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On Grieving
Of all the challenges we face in this complex human existence, grief stands alone as something profound, confronting us with the limits of our control, the irreversibility of time, the fragility of possession, and the inevitability of change. While we may seek to reduce suffering in most emotional realms, grief instead asks us to enlarge ourselves until we are capable of carrying what cannot be returned but transformed.
Following the Threads --
Materials for Exploration
Below is less a clinical list of recommended materials than it is an intimately-cultivated collection of resonances; books, art, musings I’ve personally encountered in various phases of my own grieving that contain treasures for all grieving hearts.
Books
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The Work of Mourning - Jacques Derrida
Gathered here are texts—letters of condolence, memorial essays, eulogies, funeral orations—written after the deaths of friends and some of the most prominent French thinkers of the past quarter century. With his words, Derrida bears witness to the singularity of a friendship and to the absolute uniqueness of each relationship. In each case, he is acutely aware of the questions of tact, taste, and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead—the risks of using the occasion for one's own purposes, political calculation, personal vendetta, and the expiation of guilt. More than a collection of memorial addresses, this volume sheds light on some of the most important themes of Derrida's entire oeuvre-mourning, the "gift of death," time, memory, and friendship itself.
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The Mourning Diary - Roland Barthes
The day after his mother's death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning. Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society's dismissal of grief.
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The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation - Rainer Maria Rilke
From the author of Letters to a Young Poet comes a new selection of the great poet's writings to bereaved friends and acquaintances, reflecting on death and dying, providing comfort in a time of grief.
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The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise - Martín Prechtel
Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living.
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A Grief Observed - C.S. Lewis
Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis mourning the death of his wife, American-born poet Joy Davidman. He shares moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."
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The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss - Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor
With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future that encompasses their absence. Dr. O’Conner explores our neurobiological responses to profound loss, offering a new paradigm that can help articulate why grief feels the way it does.
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The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing -
Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor
"Our body is being remodeled as we are living through this bereavement." Dr. O’Connor expands on the neurobiology of loss and details the physiological impact of profound grief on the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems.
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The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of their Lives - Jessica Pierce
Pierce Drawing on the moving story of the last year of the life of her own treasured dog, Ody, she presents an in-depth exploration of the practical, medical, and moral issues that trouble pet owners confronted with the decline and death of their companion animals.
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Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief, and Bereavement - Naomi Westerman
An examination of the many faces of death and grief in Westerman’s own life and in cultures around the world. From expensive coffins and unconventional burials to horror films and true crime, what does our treatment of death and dying have to tell us about how we live our lives? What makes a “good death”? And who owns our bodies before and after we die?
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The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning - Margareta Magnusson
At the intersection of clutter, aging, and death, Magnusson offers a charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life. While Magnusson shares experiences of sorting the belongings of dead relatives, she says that “death cleaning is also something you can do for yourself, for your own pleasure. And if you start early, at say sixty-five, it won’t seem like such a huge task when you, like me, are between eighty and one hundred.”
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Films
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Come See Me in the Good Light
A poignant and unexpectedly funny love story about poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley finding strength, joy, and unshakeable partnership in navigating Gibson's incurable cancer diagnosis. Through laughter and unwavering love, they transform pain into purpose, and mortality into a moving celebration of resilience.
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​​Are We Good?
A documentary filmed in the wake of the sudden and shocking death of his partner, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, Are We Good? finds comedian and podcast pioneer Marc Maron reflecting—with his inimitable candor—on grief, loss, disillusionment, and growth as he struggles with how to move forward and channel personal tragedy into comedy.
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Music & Poetry
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Letter to Cynthia - Nick Cave
Cave's "Grief single" is a poetic admission of grief's contradictions which he shares as a response to the following reader question from his newsletter, The Red Hand Files (in which he shares of grief often): "I have experienced the death of my father, my sister and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?"
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Time Is a Mother - Ocean Vuong
“When a loved one dies, you experience you life in just two days: today, when they are no longer here, and yesterday, the immense vast yesterday, when they were here. And so my life, as I see it now, is demarcated by one line. The yesterday when my mother was with me, and now, when she is not. When you lose your mother, no matter how old you are, you’re suddenly a child. You feel like an orphan. So I went back to the blank page, which is the only safe space for me. The only space I have control over. And I guess I learned that by just putting one word after the other.“ In his deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it.
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Fine Art & Photography
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Frida Kahlo — Henry Ford Hospital (1932)
Painted after Kahlo's miscarriage in Detroit, Henry Ford Hospital depicts her lying naked on a hospital bed, connected by red ribbons (umbilical cords) to six symbolic objects representing the slowness of the operation, its medical machinery, and her lost fetus.
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Lectures &
Discussions
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How to live given the certainty of death - Professor Shelly Kagan of Yale University
This is part of a lecture series with several videos on death and how knowing we will die affects the quality of our life. Among other curiosities, this video sees Professor Kagan confront the sense of "running out of time" and how that helps us decide what's worth doing.
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Death Cafes
At a Death Cafe people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death. This group's aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives. Explore current and future events in your local area or online or host a Death Cafe of your own.
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Essays, Articles,
& Print Interviews
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David Cronenberg, The Beetle and the Fly," The Paris Review, January 17, 2014
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Ryan Benk, "David Cronenberg's Grief Is 'as Powerful as It Always Was'," NPR, April 20, 2025
Podcasts & Interviews
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The Toughest Year of My Life - Karl-Anthony Towns
The NBA champion vulnerably describes the painful navigation of his mother’s recent death, including the difficult decisions that illness leaves to family members, the ups and downs of a medically-induced coma, and how he’s learning to accept a lifetime of jealousy for his older sister who got to live more life together with their mom. In 2026, Towns and the New York Knicks won the NBA championship and he was vocal about seeing signs from his mother throughout the series, all the while feeling the pain of her not being there in person to share it with.
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Patti Smith on the 'sacred wounds' of grief - All There Is with Anderson Cooper
"It's not a thing where time heals all wounds, it's that in time you learn to navigate it more. They're sacred wounds, they're not going to heal... Some years, it's extremely painful. This year, I don't know. I just felt happiness that I knew them both. I was just happy. A couple of years ago, I had such a terrible bout of horror that these people were gone, that my husband was never coming back, I just couldn't get out of bed. So I just accept that some years, the wound is vibrating, and other years we're fine." Singer, poet, and author Patti Smith reflects on the deaths of her husband, her brother, and her lifelong friend and creative partner with Anderson Cooper as they both confront anniversaries of their losses.
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Andrew Garfield on grief bringing him closer to love - All There Is with Anderson Cooper
“My ego said: no, this doesn’t make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way; it should be that way. But actually it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, ‘it’s really horrible. And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you’ve just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You’re in a realer version of the world now, and it’s painful." Andrew Garfield.
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Megan Falley on losing partner Andrea Gibson - All There is with Anderson Cooper
Is dying really "the opposite of leaving?" Are we "reincarnated in those we love?" Poet Andrea Gibson thought so, and in this moving conversation, Anderson speaks with Andrea's wife Megan Falley, about Andrea's battle with cancer and why she uses the word "alleged" when talking about Andrea's death.
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​On Grief, Awe, and Being Alive - The Ezra Klein Show
It exists for all of us, and it always has: life intermingling with death, grief coexisting with joy. Kathryn Schulz’s memoir, “Lost & Found” is all about this experience — the core of her book isn’t losing a parent or finding a life partner. It’s the “and” that connects them both. How do we hold all that we have to hold, all at once? How do we not feel overwhelmed, or emotionally numbed?
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