Ambassadors of Grief

Stories of love and loss for our Sunday recovery rundown.

This is the Sunday TSB newsletter for paid subscribers. If you’d like to get an extra Sunday essay that’s more link-heavy, merch deals, more Edith illustrations, plus a recap of journals, meetings, therapy, and meditation I do for my own recovery program each week, please consider pressing the red button. —xx AJD

---

I was drawn to grief this week, not for personal reasons, but it kept popping up in almost everything I read, with varying degrees of poignancy. Let’s start with the obvious—Nick Cave. Not only is his “Red Hand Files” newsletter a showcase of his formidable writing and empath skills, but I’m always amazed at his ability to connect to the desperately wounded who’ve lost loved ones and are having trouble existing in the world of the living. This week’s installment was one of his best, where a woman who recently lost her husband of 45 years always wants to talk about him, but she says that “makes people nervous.”

“Loss brings its unhappy vacuum, and in our loneliness we reach out to people for comfort. But in our state of mourning we often find that not only have we lost the one we loved, but also those we reach for, as they instinctively recoil from our suffering. We have a desperate desire to talk about the person who has left us, to keep their memory alive, but at the time of our greatest need the world shrinks back as it sees in us that cold and uncomfortable truth – life is loss. As the nervous world retracts, we are left alone with the fading spirit of our beloved. We have a desperate desire to talk about the person who has left us, to keep their memory alive, but at the time of our greatest need the world shrinks back as it sees in us that cold and uncomfortable truth – life is loss.”