A Grief Observed

“Losing a beloved is an amputation.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed I once listened to a podcast in which a psychiatrist was talking about why it feels like we lose a part of ourselves when we lose a loved one. He said that, unwittingly, we store information, memories and experiences in the brains of other people we are close to; like an external hard drive. Our own minds have limited capacity to keep all the data we need, so we share mental and emotional data resources with others. We see this phenomenon to be particularly true when someone loses a spouse and has no idea what the bank password is, or what…

Continue reading →

The Call

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021 It was just after 9pm when the call came. I was in the rocking chair in the nursery, breastfeeding my son. My husband, who had been fielding all of the phone calls for the last week – from investigators, and search parties, and the news reporters – was presently on a flight to Arizona, to join the search for my missing brother. “Mrs. Neuberger?” “Yes, this is her,” I answered in a low voice, not wanting to involve my newborn in what was likely to be a life-altering conversation. She chose her next words carefully and delivered them with a clinical degree of care, “We located John below the…

Continue reading →