dude who felt like the least he could do was pay folks enough to survive, since he was practically killing the whole hood with the food. How could something that tastes so good be so bad for you?

I had eaten there tons of times. My mother would send me out to get chicken baskets on Friday nights. We cooked Monday through Thursday and then took the weekend off. Yes, we cooked. I was pretty much my mom's sous chef growing up, which is just a fancy way of saying I was her kitchen assistant. A little slicing, a little dicing. Some stirring, some sprinkling. What I'm getting at is, I'm kind of mean with the pot and pan. That's another reason why Cluck Bucket seemed like an easy choice for me. I can burn, and I like the food. Especially the biscuits. My mom always said they reminded her of real country biscuits. I never had a country biscuit, but Cluck Bucket's were incredible. As a matter of fact, Cluck Bucket's everything was pretty good, all the way down to the sweet tea.

"Can I help whoever's next in line?" the girl behind the register said with about as much enthusiasm as I had for anything right now-none. She wore a net on her head that made her hair look more like some kind of helmet, and a gold necklace was around her neck with a nameplate hanging from it. RENEE, it said in cursive.

I stepped forward, my sneakers making that weird sound you hear when something comes unstuck.

"Welcome to Cluck Bucket, would you like to try a combo, a special, the Cluck Deluxe, a shake, or a delicious treat from our list of desserts?" she rattled off while rolling her eyes and looking away.

"Are y'all hiring?" I asked, sort of quietly. I didn't care if anybody knew I was trying to get a job, but at the same time, I didn't want everybody in my business.

Renee looked at me for a second, sizing me up.

"Hold on," she said, annoyed. She turned around and yelled to the back, but it looked like she was yelling at the chicken stacked up in that big metal bed thing it sits in. "Clara. We hiring?"

Another woman appeared from behind the metal trays. Her shirt was white instead of purple like Renee's. She also had that hair thing around her head, but her hair was in braids and looked like snakes caught in a net.

"You looking for a job?" Clara said roughly.

"Yes."

She reached under the register and pulled out a piece of paper. An application.

"Fill this out over there." She pointed toward the tables closer to the door. "And bring it back up here when you done."

Clara then slapped a pen down on the counter and glared at me. "And don't steal my pen."

I sat down and started filling out the application, trying to block out the stale smell of old grease and the sounds of all the people coming in and out, yelling and cracking jokes, kids skipping school, construction workers on their lunch breaks, junkies begging for biscuits, and just about anybody else you could possibly imagine. The bell on the door kept jingling every time someone opened it, letting in the car horns and police sirens from outside. Noise from every damn where.

"What's good, Ma?" a young guy probably my age said to Renee. "You looking good with that thing on your head," he joked. His boys laughed.

I tried to see her reaction, but I couldn't because he was standing in front of her. But I could hear her.

"Yeah, whatever. What you want, man?"

The guy rocked left to right and adjusted the hat on his head, and his crotch.

"What's good with your number?" he said, slick.

"Nope. But how about some food," Renee said pretty flat. I'm sure she got this kind of crap all the time. Some fool crackin' slick in front of his friends. I always wondered if this kind of game worked. Like, does "What's good with your number" really bag the ladies? Doubt it.

"A'ight, a'ight, a'ight, whatever. Just let me get a Deluxe."

"No Deluxes. All out."

"Damn, a'ight. Well, let me get Five Cluck Strips."

"No strips."

"Come on, really?"

"Really."

"A'ight well, just give me a three-piece meal. I know you got chicken." The guy laughed and shook his head, disappointed.

At this point he moved to the side, just enough for me to see Renee. She turned around and looked at all the chicken in the hotbed. There must've been like sixty pieces in there. Then she turned back around to the dude.

"All out."

"What?"

"All out. No more chicken."

"It's chicken right there! What you talkin' about?"

"All out."

The boy stood there stunned.

Renee smirked and lifted her hands to her face, her fingers forming a pretend camera. She acted like she was taking a picture. "Snapshot!" she shouted. Then Renee looked at the make-believe camera as if she was checking the photo-guess it was an invisible digital-and teased, "Yikes, not your best face."

The dude's boys started laughing at him, and before he could say anything back, Renee said, "Next in line, please!"

Then he got all sensitive and cussed Renee up and down, throwing the typical "You ain't even that pretty anyway!" at her, bumping tables and chairs as he walked out. His boys trailed behind him like a litter of puppies. I looked down at my application as they were leaving. Guys like that always try to mess with somebody else to make them feel better, and I just wasn't in the mood.

Everyone else in line laughed, though. Especially when the next guy ordered fifty pieces of chicken and got every piece. Apparently, that's why she really couldn't sell that jerk the chicken. It was already spoken for.

"Thank you so much, love. I already have it squared with Clara," the man who ordered all the chicken said.

"No prob, Mr. Ray."

Mr. Ray? I looked up, and sure enough, it was Mr. Willie Ray standing there while Renee piled fried chicken into cardboard buckets.

Mr. Ray was a tall stick of a man who everyone in the neighborhood knew for two reasons. The first is, he was in the funeral business. A mortician. He owned Ray's Funeral Home after inheriting it from his father. It's weird to say, but most of the teenagers and old folks who've died around here have passed through Willie Ray's door.

The other thing everyone knows him for is, well, cancer. Mr. Ray beat it twice, and the only reason everybody knows that is because after he beat it the second time, he basically became, like, a Jehovah's Witness for cancer, knocking on doors and passing out pamphlets. He swears the only reason God spared his life twice is so that he could spread the word about the illness, as if nobody knew what it was. My mother used to always joke with him and say, "Willie, God saved you just so you could torture the hell outta the rest of us? That don't make no sense." He never got upset with her. He just used to laugh and shake his head while heading on to the next house.

"Mr. Ray?" I called out.

"Matthew, I didn't see you sitting there. How are you?" he said, walking toward me with his familiar limp.

"I'm okay." I stood and shook his hand. "What's with all the chicken?"

"Man, it's a funeral. Well, really it's a repast. They didn't have anyone to cater it, so they paid the funeral home extra for us to take care of the accommodations. So we always just come down here and get the chicken. It's easy and everybody likes it," he explained. "What you up to?"

"Just trying to get a job." I pointed to the application that I had literally only filled out my name on, so far.

"Where, here?"

"Yes sir."

Mr. Ray stood there for a second and gave me a once-over, as if he was upset that I was trying to work in Cluck Bucket. As far as I was concerned, it was an honest gig. I figured it was probably tough at times, but still, honest. Plus, I figured I could maybe learn what the secret to some of that fried deliciousness was so that I could take it back to my own kitchen. Maybe make those biscuits for me and my dad one day.

"Matthew, if you work here, you'll never be able to eat here again," he finally joked.

I didn't really think that was true. I mean, certain things you just never get tired of. Cluck Bucket, for me, was definitely one. That's like saying that if I would've gotten that job working at the bank, I would've eventually gotten sick of money. Yeah, right. Not that Mr. Ray was wrong. I just couldn't see it. But I didn't say nothing. Just shrugged.

"Listen. Your mother was a friend of mine. And your father still is. If you need a job, I'll pay you a couple of bucks to help me out down at the funeral home. I mean, I heard they pay pretty good in this crap shack, but I'm sure I can get close, and you won't have to come home smelling like deep-fried fat every night, or put up with these knuckleheads. What you think?" Mr. Ray inched his jacket sleeve up just enough to see his watch, which he twisted around so that the gold face was on the top of his wrist. "Unless," he said low, his eyes still on the time, "you got a thing for hairnets."

Funny. Real funny.

I thought for a moment. Mr. Ray was definitely a friend of my folks. He was the one who talked to my mother about the chemotherapy, and what that would be like. He said he didn't know much about breast cancer, but he did know that ice cream is the secret to feeling better when the treatment makes you feel sick. As a matter of fact, Mr. Ray was there the day my mom was taken to the hospital, the day she left home for good. He helped my father get her down the steps because she refused to let the EMT guys put her on a stretcher.

"I ain't no princess and I ain't no baby, so I don't need to be carried nowhere," she had snapped as Dad and Mr. Ray held her up by her arms and eased her down the stoop, one painful step at a time.

Dad cracked a joke about her being a queen. "Damn right!" she replied, and Mr. Ray was right there to cosign.

"The queen of your house, this block, Bed-Stuy-hell, Daisy, you the queen of all of Brooklyn!" Mr. Ray joked. "And guess what? Your throne will be right here waiting for you when you come home."

She never came home, but we appreciated Mr. Ray's positivity. He was always that way-a good guy. And even though I trustedhim, did I really want to work at the funeral home with him? I mean, it wasn't him I was worried about. It was just the whole death thing, and the fact that I would have to be around sad people all the time. Losing my mom was already damn near too much for me to deal with, so being around a bunch of strangers dealing with the same crap just seemed like hell.

But the way Mr. Ray was talking, hell paid pretty good. And even though I didn't buy the whole "You wont be able to eat here" crap, I didn't want to risk it. But still, I didn't know if I could really do it. A funeral home?

"Thanks Mr. Ray," I said, tapping the ink pen on the application. "But I don't think I can do that. It's just . . . I just . . ." I struggled to explain why, but I could tell by the way he looked at me that I didn't really have to.

"No need to explain, son," he said, putting his hand up. "Trust me, I get it."

I looked down at the application, embarrassed. Even though Mr. Ray said he understood where I was coming from, I still felt a little stupid turning down his offer when the only other option was to work in a grimy chicken spot. But on the other hand, it just didn't seem like a good idea to take a job somewhere where I'd have to relive my mom's funeral everyday. Like being paid to replay the worst day of my life over and over again.

Mr. Ray put his hand on my shoulder. "Just let me know if you change your mind." I didn't look up. I just nodded and started filling out the address line, signing myself up for fry-duty. But it was either that or die-duty. Lose-lose.

As soon as Mr. Ray turned around to walk back toward the counter, the door swung open and a young girl came rushing in, her hand pressed tight to her mouth, her cheeks bulging from her face. And before she could get to the bathroom-hell, before she could even get all the way inside-she spewed red, lumpy slime all over the already sticky floor. It looked like that old-lady pudding. What's it called? Tapioca? Yeah. It was like tapioca. But red. And if there's one thing I just can't deal with, it's puke. Two things, really-tapioca and puke. I just can't. Everything about throw-up is gross. The way it looks, the way it smells, the way it sounds. All of it. Straight-up nasty. So when this girl came in chucking her lunch, I sprung from my chair and damn near jumped on Mr. Ray. I literally almost knocked him over.

"What the-" Mr. Ray whipped around after hearing the belching and hacking sound of spit-up, along with my chair sliding back from the under the table and my footsteps running up on him. "Clara!" he shouted. "Clara! You got a situation out here!"

I stood next to Mr. Ray, but faced the opposite way. I looked straight ahead at Renee and the other customers who were also grossed out, while Mr. Ray focused on the sick kid, who I could hear heaving.

Renee stretched her neck to see what was happening, and once she saw the mess, she just tightened her lips and shook her head. Like this was normal. "Clara, we need a clean-up," she said in a bored voice.

"Clara!" Mr. Ray barked again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Clara yelped. She came through a door on the side of the kitchen, rolling a yellow mop bucket. A guy followed behind her with what looked like a bag of sand and one of those big orange cones.

"Jesus," Clara said, passing me. I locked my eyes on the chicken. I couldn't stand to see the puke, because if I had seen it, they'd have had to clean up two tapiocas. "Put that stuff down and go get her some water," Clara said to the guy with the sand.

The dude ran back toward the kitchen and in a flash came back with a cup of water.

"Sit down," Clara said to the girl.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," the girl cried over and over again, and I could tell she was lifting the cup to her mouth because her voice changed. "I'm so sorry. I just . . . couldn't make it to the bathroom." She sounded embarrassed, and to be honest, I was pretty embarrassed too. I mean, I was already feeling a way when I turned down the job Mr. Ray offered me, but now I was visibly scared of upchuck and I just knew the girl at the register was looking at me act like a pussy. So, yeah-pretty embarrassed.

"Next in line!" Renee called. Turns out she wasn't paying me no mind. She wasn't tripping about anything. For her this was just another day at the job. I didn't know how anyone could still have an appetite, especially since the whole place smelled like old, wet socks now, but people went on ordering.

Mr. Ray faced the front of the restaurant and put his arm around me. "All good, Matthew," he said. "Go ahead and finish up your application. Hell, they should hire you just for having to endure that!" He chuckled to himself and moved toward the register.

"Wait. Mr. Ray." I reached out and grabbed his arm. He turned back toward me. "Will I . . . uh . . . will I have to touch dead people?" Honest question.

He crossed his arms. "Do you want to?"

"No."

"Then, no."

I weighed my options. Funerals suck. The possibility of not being able to eat my favorite fast food, dealing with random crazies who come in and talk trash, and mopping up throw-up really, really sucks.

"Okay," I said to Mr. Ray.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

Mr. Ray smiled. "Okay," he said with a nod. "C'mon, you can start right now."

I followed him up to the register. I set Clara's pen on the counter while Mr. Ray reached in his suit jacket and pulled out a few cancer pamphlets and left them in front of Renee's register, like they were some kind of tip or something.

"Give these to your grandma," he said while we gathered up all the buckets of chicken.

"You got it," Renee said nicely as we headed toward the door. I held my breath as me and Mr. Ray tiptoed over the pile of sand that covered whatever was left of the vomit, leaving the application with only my name and half of my address on the table.

"So, who's funeral is it up there?" I asked Mr. Ray as we laid the chicken out on platters. The repast (I actually didn't know that's what they're called, but it's the dinner after the funeral-the repast) was happening in the basement of the funeral home, and the actual service was going on upstairs. The only reason I knew that some funerals happen in the funeral home is because we used to always see people standing outside of Ray's dressed in all black, hugging, just like they do at funerals that happen at churches. The good thing about Ray's Funeral Home is, at least the AC worked.

"You know Rhonda Jameson?" Mr. Ray asked.

He placed a breast next to a leg.

"Ms. Jameson died?"

"No. Ms. Jameson is fine. Her father passed last week."

"Oh," I said. "Well, at least she had him for a long time."

"Yeah." Still, he shook his head. "But it never gets any easier."

Mr. Ray put these big, really nice bowls on the table and was scooping out spoonfuls of canned greens. I have to admit, the food area looked pretty good. He had tablecloths down and fake flowers on the tables (I hate real flowers, but I'll get to that), and had me set up the cushioned fold-up chairs instead of the regular, hard-butt ones.

After all the food was out and all the tables were set, there really wasn't much else to do, but I still didn't want to go home yet. At the same time I also hoped Mr. Ray didn't start digging into how I was feeling and all that. I mean, I know people mean well when they ask those kinds of questions, but at the end of the day, they are stupid questions. How am I feeling? Well, let me think.My mother's funeral was a couple days ago, so I damn sure ain't happy.

Lucky for me, Mr. Ray didn't ask anything like that. He actually didn't say nothing about my mother at all. Instead he started talking about what he was like when he was my age.

"Man," Mr. Ray said with a sigh, "you better than I was. You responsible, y'know?" He leaned against the wall and crossed his ankles.

"I guess," I said, unsure of where this conversation was going.

"I mean, I wasn't thinking about no job or nothing like that. I was thinking about one thing only-skirts."

"You were thinking about wearing skirts?" I asked, shocked.

"No, man! I didn't mean"-his raspy voice sounded even more scratchy when he got excited-"I mean girls, man. Skirts. We were thinking about girls. Like your buddy, Chris."

Mr. Ray seemed disappointed that I didn't pick up on his old-school slang.

"Oh." I smirked. Chris definitely thought about girls. "Well, I think about them too. A lot. I just also think about other stuff, I guess." I didn't really see the big deal in that. Girls are great. But so is graduating from high school and leaving it behind. Forever. Seemed pretty basic to me.

"And that's why you're different. Man, me and my brother Robbie done wrecked many a car, taking our eyes off the road to check out some lady's hind-parts."

Hind-parts? I snickered and Mr. Ray started laughing too. He probably thought I was laughing at him and his brother, but what it really was, was the word hind-parts. Such an old-people word.

The whole time we talked I could hear the people upstairs moving around. I couldn't make out voices, but every footstep came through. I wondered what the people at Mr. Jameson's funeral were doing. If they were laughing or crying, or both. If someone was whispering stupid comments to the person next to them about how good Mr. Jameson looked dead. If Ms. Jameson was exploding. Like I did.

"Mr. Ray, can I ask you something?"

"Of course." I could tell he thought I was going to ask him something about girls by the way he crossed his legs the other way.

But I didn't.

"Can I go up there?"

"Where?" he asked, confused.

I pointed up. "Up there? To the funeral. Just for a second."

"Why?" He cocked his head slightly to the side.

I just shrugged. I couldn't tell him why because I'm not sure I really knew why at the time. I just all of a sudden wanted to. I needed to.

Mr. Ray looked at me for a few seconds, hard. Then he sucked his teeth. "Come here, Matthew," he said, taking off his suit jacket. "If you gonna go up there, be respectful." He held the coat open so I could slip my arms in. "And sit in the back."

THE FUNERAL OF CLARK "SPEED-O" JAMESON

Upstairs, the funeral home was pretty much the same as downstairs, except much darker and no tables. Just rows of padded fold-upsand a wooden podium in the front. The lights were dimmed, which was very different from the bright lights in the church at my mother's funeral. The darkness definitely made it seem more serious. Plus it hid you better in case you exploded.

Robbie Ray, Mr. Ray's younger brother, was the MC for the funeral, kind of like how the preacher is when you have one at a church. But Robbie Ray wasn't no preacher. As a matter of fact, he was pretty much still the same man who was crashing cars looking at "hind-parts" when he was younger, except now he was older. But he still looked young. Way younger than Mr. Ray. And he was always dressed like he was looking for a date. Tight suits with his shirt always unbuttoned down to the middle of his chest like we live on some island or something. He always wore gold watches, gold chains, had a gold slug in the front of his mouth, and wore a gold nugget ring on his pinky. My mother used to always clown him, saying he was stuck somewhere between 1970 and outer space.

"And now we're going to have a few words from some of Mr. Jameson's friends," Robbie said, his voice deep like a late-night radio show host's. Sometimes I thought he was making it that way on purpose, just to go with his whole style. But I could never tell for sure.

He moved his finger over the program to make sure he called the right name. "Mr. McCray?"

I slipped into a seat in the back like Mr. Ray told me. I felt a little silly, not because I was at a random funeral, but because my arms looked like tentacles in Mr. Ray's huge suit jacket. It fit me okay in the shoulders because Mr. Ray was skinny, but the sleeves were way too long. I kept pulling them up to my wrist, and tried to keep my fingers spread out so they wouldn't slide back down.

Next to me was an old lady dressed in a purple skirt and a black and purple polka-dot shirt. Who said you had to wear all black to a funeral, I thought as I looked down at my blue jeans and green and brown Nikes. I glanced over at her and nodded. She gave me an awkward look. At first I thought maybe she knew I didn't belong there. But then she kept wiggling her nose like she was going to sneeze, so I figured it was all the cologne coming from Mr. Ray's suit coat. I don't know what it is about old men and cologne. My mother used to say that when men get old they think anything that smells bad can kill germs better than soap and hot water, so they either bathe in liquor or cologne. I wanted to lean over to that old lady and tell her that I was sorry for the stench and that I hoped it didn't cause her more grief than she was already feeling. But I didn't. I just made whatever face I thought looked like it was saying I was sorry, and nodded my head to her.

"Afternoon, afternoon," a mumble came over the speakers. "I'm A. J. McCrary. Not McCray. McCrary." The old, bent-over man peered at Robbie Ray for messing up his name.

"Anyway, y'all know how Clark got the name Speed-O?" A. J. McCrary leaned on the podium and spoke into the mic. His face looked like leather, and his eyes were big and glassy. He only had white hair on the sides of his head, almost like he was wearing ear muffs made of pure cotton.

"Y'all wanna know?" he asked again, his voice pitchy and weird like all the teeth in his mouth were loose.

Some people in the crowd grunted, a few others shouted, "Tell it!"

"Oh, I'm a tell it," he said, adjusting the microphone.

"One time, a long time ago when we was kids, there used to be this old doughnut shop over on DeKalb all the cops used to hang at. So we outside of there, and Clark starts talking to me about the pig this and the pig that, and that he been reading black newspapers and checkin' what Malcolm X been saying up in Harlem. This was the sixties, so you know how it was. 'Fros, people changing their names and all that."

The older people in the crowd nodded their heads in agreement. I glanced over at the lady next to me and imagined her with an afro. Yikes.

"So Clark kicking all this revolution stuff, and I told him, 'Man you ain't 'bout nothin'. You just yappin' your trap. But you ain't gonna do a"-the old man caught himself about to cuss-"a daggone thing."

People started giggling.

"He said, 'Oh, yeah? Watch this.' Next thing I know this fool come running out the doughnut shop with one doughnut in his hand and one in his mouth, and a young white cop running behind him hollerin' 'bout his doughnut gettin' stolen. Can you imagine that? A cop yellin' out, 'Thief, thief !'"

Everybody started laughing at this crazy story. Even me.

"I didn't see him for a few days after that," Mr. McCrary continued, "but when I did, he told me he never got caught! And to prove it, he told me he had the other doughnut in his house forme. He said Brother Malcolm talked about whatever you do for yo'self, you do for your brother. So the other doughnut was mine. I couldn't believe it-one, because that's crazy; two, because he risked his life over some doughnuts; and three, because he actually outran the police! You know how fast you gotta be to get away from the cops . . . on foot? Pretty damn"-he caught himself again-"daggone fast! So I started calling him Speed-O, and it stuck."

He laughed and began coughing harshly into the mic, digging into his back pocket for a handkerchief to spit in. Robbie Ray reached out for him to help him to his seat, though Mr. McCrary didn't look like he was quite ready to sit down. But realizing that his time was up, he looked back into the crowd and pressed his lips to the mic as if he was kissing it.

"We'll miss him, and many blessings to his family. Thank you," he added quickly, his voice now way too loud, popping through the speakers.

Everybody shook their heads, confirming that Mr. Jameson was that kind of guy.

Robbie Ray came bopping back up to the mic to introduce the next speaker. I kept feeling something sticking me in my chest, so I reached my hand into the jacket to see what kept poking me. Of course, not thinking, I pulled out what had to be at least ten cancer pamphlets. For a moment I forgot whose jacket I had on. The lady next to me shot her eyes over at me. I just made the weird robot face I make when I'm taking pictures-big eyes, tight lips-and tried to stuff the pamphlets back in the pocket as quickly aspossible. Especially since I didn't know what Mr. Jameson died of. Might've been cancer. That would've been awkward.

"Mr. Wallace," Robbie said next in his weird, fake sexy voice.

A giant rose from the second row. Seriously, the biggest man I've ever seen in real life. His head was the size of a basketball, and his back was like a king-size mattress. Except made of bricks.

"Good afternoon," the giant said.

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This humongous monster of a man had the voice of a six-year-old. High, squeaky. Like, cute. I could hear that weird sound when you try to hold in a laugh, but a little bit leaks out-like a mouth fart-happening all over the church. People were trying not to crack up, but his voice made it so hard.

"Um, my name is Mouse," he said, leaning down to get to the microphone. His hands, the size of oven mittens, were gripping the sides of the wooden podium. He could've ripped it apart like nothing if he wanted to.

"And Speed-O trained me when I first got the job with the trucking company. We worked together for a long time. Had a lot of fun. A lot of laughs." Mouse smiled, flashing a big gap in his two front teeth, as if he was suddenly reminiscing in his mind about some of those moments.

"Anybody who knew Speed-O knows he loved to tell stories, and the crazy thing was, you never knew if the stories were true or not. You knew he wasn't no liar, at least he ain't seem like one. But some of the stories were just so ridiculous." Mouse laughed a silly laugh. It sounded like a never-ending hiccup.

"Like this one time, we riding through Arizona on a five-day delivery. I think it was August-the heat was kicking something terrible. Brooklyn summer ain't got nothing on Arizona." He pretended to wipe sweat from his face. "So we pull up to this gas station, some random spot off the map. And Speed-O get to talking about how the last time he had been down in Arizona he stopped at that exact same gas station, and that it was so hot last time that he seen a horse leaning up against the ice chest-you know those old ice chests that sit outside of some stores? One of them. He said the horse was leaning with all four of his legs crossed at the ankle and was panting like a dog. All four legs! Then he said that somebody slipped a cigarette in the horse's mouth to smoke because the dang horse looked so stressed out by the heat."

The room broke out in laughter.

"Shoot, so I asked him," Mouse continued. "I said, 'Speed-O, you sure the heat just wasn't getting to you, and you was seeing things?' You know what he said? He said, 'Nope. I know it was real, because I was the one who lit the horse's cigarette!'"

The room erupted again. People squealed, rocking back and forth, wiping tears from their eyes. I mean, not only was the story hilarious, but the fact that the huge guy telling it sounded like a little kid made it even better. I looked over at the old lady next to me and she was chuckling. She glanced at me and saw that I was laughing too, and nodded. Everyone was nudging each other and I could tell that some of the other folks in the room had heard that story before. And in a weird way, I kind of felt like I knew Mr. Jameson, at least for that moment.

"He was so serious. He never ever said he was kidding or even cracked a smile. He just told the story while lighting a smoke and unwrapping a honey bun, which was his favorite road snack. He was a good friend. I'm gonna miss him a lot, but I'm glad I got to know him."

Mouse maneuvered his way back to his seat, bumping just about everything and everyone. While most people were still laughing, Ms. Jameson stepped up to the mic.

"My name is Rhonda Jameson." She stood there a moment and waited for the crowd to quiet down. "Clark, or Speed-O as most of you knew him, was-is my father."

Ms. Jameson looked tired, but was still upbeat. It definitely seemed to be a pretty cool funeral from what I could tell. Nothing like my mom's.

"I just want to say thank you to everyone for coming out. My father would be so thrilled to know that you came to say your final good-byes." And just like that, her eyes started to swell and fill with tears.

"I'm not gonna cry," she whispered to herself, taking deep breaths. "He would've wanted you to know that he did everything his way. He was honest, his way." Everyone laughed lowly as Ms. Jameson shot a wink to Mouse, who flashed his gappy grin. "He was loyal, his way." Now she nodded to Mr. McCrary.

"But most importantly, he loved, his way," she said, her face starting to melt as the water rose up in her eyes. "He loved . . . ," she started, but couldn't get it out. The breakdown was coming, and there was no stopping it.

I sat in my seat, suddenly anxious. My stomach started to feel weird, and strangely I felt a little desperate to see what was going to happen next. Would she cry? Would she run out? Would she pass out? It wasn't like I was going to be happy to see Ms. Jameson, a lady I had known most of my life from the neighborhood, sad. But I wanted to see if I could tell if she was feeling what I had been feeling.

"He loved . . ." Her voice fluttered. "I'm sorry. I just . . . I just . . ." She turned away from the mic and looked to her left as if she was looking for someone to help her, but no one was there. She started shaking and biting her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. A few people in the crowd shouted, "It's okay!" But it really wasn't. I knew that and she knew that, more than anyone else in the room. Robbie Ray came over to help her, and he held her close while she stumbled and wept through the rest of her speech. After that-and this may sound weird-I felt satisfied.

I didn't stay for the repast, which would pretty much become tradition. Funerals only. Nothing else. I gave Mr. Ray back his funky coat, and told him that I needed to head home.

"Homework?" he asked, like an old man.

"Yeah, unfortunately," I lied. I didn't have any homework. I just didn't want to be around when people started introducing themselves and talking about how they knew Mr. Jameson. It would've been pretty awkward if his loved ones found out that I actually never met the guy. That we never shared a joke or advice or nothing like that. That I was just kind of hanging out watching the funeral like it was a pickup game at the park, or some kind of reality TV show. Crashing Caskets.

"Yeah, you a different one, a'ight. Nothing like how me and Robbie was," Mr. Ray said again, slipping his arm back into his suit jacket. "You go 'head on. We'll meet back here tomorrow after school is through."

I nodded. "I'll be here."

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The Boy in the Black Suit Chapter 1 EVERYTHING IS BACKWARD IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of school. Actually, it was the nineteenth day of school, but it was my first day, and all I could think about was how happy I was that I had already missed three weeks, and that this would be the last first day in this place I would ever have.

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Helping a Teenager Deal With Grief - Advice Column

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Helping a Teenager Deal With Grief - Advice Column

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Helping a teenager deal with grief can be a daunting task. There are a number of things one should take into consideration when supporting a teen.

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How what we do has lasting impacts on the world

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In conclusion, words matter. And when possible, try to let positive words escape; if you're on the brink of spouting negative thoughts, remember the butterfly effect. Remember that apparently insignificant words can have calamitous effects on another person (although the probability of this happening is still unknown).

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Carver, Mars, Eli, and Blake were the best of friends, so when the latter three are killed in a single car accident, Carver’s life is shattered. Adding to his grief is a heavy dose of guilt: he was the one who sent the text Mars was responding to while driving, causing the fatal crash.

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Image: penguin random house

Grief is messy, painful, and somehow both universal and incredibly personal.

Jeff Zentner's upcoming YA novel Goodbye Days tackles an extreme and tragic case of grieving with empathy, honesty, and heart.

The follow-up to his acclaimed debut novel The Serpent King, Goodbye Days is the story of teenage Carver Briggs, whose three best friends have all tragically been killed in a car accident. Carver blames himself for their deaths, as he was texting them at the time. As he is faced with his grief and guilt, Carver is also asked by the families of his friends to participate in "goodbye days," to share their memories and say a proper farewell.

Mashreads spoke with Zentner about the challenges of writing about loss.
What sparked the idea for this book?
First of all, The Serpent King deals a little bit with this kind of subject matter, with issues of grief and things like that, but I didn't really get to explore that emotional territory as fully as I wanted to. After I got done with The Serpent King ... the itch was sort of there to explore this sort of thing.

And also I think a lot about death. Not in a creepy morbid way, just in the finality of it. The sense that every one of us are walking around with a ticking clock attached to us, and we have no idea when that clock is gonna run out. And so it's all about creating as much love as you can while the clock is running, and seeing as much beauty and doing as much things you want to do.
You're writing about teenagers dealing with these issues, and generally writing for teenagers. What are the challenges and the responsibility in that?
I think the responsibility is the same as it always is when writing for teenagers, which is to be honest. Because teens can really see through dishonesty very quickly, and you can lose your trust very quickly.

I think the challenge is, a lot of times we think about lives as a compendium of accomplishments: "He graduated high school and went to college, got a job and had children, bought a house and retired to Miami." How to find the value you find in a life separate from accomplishments, when there's no objective measure of a life, how do you measure the value of that life, I think is the challenge.

And also the challenge here was my main character's culpability in it all. And to write it so that he is both able to grieve and to contend with his guilt. He's got two really different things going on, and they're working in conjunction with each other.
What was it like delving so deeply into grief?
I had to really do a lot of research on grieving. I've been really fortunate in my life, I've never had a situation like Carver in the book, where I lost friends like that. I've lost family members, grandparents, that sort of thing, but I've never had a close friend die. And it's really terrifying to me, because I know how much it would hurt me and how much I would grieve over it.

So it was really an exercise in imagination and empathy, and really going inside myself, to take myself to dark places where I'd never been forced to go. But I kind of had to willingly go to those places. I would read books like Blue Nights by Joan Didion and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, books about grieving. I learned a lot from those books, like about the kind of strange counter-intuitive responses we have to losing a loved one. Like, Joan Didion talks about not wanting to throw out her husband's shoes in case he comes back and needs them. That's not going to happen, but she's indulging that magical thinking. I could not rely on my own personal experience for it. I really just had to imagine it and put myself in the shoes of my characters.
Goodbye Days hits shelves March 7th. Read on for an exclusive excerpt:
Chapter One

Depending on who-sorry, whom -you ask, I may have killed my three best friends.

If you ask Blake Lloyd's grandma, Nana Betsy, I think she'd say no. That's because when she first saw me earlier today, she grabbed me in a huge, tearful hug and whispered in my ear: "You are not responsible for this, Carver Briggs. God knows it and so do I." And Nana Betsy tends to say what she thinks. So there's that.

If you ask Eli Bauer's parents, Dr. Pierce Bauer and Dr. Melissa Rubin-Bauer, I expect they'd say maybe. When I saw them today, they each looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. In their faces, I saw more bereavement than anger. I sensed their desolation in the weakness of their handshakes. And I'm guessing part of their fatigue was over whether to hold me accountable in some way for their loss. So they go down as a maybe. Their daughter, Adair? Eli's twin? We used to be friends. Not like Eli and I were, but friends. I'd say she's a "definitely" from the way she glowers at me as if she wishes I'd been in the car too. She was doing just that a few minutes ago, while talking with some of our classmates attending the funeral.

Then there's Judge Frederick Edwards and his ex-wife, Cynthia Edwards. If you ask them if I killed their son, Thur- good Marshall "Mars" Edwards, I expect you'd hear a firm "probably." When I saw Judge Edwards today, he towered over me, immaculately dressed as always. Neither of us spoke for a while. The air between us felt hard and rough as stone. "It's good to see you, sir," I said finally, and extended my sweating hand.

"None of this is good," he said in his kingly voice, jaw muscles clenching, looking above me. Beyond me. As though he thought if he could persuade himself of my insignificance, he could persuade himself that I had nothing to do with his son's death. He shook my hand like it was both his duty and his only way of hurting me.

Then there's me. I would tell you that I definitely killed my three best friends.

Not on purpose. I'm pretty sure no one thinks I did it on purpose; that I slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines. No, here's the cruel irony for the writer I am: I wrote them out of existence. Where are you guys? Text me back. Not a particularly good or creative text message. But they found Mars's phone (Mars was driving) with a half-composed text responding to me, just as I requested. It looks like that was what he was working on when he slammed into the rear of a stopped semi on the highway at almost seventy miles per hour. The car went under the trailer, shearing off the top.

I would tell you that I definitely killed my three best friends.

Am I certain that it was my text message that set into motion the chain of events that culminated in my friends' deaths? No. But I'm sure enough.

I'm numb. Blank. Not yet in the throes of the blazing, ringing pain I'm certain waits for me in the unrolling days ahead. It's like once when I was chopping onions to help my mom in the kitchen. The knife slipped and I sliced open my hand. There was this pause in my brain as if my body needed to figure out it had been cut. I knew two things right then: (1) I felt only a quick strike and a dull throbbing. But the pain was coming. Oh, was it coming. And (2) I knew that in a second or two, I was about to start raining blood all over my mom's favorite bamboo cutting board (yes, people can form deep emotional attachments to cutting boards; no, I don't get it so don't ask).

So I sit at Blake Lloyd's funeral and wait for the pain. I wait to start bleeding all over everything.

Chapter Two

I'm a seventeen-year-old funeral expert.

The plan was we'd finish our senior year of high school at Nashville Arts Academy. Then Eli would be off to Berklee College of Music to study guitar. Blake to Los Angeles to pursue comedy and screenwriting. Mars hadn't figured out where he was going. But he knew what he would be doing: comic-book illustration. And I'd be heading to Sewanee or Emory for creative writing.

This was not the plan: for me to be waiting for the funeral of the third member of Sauce Crew to begin. Yesterday was Mars's funeral. Eli's the day before.

Blake's funeral is at his small, white Baptist church-one of about 37,567 small, white Baptist churches in the greater Nashville area. It reeks of graham crackers, glue, and old carpet. There are crayon-drawn pictures of Jesus, resembling a bearded lollipop, handing out blue and green fishes to a multitude of stick figures. The air-conditioning doesn't work well in the early-August heat and I'm sweating in a navy- blue suit my sister, Georgia, helped me pick out. Or rather, Georgia picked it out herself while I stood there, dazed. I came out of my stupor briefly to express that I thought I was supposed to get a black suit. Georgia gently explained that navy was fine and I could wear it after the funeral. She always forgot to say funerals. Or maybe she didn't forget.

I sit in the back of the church, forehead resting on the pew in front of me. I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck." The carpet is blue and flecked with white. I wonder who designs carpet. Whose life's calling this is. Who says, "No! No! It's not right yet! It needs . . . specks of white! And then my masterpiece is complete!" I mull over this stuff because the world's reliable absurdity is one of the few things that can distract me, and I welcome distractions right now.

My forehead aches from resting on the hard, smooth wood. I hope I appear to be praying. That seems a church/ funeral-appropriate thing to be doing. Plus it saves me from having to make small talk (which I despise under the best of circumstances) with the people making a hushed, sorrowful buzz around me, a swarm of mourning locusts. Isn't it terrible. . . . What a loss. . . . He was so young. . . . He was so funny. . . . He was . . . He was . . . He was. People take shelter under clichés. Language is powerless enough in the face of death. I guess it's asking too much for people to veer from the tried-and-true under such circumstances.

Language is powerless enough in the face of death.

There's a huge crowd. Blake's extended family from East Tennessee. People from Blake's church. Friends of Nana Betsy's from work. A bunch of our classmates from Nashville Arts. I'm friendly with most of them, if not friends. A few come by and quickly express sympathies before moving on, but they mostly leave me alone and I'm grateful. That is, I'm grateful if they're leaving me alone for compassion's sake and not because Adair has already persuaded them that I'm a killer.

There's a rustle beside me, the cushion of the pew depressing, a warmth, and then the sunlit perfume of honeysuckle. If any smell stands in defiance of death, it's honeysuckle.

"Hey, Carver."

I look up. It's Jesmyn Holder, Eli's girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? They never broke up. They'd been dating for maybe two months. She has dark circles under her eyes. She wears her grief like dust on her face.

"Hey, Jesmyn."

"Can I sit here?"

"Sure." Glad there's at least one future classmate Adair hasn't gotten to yet.

"I guess I'm already sitting here."

"I heard someone say once that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"You here alone?" Jesmyn asks. "You were at the other two with a girl."

"That was my sister, Georgia. She had to work today. Sorry we didn't really talk at the other two funerals."

"I wasn't in a chatty mood."

"Me neither." I tug at my collar. "Is it super hot in here?" In general, I'd rather be bitten on the nuts by a Komodo dragon than make small talk. But sometimes you do what you have to do.

"Yeah, but my Filipino genes are fine with it," Jesmyn says.

We sit quietly for a moment while she surveys the crowd. "I recognize a lot of these people from the other two."

I lift my head slightly. "Some go to NAA. You still planning on going?"

"Of course. You didn't think I was going there because of Eli, did you?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. No."

"Two girls from NAA got into Juilliard's piano program last year. That's a huge percentage. That's why I decided to go even before I met Eli."

"I'm glad you're coming still. I didn't mean anything."

"It's cool. Anyway, this seems like a weird thing to talk about right now."

"Everything seems weird to talk about right now."

"Yeah."

At the front of the room, Nana Betsy shambles, weeping, toward Blake's cedar casket to run her hand along its smoothness once more before the funeral starts. I did that before sitting down. The smell of the cedar. Sharp and clean. It didn't smell like something that should be buried under the dirt. It was closed. You don't let people see how someone looks after something like the Accident. So perched atop the casket lid on a wooden stand there's a photo of Blake. He purposely made it ridiculous. It's a department-store portrait; Olan Mills or Sears studio or something. He's wearing a thrift-store sweater from the 1980s and pleated khaki pants. He's holding a huge, grouchy-looking Persian cat. He didn't own a cat. He literally borrowed one for the photo. Pure Blake. A genuine and radiant grin covers his round face. His eyes are closed as if he blinked. He thought photos where people were blinking were hilarious.

I couldn't help but smile when I saw it. Even under the circumstances. All Blake had to do was walk into a room and I started preemptively laughing.

"How come you're not here with your parents?" Jesmyn asks, drawing me out of my memory.

"They're in Italy for their twenty-fifth anniversary. They tried to come home, but they had trouble getting tickets and my dad had to deal with a lost passport. They're coming home tomorrow."

"That sucks." "Why aren't you sitting with Eli's parents?"

Jesmyn crosses her legs and picks a piece of lint off her black dress. "I was. But Adair was giving me a supercrusty vibe. And then I saw you sitting here looking really lonely."

"Maybe this is how I always look."

She brushes a lock of her reddish-black hair from her face. I smell her shampoo. "Imagine my embarrassment if I came over here to show you kindness and you didn't need it."

"Adair won't be happy with you showing me kindness."

"Yeah, well. I guess life is about risk."

I rub my eyes. My exhaustion is beginning to set in. I haven't slept more than a few hours in the last three days. I turn to Jesmyn. "Have you talked to Eli's parents or Adair much since the accident?" I realize, even as I ask, that I have no idea where Jesmyn herself stands on the whole blame thing. Lack of sleep has lowered my inhibitions such that I'm asking questions that might lead to answers I'm unready to hear.

She opens her mouth to answer when the service begins. We bow our heads as Blake's pastor prays and then offers words of comfort from the gospels. It reminds me more of Mars's huge funeral at New Bethel AME Church than Eli's small private service at Connelly Brothers' Funeral Home. Eli's parents are atheists, and it was the first funeral I'd ever been to that didn't once mention God. Seventeen years old and the breadth of my funerary experience probably rivals that of people twice my age.

Six members of Nashville Arts's a cappella choir perform a requiem. They did this at Mars's and Eli's funerals too. Tears streak Jesmyn's face like an atlas of rivers. She holds a wadded-up tissue and dabs her eyes and nose, staring straight ahead. I don't understand why I'm not crying. I should be. Maybe it's like how it's sometimes too cold to snow.

One of Blake's uncles reads First Thessalonians 4:14-17 in his thick East Tennessee accent. His large hands tremble. His voice wavers. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

A fly lands on the pew in front of me and rubs its back legs together. This fly is alive and Blake is dead. The world brims with pulsing, humming life. Except for in the wooden box at the front of the room. There everything lies still. And what caused this stillness was the most banal, routine activity on my part. Texting my friends. The human equivalent of a fly's rubbing its back legs together. It's just something we do. It's not supposed to kill your three best friends.

Nana Betsy limps to the pulpit to deliver the eulogy. She has bad knees. She takes a long while to gather herself before speaking. Her hands are empty, as though she planned to say whatever was in her heart. The look on her face says that there's too much to choose from.

I try not to breathe too much or too loudly in the silence. My mouth is dry and I have a headache forming at the base of my skull. My throat aches as if I have something caught in it. The precarious wall I've built-that we all build to protect others from enduring the spectacle of our grief-is beginning to crumble.

Nana Betsy clears her throat and speaks. "Blake's life wasn't always easy. But he lived joyously. He loved his family. He loved his friends. And he was loved by them."

Down comes the wall and out pours the swirling, gray sea it contained. I put my head in my hands and rest my elbows on my knees. I press the heels of my hands over my eyes, and tears seep hot around the sides. I'm trembling. Jesmyn's hand is on my shoulder. At least the ache in my throat is gone, as though it were an abscess full of tears that I lanced.

"Blake was funny," Nana Betsy says. "If you knew him, he made you laugh at some time or another."

Tears stream down my wrists and dampen my shirt cuffs. They dribble onto the blue carpet with white flecks. I think for a second about all the places I've made a small part of me. Now a tiny piece of this church holds my tears. Maybe after I'm dead, they can cut up the carpet and extract my DNA from my tears that have soaked into the carpet and resurrect me. Maybe that's what the resurrection will be.

"Think of him every time someone makes you laugh. Think of him every time you make someone laugh. Think of him every time you hear someone laugh."

I draw a deep breath that hitches and shudders as the air enters my lungs. It's probably too loud, but I don't care. I sat in the back for a reason. I don't sense anyone turning to look at me, at least.

"I can't wait for the day that I see him again and throw my arms around him. Until then, I know he'll be sitting at our Savior's feet." She pauses to compose herself before finishing. "And he's probably making Jesus laugh too. Thank you all for coming. This would have meant a lot to Blake."

The funeral ends. I stand to serve as pallbearer. They didn't ask me to be Mars's or Eli's pallbearer.

Jesmyn reaches up and touches my hand. "Hey. Do you want a ride to the cemetery?"

I nod, grateful, sagging into myself. Like I've awoken from one of those dreams where you cry and soak your pillow. Your grief is animal, formless, unhinged in the illogic of dreams. You wake up and don't remember what you were crying about. Or you do, and you were crying because you've been offered a chance at redeeming yourself. So when you realize it was a dream, you keep crying because your shot at redemption is another thing you've lost. And you're tired of losing things.

I help carry Blake's casket to the hearse. It weighs a thousand pounds. I had a science teacher ask us once: "What weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of lead?" Everyone said lead. But a few hundred pounds of best friend and casket don't weigh the same as a few hundred pounds of lead or feathers. It weighs much more.

~

It's a short walk from the front of the church to the waiting hearse, but in the sultry afternoon heat, I'm soaked when I get to Jesmyn's battered Nissan pickup.

"Sorry, my AC doesn't work," she says, sweeping piano books off the passenger seat.

"Don't you die of heat every time you drive anywhere?"

"That's the best way you could phrase it?"

"Don't you suffer extreme discomfort but not literal death every time you drive anywhere?" I get in and roll down the window.

We drive without speaking for most of the ride, the muggy air washing over our faces. My cheeks are gritty with dried salt.

When we're a few blocks from the cemetery, Jesmyn asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I lie. A few seconds pass. "No."

Chapter Three

Sauce Crew.

Every group of friends needs a name. We were Sauce Crew.

Sophomore year. Close enough to the end of the school year that we're in a perpetual state of giddiness. It's a Friday night and we've just attended Nashville Arts's production of Rent. It was great. But on a Friday night in spring-each of us surrounded by our three best friends-it could have been the worst train wreck of a steaming turd (work with me on the mixed metaphor) imaginable and we'd still have been euphoric.

So we're at McDonald's stuffing our faces.

"Okay," Mars says through a mouthful of hamburger, apropos of nothing: "What if you had to classify every animal as either a dog or a cat?"

Eli spews soda out his nose. We were already laughing at the question, and now we're laughing at Eli mopping Mountain Dew off the Wolves in the Throne Room T-shirt he wore as if it were grafted to his chest.

Blake is gasping for air. "What are you even talking about?"

Mars reaches over to dip a french fry in my ketchup. "No, no, all right. Check it out. Raccoons are dogs. Possums are cats. Squirrels are-"

"Hang on, hang on," Eli says.

"Dude, Mars," Blake says, "raccoons are clearly cats. Possums are dogs."

"No, hang on," Eli says. "Any animal you can't train is a cat. You can't train a raccoon. Cat. You can't train a possum. Cat."

"Wait, how do you know you can't train a possum?" Mars asks.

"You can train a cat," I say. "I've seen YouTube videos of cats using a toilet."

Now all three are howling, struggling to breathe. Blake is doubled over. "Please tell me when you ditch out on us to write, you're sitting at home watching cats piss and shit into human toilets and pumping your fist - Yeah! Cat using human toilet! "

"No, but I just come across them. Through life."

Tears stream down Mars's face. "'Through life.' Blade said 'through life.' Oh my God. Oh my God."

Get it? Carver? Blade? Blake had come up with the nickname. It's funny because I dress like a guy who wants to be a writer and whose older sister works at Anthropologie and helps dress him. Guys who meet this description don't generally go by "Blade."

"Okay, guys. Ferrets. Ferrets are long cats," Eli says.

"I've seen a trained ferret, so you can definitely train a ferret," Blake says.

"To use a human toilet?" Mars asks.

"I didn't know there were ferret toilets," Blake says.

"If it's true that you can train a ferret, then I take back what I said, because ferrets are definitely cats," Eli says.

"Okay, seals," I say.

"Mmmmm, cat," Mars says, staring off thoughtfully.

Eli looks incredulous. "Wait, what?"

"You can for sure train a seal, bro," Blake says.

"No, hang on," Eli says. "I think Mars is implicitly saying seals look like cats to him."

Mars pounds the table, rattling our trays. "They do. They have catfaces. Also they love fish. Cats love fish. Seals are watercats."

We're getting dirty looks from other diners. We couldn't care less. Remember? Young. Alive. Friday night in spring. A feast of junk food spread before us. Best friends. We feel like lords. Everything seems limitless.

Blake stands and finishes his drink with a rattling slurp. "Gentlemen, I need to"-he makes air quotes-"urinate, as it were. If y'all will excuse me. When I return, I expect to have some resolution of the seal-cat issue."

Mars slaps me on the back. "Better go with him so you can film it."

"You don't understand, man," I say. "I'm only into cats that way." Peals of laughter from Mars and Eli.

We're well into our discussion of whether grasshoppers, jellyfish, and snakes are dogs or cats when we realize it's been a while since we've seen Blake.

"Yo, fam, check it out." Mars points at the children's playground adjacent to the McDonald's. Blake is pitching back and forth on one of those rocking horses mounted on a thick spring. He's waving furiously at us, like a little kid, and whooping.

"Look at that asshole," Eli murmurs.

"He shame," Mars says.

"Wait, what?" I ask. " He shame? That's not a thing people say. You're missing like three words in that sentence, including a linking verb."

"I'm making it a thing. Someone does something stupid? He shame. You do something stupid? You shame."

I shake my head. "That will never be a thing."

Eli gathers unopened packets of Blake's chicken nugget sauce and hands a couple to Mars. "Come on, we gotta blast him."

I hurry to keep up as they dash outside.

"Blade, you film," Eli says. I also throw like a guy who wants to be a writer.

Blake rocks, whooping, laughing maniacally, whipping around an invisible cowboy hat and waving at us.

We grin and wave-Eli and Mars waving with one hand, handfuls of sauce packets behind their backs-watching him for a second while I film on my phone.

"Okay," Mars says under his breath, still grinning and waving furiously. "Count of three. One. Two. Three. "

He and Eli stop waving and lunge forward, hurling sauce packets. Mars has a good arm. His dad used to force him to do all kinds of sports. Eli has this rangy athleticism. He'd have probably been a decent basketball player if he could put down his guitar long enough and if he weren't so allergic to keeping his long, curly black hair out of his face. A teriyaki and a BBQ each score a direct hit on the horse's head, causing them to burst open and spray Blake. His joyous whoops turn to cries of indignation. "Awwwww, no way, you assholes! Gross!"

Mars and Eli high-five each other and then awkwardly high-five me. I suck at high fives. They collapse on the ground in hysterics, rolling around.

Blake walks up, arms outstretched, dripping with sauce. Mars and Eli hurry to their feet. Blake starts chasing them in turn, trying to wipe sauce on them. He's much too slow, even with them breathless from laughter. Finally he gives up and goes to the restroom. He returns, dabbing his shirt with a wet paper towel.

"Y'all are so damn funny. The damn Sauce Crew."

"We should call ourselves that. Sauce Crew," Eli says.

"Sauce Crew," I say somberly, extending my hand, palm down.

"Sauce Crew," Mars says in his terrible English accent and puts his hand on mine.

"Ssssssssssssauce Crewwwwwwwww," Eli says, in a boxing announcer voice, and puts his hand on Mars's.

"Sauce-" Blake starts to put his hand on Eli's but then playfully slaps him on the cheek and goes for Mars. They both giggle and dodge while trying to keep their hands together.

"Sauce Crew," Blake says, and puts his hand on top of Eli's.

"Saaaaaaaaaaaaauce Crew!" we shout in unison.

"Did one of you donkey dicks film it at least? I want to put it on my YouTube," Blake says.

~

I watch them lower the third member of Sauce Crew into the ground.

I am Sauce Crew now.

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Read an exclusive excerpt of Jeff Zentner's upcoming 'Goodbye Days'

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Grief is messy, painful, and somehow both universal and incredibly personal. Jeff Zentner's upcoming YA novel Goodbye Days tackles an extreme and tragic case of grieving with empathy, honesty, and heart. The follow-up to his acclaimed debut novel The Serpent King , Goodbye Days is the story of teenage Carver Briggs, whose three best friends have all tragically been killed in a car accident.

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A poem about missing people we've lost.

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Poet Winifred M. Letts writes about losing someone.

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An article from Psychology Today that provides tips to readers on how to deal with the loss of a loved one.

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Think of the most psychologically painful thing that you have ever experienced. Actually take a moment and do it.

As you do that, realize that all it took for you to revisit it was a dozen written words from a person you've likely never met.

That's how close to your life that pain you just felt still is-and always will be.

Loss is painful. That's the trouble.

Acute pain is a signal to stop and change directions so as to avoid harm-just what your hand does automatically when you accidentally touch a hot pan. Even before you're fully aware of what you're feeling, your hand dramatically changes direction. If the reaction is fast enough, it may partially reduce the tissue damage that even a few more milliseconds would certainly produce.

If any cues reliably predict acute pain, they too will readily lead you to stop and change direction. Learning to avoid events merely associated with pain is an ancient process.

Every organism that evolved since the Cambrian period (and none that evolved before) shows it. That's half a billion years of practice. We're pretty good at learning how to avoid.

But some forms-many forms-of psychological pain cannot be removed or diminished by a change in direction. They cannot be addressed by flinching, running, or hiding. They are permanent and ever present.

Take the loss of someone you love. The sense of having lost someone or something, without any hope of recovering it, requires a profoundly different approach than jerking back from a hot pan. But the challenge it presents is clearer and more undeniable: It's not exceptional. You will go to your grave just a few words away from virtually any notable pain or loss you have ever experienced. Anytime, anywhere, human cognition can bring it back. Mental relations and memory are like that.

When a loved one dies, the loss follows you from room to room, moment to moment. It is both permanent and ever present. Although we know that loss is not going away, there are those eons of human practice in trying to avoid pain. We foolishly engage that inheritance even with the loss of those we love.

We may try not to think of the death or distract ourselves with other tasks- hoping against hope that thinking of something else will diminish the pain. We may directly try to suppress a sense of sadness. We avoid thinking of sweet moments with the loved one, lured into suppression of our memory by the deceptively soothing short-term effect. We may pretend the loss did not occur or deny its implications-refusing to ever alter a loved one's bedroom, as if she or he will return to reclaim it.

Suppression and avoidance come at a high cost-they diminish our ability to do much of anything else. The effort to suppress and run away is exhausting and eventually fails. Always, the painful reality of the loss returns. Pain does not really disappear when suppressed or avoided; it is right there, under the surface. Avoidance doesn't make sadness less of a problem; it makes it more of a problem because you have to keep working harder and harder to suppress it.

The pain of loss is important, not just because it challenges us in ways that go far beyond a hot stove. It has huge lessons to teach us, and avoidance keeps us from a significant source of wisdom. Pain is really an instructor about caring. It tells us we're vulnerable. We care where we hurt-and we hurt where we care. The gift of pain is a message about what is important in life. It not only tells us how to love; it also provides us with an opportunity to discover sources of strength and flexibility within us that help us prosper. Looking inside the pain expands us, encouraging us to become larger than we are and to live a life of meaning. To open your heart to pain is to open your heart to joy.

The Ubiquity of Loss

My mother died a few years ago at age 92. My sister texted me that her pneumonia had suddenly worsened. A frantic plane trip had me arriving just in time to witness her last few hours of life. I knew this scene had played out countless times over the millennia, but it felt profoundly special, and it filled me with reverence for the fragility of life. It was awe-full and awe-inspiring-profoundly painful, yet profoundly precious.

My sister and I heard her breaths space further and further apart. "It won't be long now," a nurse said quietly. And then came that exhale that was not followed by an inhale. She was forever lost to me, except in my memory.

The word grief comes from the Old French gréve, meaning "a heavy burden." When you grieve for a loss, you have to carry a heavy burden. If you tell yourself that the loss isn't that heavy, or that you should be over it by now, you deny your own pain. You deny your wound and thus hinder it from healing.

There is wisdom about pain in some of our oldest rituals of death. People gather together, typically telling stories about the sweet, silly, or loving things the person did. We honor their courage, perseverance, and contributions to our lives at the same time we weep over the knowledge that we will never see them again. The rituals teach us that the pain of loss is rich and varied and reflects our caring and connection. We honor what loved ones stood for and promise to carry that forward. We acknowledge their flaws and resolve not to repeat them. We find in their lives instructions for what to appreciate and value. We laugh and we cry, extracting the array of thoughts and feelings that accompany the loss of anything important.

Loss serves up a rich and bittersweet stew of love and wisdom about what matters. Right inside the pain is the opportunity to see all of our present moments in a way that helps us live life more purposefully and more fully. But we can't learn the lessons that loss contains while fighting or running from it.

The sheer futility of the attempt is exposed by the frequency of loss in everyday life. If we fail to learn how to deal with the pain of loss in a kind and self-compassionate way, the pull to escape and avoid can dominate our moments.

For example, among the common losses that thread through our lives is loss of trust in one's own body or mind, whether due to a life-threatening illness, a panic attack, or a spell of depression. Yes, you may get better, but there is no delete button in human cognition. After a distressing illness, you cannot unknow that your body or mind is not as trustworthy as it was before.

Another common experience is loss of trust in others due to betrayal or victimization. Everyone has felt betrayed in love and very likely had the thought, I will never be hurt like that again. Only the little promise not to be so vulnerable the next time ( vuln is an Old Norse word for "wound") is a promise never again to be so close, since by definition others can wound you only if they are inside your defenses. If you manage to put on the protective shield your mind desires, the cost will be yet another form of loss-loss of the ability to connect and to love.

Life may also inflict on us loss of a sense of safety, due to the capricious nature of direct trauma or even media exposure to violence. Can anyone say "twin towers" without a slight shudder? When your local news reports on a violent crime in your neighborhood, do you lock your doors before going to sleep? Glance outside your windows? You can add things to your environment to try to regain a sense of safety-gates on your community drive or a camera on your front porch-but human cognition means the innocence that was there before you knew what could happen is gone, never to be returned to you.

Simply growing older may bring loss of comfort and function due to the onset of chronic pain or increasing frailty. Some functions may come back, and some pains may subside, but some likely never will.

Anytime, anywhere, any loss can revisit you, because human cognition is like that: It contains the capacity to remember. What is there to do about that?

Loss is a reminder of the impermanence of life, and sadness signals that you cared: What was taken away mattered to you. If you look inside the pain, with gentleness, making room for discomfort, you can discover what mattered. Turn toward the pain? Who in their right mind would do that?

Pain Mishandled: The Feedback Loop from Hell

The modern world is now so rigidly committed to avoidance that it has not made room for what we all know deep down: Love and loss come as a single package. Psychological vitality and openness to hurt are two sides of the same coin. If you are unable to risk loss, you are unable to live a vital life. It you are unwilling to be hurt, you are unable to love.

Contemporary culture leaves little or no room for recognizing and caring for an experience of loss-or virtually any other experience of difficulty. Take, for example, the newest version of the psychiatric bible, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-5. It allows for two weeks of bereavement-anything longer is grounds for diagnosis and, likely, medication. Two weeks! You may have been married for 40 years, but 14 days of grieving for a deceased spouse and time's up!

You don't need a copy of the DSM-5 to understand an entire culture is denying the pain of loss. Television commercials relentlessly suggest that we can and should be able to manipulate our emotions with the right beer, the newest video game, the perfect vacation spot, the latest car. The real product people are buying is the promised avoidance of difficult emotions. Research shows that using material goods as a way to avoid discomfort and to self-soothe any that exists actually worsens anxiety, depression, negative self-assessment, and low life satisfaction.

Rather than acknowledging loss as an uncomfortable, inevitable, and profoundly meaningful part of life, we treat it as a disease. We see pain as a problem to be solved, instead of engaging with it and learning how to live with it as part of our life course. That gives pain an unhealthy power to control our lives-and ironically actually tends to increase our pain, creating the feedback loop from hell.

I learned this lesson personally nearly 40 years ago, when I developed a panic disorder: As soon as anxiety became something I was not supposed to feel, anxiety became something to be anxious about. Notice, amplify, react. Notice, amplify, react.

It was only when I found a way to turn toward the anxiety-with curiosity and self-compassion-that I had the chance to understand what my own feelings had to teach me. Long-suppressed memories of the sadness and fear I felt from the domestic violence I witnessed as a child came into view. Far from being a burden, my anxiety helped explain what I wanted to do with my life-it was rooted in a yearning that little boy had to help his parents.

The feedback loop of pain mishandled is on display not just in our individual struggles. It is evident in global health statistics. Around the world, chronic pain and disability are skyrocketing. Shockingly, disability is running rampant in countries with comprehensive health-care systems and excellent worker-protection laws. Sweden, Norway, and The Netherlands spend about 4 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on disability, the majority of it linked to chronic pain.

In the United States the same feedback loop from hell shows up in the opioid crisis. In 2015 the world consumed 61 "morphine milligram equivalents" per person. Americans used 11 times that amount. More than 46 people died every day last year from an overdose, primarily from prescription opioids.

The pain being treated often starts out as acute pain. But treating pain per se as something to focus on and run from, through powerful medications, risks turning acute pain chronic. Chronic back pain is something that 40 percent of people feel. Approaching it with addictive drugs may not be the wisest course. The vast research on psychological flexibility suggests that if we mishandle pain, pain will mishandle us.

Mental Flexibility: The Path to Healing

Over the last 35 years, my colleagues and I have developed a small set of skills (see "How to Deal with the Pain of Loss" at the end of this article) that help people thrive. Most of the skills are hinted at in the social rituals honed over time to help us deal with the death of a loved one.

In more than 1,000 studies, we have found that the presence or absence of these skills predicts who is going to develop anxiety, depression, trauma, or substance abuse, and how severe or long-lasting the problem will be. If someone has one of those problems, the lack of those skills predicts who will later have two. The absence of the skills helps explain the opioid crisis and the rise of anxiety and depression among our youth. And it helps explain the paradox of the modern world: Even amidst plenty we suffer.

This set of skills, built around acceptance of emotions and affirmation of the values hidden within them, is designed to confer psychological flexibility-the ability to feel and think with openness, without defenses, just as our healthy burial rituals ask us to cry and laugh and honor and appreciate. It means being able to attend to what is present inside and out, flexibly, fluidly, and voluntarily. We learn from our own emotions instead of making them the enemy.

With psychological flexibility, people can turn toward unavoidable pain, learn the lessons it contains, and then use the lessons to create a rich and meaningful life. Inside the weeping from loss you will find the dignity and honor of a life that stood for something. Mental flexibility allows you to shift your attention from the pain to ways you can build those qualities in yourself.

There are those who fear that turning toward the pain and opening to it will only drown them in a flood of feeling, that they will be overwhelmed by the pain-as if the pain is bigger than they are. If I don't go there, it can't threaten me. But that's merely an illusion. The pain is already there.

If, instead, you approach it with kindness and compassion, you can gradually reflect on what hurts and what you miss. Sadness does not mean something is broken that needs to be fixed. It means something important to you has been lost. You have to take the time to look and identify what it is.

We can learn to be present with our pain without altering it in any way or form. We can learn to acknowledge and accept our loss and its emotional impact without pushing it away. And inside that very process we become better able to focus our attention on what makes life rich and meaningful, learning how to live lives connected to our deepest values and yearnings. By learning the lessons of loss, we learn how to open up and live. Loss becomes a stimulus for growth.

Handling a Death vs Honoring a Life

Recently, when conducting a workshop on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a method my colleagues and I developed to foster psychological flexibility, I asked for a volunteer to work with me. A woman came up on stage wanting to talk about the death of her sister some months earlier. Her sister had spiraled into an opiate addiction due to chronic pain and was found dead in her home of unknown causes. My volunteer was still feeling grief, she said, and guilt kept pulling her toward the idea that the death could have been averted if she had called or visited her sister.

I wasn't interested in chasing grief and guilt. I was more interested in the vital source of that pain: the love she felt for her sister.

When I asked what she loved about her sister, she immediately became animated. Her eyes sparkled as she talked of her sister's creativity, energy, and inner strength, qualities she admired in her. Yes, she admitted, others saw her as an increasingly reclusive and neurotic person addicted to opiates. Then she began to cry as she said what she really wanted: for her sister to be seen and appreciated as the whole person she really was.

In the conversation, it became clear what the volunteer wanted and needed to do. She wanted to let her sister's life shine-by allowing herself to carry her sister's best qualities forward. Right before my eyes, and the eyes of hundreds of workshop attendees, she was transforming the pain of loss into the energy and growth that love alone can provide.

The woman sought me out later in the day to share her thoughts. "When I volunteered," she said, "I thought I needed help about how to handle my sister's death." She paused and, with a sweet smile and more tears, added "Now I know my real task is how to learn from her life."

How to Deal With the Pain of Loss

There is no typical response to loss; every experience is unique. Nor is there a "right" way to grieve, although there are unhelpful ways of coping with loss. Healing takes time; it can't be hurried or forced. Some people start feeling better after weeks; others need years. In the meantime, here are steps you can take to move forward. It will not always be comfortable or easy, but it will help you to get your life back.

1: Acknowledge loss.

Before any healing can happen, there must be acknowledgement that there's a wound that needs healing. Acknowledge that you have lost someone or something, and it hurts. You are in pain, and it's uncomfortable, sometimes unbearable. To know about a loss, you have to know what was there before the loss. Start with a remembrance of some of the positive experiences that cannot now be repeated.

2: Embrace feelings of loss.

Pain is uncomfortable by definition. Often, we want to push it away, distract ourselves from it with food, alcohol, television, drugs, work-the list is endless. But numbing ourselves from pain numbs our entire existence. We focus all our attention and energy on controlling the pain. But sooner or later, the pain will surface again, and we have to numb it even more. Instead, try something radically different: Embrace the feelings of loss. You may feel hurt, sad, shocked, angry, guilty, anxious, bitter, hopeless, depressed, or all of the above. Open your arms to these emotions. It may help to make a list of them and see if over time you are better able to touch the range of feelings.

3: Expand your scope of vision.

As you open yourself up, look for what else might be there in the form of emotion, thought, or memory, especially things that are unexpected. Include reactions that superficially "do not belong" because they seem positive or confident-feelings of freedom, relief, laughter, pride. Those are normal, too.

4: Prepare to be overwhelmed.

At times, like a surging wave, your emotions will run high, crash down, knock you over, and seem to carry you away. That's normal and natural, especially in the early stages of grief. Sometimes you will feel completely numb, other times irritated by everyone. Your emotions might sway back and forth, but they won't harm you. Measure progress over days and weeks, not a single difficult hour or day.

5: Watch out for unhelpful thoughts.

I should be over it by now. Things will never be the same. Life is unfair. If only I'd done something different. It's all my fault. I'll never get over this. Such thoughts are part of the normal grieving process, but it's important to notice them with a healthy sense of distance. Most often, these thoughts won't appear as "thoughts" but as factual truths about the world that you have to obey. Instead of treating them as truths, practice looking at them as reactions to be noticed, not dictates to be followed. If you catch that you've been hooked, you can unhook: Try singing such thoughts or saying them very slowly. Recognize that they are there without letting them take control over your actions.

6: Connect with what matters.

Despite what your mind may tell you, there's still meaning in your life. There are still people and activities that are important to you. Your pain, in fact, is proof that you're still alive. Recognize that your feelings of loss identify what is close to your heart. Determine what that is so you can identify what is important to you. Use that information to become the type of person you want to be. Your loss can be an opportunity to carry what is most meaningful toward a life worth living. Decide on actionable, concrete steps you can take to put the qualities into action.

7: Take committed action.

After having identified what is truly close to your heart, act on it, so your behavior is guided by your goals and values. It might mean reaching out to other people. It might mean going back to work, or maybe volunteering at a local animal shelter. You get to define what is important to you. And while you are acting on your values, be sure to treat yourself with kindness and compassion.
Facebook image: Ostariyanov/Shutterstock

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Think of the most psychologically painful thing that you have ever experienced. Actually take a moment and do it. As you do that, realize that all it took for you to revisit it was a dozen written words from a person you've likely never met.

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10 Songs that Cheer Me up No Matter What - Music

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10 Songs that Cheer Me up No Matter What - Music

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Music is here, but look up the lyrics, too!

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From choir to playing saxophone in the band, from singing for the school jazz band to opera in the shower - music is a way for me to release anxieties and pain. It's an awesome way to have a great time on your own or with people in your life.

It was tough to narrow down a list of songs that made me really happy to ten. Hopefully one of these songs will help to make your day just a little bit better.

Song: "Happy" (of course!) by Pharrell Williams

Lyrics that inspire: "Clap along if you know what happiness is to you."

Song: "I Gotta Feelin" by the Black Eyed Peas

Lyrics that inspire: "I gotta feelin' that tonight's gonna' be a good, good night"

Song: "Hot Hot Heat" by Goddess on the Prairie

Lyrics that inspire: "Oh, oh-oh I need a goddess on the prairie to keep me somewhat sane"

Song: "Video" by India Arie

Lyrics that inspire: "Go on and love yourself cause everything is gonna' be alright"

Song: "Hold Your Head" by Homeboy Sandman

Lyrics that inspire: "Hold your head, one day it'll be different"

Song: "Daylight" by Matt and Kim

Lyrics that inspire: "Because in the daylight anywhere feels like home"

Song: "The Future Freaks Me Out" by Motion City Soundtrack

Lyrics that inspire: "Check it out I'm rockin' steady to the beat in my head, it goes oh-oh-oh-oh!"

Song: "The Remedy (I Won't Worry)" by Jason Mraz

Lyrics that inspire: "I won't worry my life away"

Song: "Help I'm Alive" by Metric

Lyrics that inspire: "I get wherever I'm goin', I get whatever I need, while my blood's still flowin', and my heart's still beating like a hammer"

Song: "We Are the Champions" by Queen

Lyrics that inspire: "WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIENDS and we'll keep on fighting 'til the end!"

OK, your turn: What songs make you really happy?

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From choir to playing saxophone in the band, from singing for the school jazz band to opera in the shower - music is a way for me to release anxieties and pain. It's an awesome way to have a great time on your own or with people in your life.

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Another excerpt from Wild

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Excerpt from Wild (Movie Tie-in Edition) | Penguin Random House Canada

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1 NATIONAL BESTSELLERA moving and inspiring gift for the holiday season.At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life.

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Cheryl Strayed tells her story about coping with the loss of her mother and a divorce by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

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The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California. Moments before, I'd removed my hiking boots and the left one had fallen into those trees, first catapulting into the air when my enormous backpack toppled onto it, then skittering across the gravelly trail and flying over the edge. It bounced off a rocky outcropping several feet beneath me before disappearing into the forest canopy below, impossible to retrieve. I let out a stunned gasp, though I'd been in the wilderness thirty-eight days and by then I'd come to know that anything could happen and that everything would. But that doesn't mean I wasn't shocked when it did.

My boot was gone. Actually gone.

I clutched its mate to my chest like a baby, though of course it was futile. What is one boot without the other boot? It is nothing. It is useless, an orphan forevermore, and I could take no mercy on it. It was a big lug of a thing, of genuine heft, a brown leather Raichle boot with a red lace and silver metal fasts. I lifted it high and threw it with all my might and watched it fall into the lush trees and out of my life.

I was alone. I was barefoot. I was twenty-six years old and an orphan too. An actual stray, a stranger had observed a couple of weeks before, when I'd told him my name and explained how very loose I was in the world. My father left my life when I was six. My mother died when I was twenty-two. In the wake of her death, my stepfather morphed from the person I considered my dad into a man I only occasionally recognized. My two siblings scattered in their grief, in spite of my efforts to hold us together, until I gave up and scattered as well.

In the years before I pitched my boot over the edge of that mountain, I'd been pitching myself over the edge too. I'd ranged and roamed and railed -- from Minnesota to New York to Oregon and all across the West -- until at last I found myself, bootless, in the summer of 1995, not so much loose in the world as bound to it.

It was a world I'd never been to and yet had known was there all along, one I'd staggered to in sorrow and confusion and fear and hope. A world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl I'd once been. A world that measured two feet wide and 2,663 miles long.

A world called the Pacific Crest Trail.

I'd first heard of it only seven months before, when I was living in Minneapolis, sad and desperate and on the brink of divorcing a man I still loved. I'd been standing in line at an outdoor store waiting to purchase a foldable shovel when I picked up a book called "The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California" from a nearby shelf and read the back cover. The PCT, it said, was a continuous wilderness trail that went from the Mexican border in California to just beyond the Canadian border along the crest of nine mountain ranges -- the Laguna, San Jacinto, San Bernardino, San Gabriel, Liebre, Tehachapi, Sierra Nevada, Klamath, and Cascades. That distance was a thousand miles as the crow flies, but the trail was more than double that. Traversing the entire length of the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, the PCT passes through national parks and wilderness areas as well as federal, tribal, and privately held lands; through deserts and mountains and rain forests; across rivers and highways. I turned the book over and gazed at its front cover -- a boulder-strewn lake surrounded by rocky crags against a blue sky -- then placed it back on the shelf, paid for my shovel, and left.

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But later I returned and bought the book. The Pacific Crest Trail wasn't a world to me then. It was an idea, vague and outlandish, full of promise and mystery. Something bloomed inside me as I traced its jagged line with my finger on a map.

I would walk that line, I decided -- or at least as much of it as I could in about a hundred days. I was living alone in a studio apartment in Minneapolis, separated from my husband, and working as a waitress, as low and mixed-up as I'd ever been in my life. Each day I felt as if I were looking up from the bottom of a deep well. But from that well, I set about becoming a solo wilderness trekker. And why not? I'd been so many things already. A loving wife and an adulteress. A beloved daughter who now spent holidays alone. An ambitious overachiever and aspiring writer who hopped from one meaningless job to the next while dabbling dangerously with drugs and sleeping with too many men. I was the granddaughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, the daughter of a steelworker turned salesman. After my parents split up, I lived with my mother, brother, and sister in apartment complexes populated by single mothers and their kids. As a teen, I lived back-to-the-land style in the Minnesota northwoods in a house that didn't have an indoor toilet, electricity, or running water. In spite of this, I'd become a high school cheerleader and homecoming queen, and then I went off to college and became a left- wing feminist campus radical.

But a woman who walks alone in the wilderness for eleven hundred miles? I'd never been anything like that before. I had nothing to lose by giving it a whirl.

It seemed like years ago now -- as I stood barefoot on that mountain in California -- in a different lifetime, really, when I'd made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk alone on the PCT in order to save myself. When I believed that all the things I'd been before had prepared me for this journey. But nothing had or could. Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed. And sometimes even the day before didn't prepare me for what would happen next.

Such as my boots sailing irretrievably off the side of a mountain.

The truth is, I was only half sorry to see them go. In the six weeks I'd spent in those boots, I'd trekked across deserts and snow, past trees and bushes and grasses and flowers of all shapes and sizes and colors, walked up and down mountains and over fields and glades and stretches of land I couldn't possibly define, except to say that I had been there, passed over it, made it through. And all the while, those boots had blistered my feet and rubbed them raw; they'd caused my nails to blacken and detach themselves excruciatingly from four of my toes. I was done with those boots by the time I lost them and those boots were done with me, though it's also true that I loved them. They had become not so much inanimate objects to me as extensions of who I was, as had just about everything else I carried that summer -- my backpack, tent, sleeping bag, water purifier, ultralight stove, and the little orange whistle that I carried in lieu of a gun. They were the things I knew and could rely upon, the things that got me through.

I looked down at the trees below me, the tall tops of them waving gently in the hot breeze. They could keep my boots, I thought, gazing across the great green expanse. I'd chosen to rest in this place because of the view. It was late afternoon in mid-July, and I was miles from civilization in every direction, days away from the lonely post office where I'd collect my next resupply box. There was a chance someone would come hiking down the trail, but only rarely did that happen. Usually I went days without seeing another person. It didn't matter whether someone came along anyway. I was in this alone.

I gazed at my bare and battered feet, with their smattering of remaining toenails. They were ghostly pale to the line a few inches above my ankles, where the wool socks I usually wore ended. My calves above them were muscled and golden and hairy, dusted with dirt and a constellation of bruises and scratches. I'd started walking in the Mojave Desert and I didn't plan to stop until I touched my hand to a bridge that crosses the Columbia River at the Oregon- Washington border with the grandiose name the Bridge of the Gods.

I looked north, in its direction -- the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me. I looked south, to where I'd been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one.

To keep walking.
From "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed. Copyright © 2012 by Cheryl Strayed. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California. Moments before, I'd removed my hiking boots and the left one had fallen into those trees, first catapulting into the air when my enormous backpack toppled onto it, then skittering across the gravelly trail and flying over the edge.

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Edgar Allen Poe tells a story through poetry about a man who is searching for answers after the loss of his beloved Lenore. His grief manifests itself in the form of a Raven.

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C.S.Lewis, author of Alice in Wonderland, writes a short novella of four chapters after the death of his wife.

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"7 Ways to Make Meaning from Hardship" -nonfiction article

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"7 Ways to Make Meaning from Hardship" -nonfiction article

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An article from Psychology today that provides practical strategies on how to process loss.

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We prefer pleasure over pain, happiness over sadness, and positive experiences over negative ones. But might negative experiences actually make us happier in the long run? Some evidence suggests that, yes, we can use those tough experiences to build ourselves up instead of letting them tear us down. In fact, any experience - from small things like a fight with a romantic partner to big things like losing a loved one - has the potential for helping us gain a greater sense of meaning in our lives.

Why does this happen? Challenging experiences often threaten to take away something that gives us meaning. We can let ourselves become overwhelmed by loss, or we can strive to gain a greater understanding of ourselves, others, and our place in the world to recover the sense of meaning that was lost.

Here are 7 ways to turn negative experiences into meaning-making moments.
1. Explore the impacts.
One way to make meaning from a negative experience is to explore its impacts. Ask yourself: How has this experience changed you? What have you learned? Who are you now that that this thing has happened? By exploring how the events affected you and integrating them into who you are, you help generate a greater sense of meaning.
2. Know your narrative.
Each of us has an ever-evolving story about ourselves - a through line about what happened when, why it happened, and how it led to whatever came next. We use these stories to understand how the hodgepodge experiences in our lives fit together. When we are able to integrate our negative experiences into our personal narrative, it feels like the events, and our lives, are part of a bigger picture. And as a result, we get a greater sense of meaning from them. To suck more meaning from your negative experiences, try writing down your story or timeline and reflecting on how each experience affected the others.
3. Imagine "what ifs."
Perhaps counter-intuitively, thinking about what "could have happened" can help cultivate meaning. By imagining that we didn't take the road where we got in that car accident or didn't marry that person we are now divorcing, we play out scenarios that help us better understand what actually happened. This mental processing helps us gain insight into broader patterns that underlie all of our experiences. So if you find yourself thinking "What if?" don't fight it. Feel free to explore hypothetical realities, but be sure to use these thoughts to better understand this reality and why it is the way it is.
4. Generate awe.
Experiencing awe may also help foster meaning in life. Awe can generate positive feelings (like when we witness the birth of new baby) and negative feelings (like when we witness a tornado, fire, or flood destroy a whole neighborhood). Awe makes time seem like it's standing still and helps us be more open to learning. So by focusing on how your negative experiences generate feelings of awe, you may be able to more easily open your mind to meaning-making moments.
5. Strengthen your social bonds.
Let's face it: When we feel lousy, sometimes we just want to retreat into a corner and hide. But if we use negative experiences to motivate us to reach out to people who care about us, then we can strengthen our relationships instead of harming them. By opting to cope with our rough times by seeking out social support, we seize more opportunities to create meaning-making moments with the people in our lives that matter to us.
6. Connect to your past.
When our sense of meaning is threatened, we can help make sense of the situation by connecting to our past. For example, by noticing vintage items, looking at old photographs, or remembering positive stories behind our mementos, we may remind ourselves of the interconnectedness and meaning behind all things. So during rough moments, take some time to reflect on objects that bring back memories. Use these objects to help you create a thread that takes you from the beginning of your life up until this moment.
7. Reflect on your future path.
When something bad happens to us, sometimes we'll start to question the decisions we've made in the past - decisions that led up to this point. To make more meaning from this moment, though, take the opportunity to think about how you will make decisions differently in the future. Perhaps your near-death experience can lead you to choose to spend more of your life engaging in things that matter to you. Or maybe the end of your friendship can lead you to choose friends that accept you for who you really are. There is great potential for difficult experiences to prompt us make better decisions regarding the lives we create for ourselves. If we accept this challenge, we can live more satisfying and meaningful lives.

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We prefer pleasure over pain, happiness over sadness, and positive experiences over negative ones. But might negative experiences actually make us happier in the long run? Some evidence suggests that, yes, we can use those tough experiences to build ourselves up instead of letting them tear us down.