“Grief is for People” by Sloane Crosley

“Time only pushes wounds aside. Regular life becomes insistent and crowds out the loss. Usually, this is a good thing. So much of healing is the recognition that not all your tissue got damaged in the accident.”

As Crosley’s Grief is for People caught my attention because it centered the experience in the title. And the book wasn’t marketed as a survival guide, but as a memoir, of someone reckoning with first material grief, and then the loss of a loved one. In the parallel losses, first of her grandmother’s inexpensive, but personally sentimental jewelry, followed quickly by the loss of her former boss and now best friend Russell, Crosley recounts her path of wading through, not out of grief but rather riding its waves. Like so many of us who navigate grief every day, Crosley looks up after stunning loss, shocked that the world still dares to turn. 

Crosley’s primary feeling is violation, first from the strangers that entered her home and then from Russell who chose not to confide in her, or as she puts it, stay alive for her. Crosley questions the selfishness of the bereaved, how we want our people alive for us, not always for them. In sharing the story of her and Russell’s friendship, her version which would not mirror anyone else’s, Crosley offers readers a parting gift in Russell’s name, a way of saying goodbye to him by sharing their truth, her truth. With honest, soulful writing and sharp, almost biting, commentary on the experience, Crosley invites us to sit with the complexity of grief. By expressing her anger, she suggests it’s okay to be angry at someone for leaving, even if it’s not their fault. She writes, “You become numb when you swallow too much sadness at once. Maybe our days are not a mixture of upbeat and downbeat songs, but notes in the same maudlin song. You just haven’t hit the bridge yet. Keep humming, you’ll get there.” In Crosley’s raw telling lies a message of hope, grounded in reality.

Disclaimer: This is the first book directly about grief that I read in a period of grieving, as my little sister died 3 years ago. Sometimes loss slips in through a book’s theme, but this is the first time I’ve reached for a book on the topic. I did cry while reading, but more so for the loss narrated in the text, not my own. Or, perhaps there’s no way to know for sure. Grief is a slippery little devil and emerges where, when, and how we least expect it. 

“Perhaps if I knew more about God, I would know it’s blasphemous to want answers, and perhaps if I knew more about philosophy, I would know it’s foolish to suggest there are answers.”