DISPATCHES FROM GRIEF

Crittenden discusses struggling with grief after the sudden death of her eldest daughter in this memoir.

The author describes her affluent family, with homes in Washington, D.C., and near Toronto, as close-knit, despite her older daughter’s somewhat troubled childhood (Crittenden recalls Miranda’s “indifference to authority”). Miranda was close with her parents and younger siblings as an adult. Five years before her death, Miranda had a brain tumor removed, losing her pituitary gland in the process, which required her to medically control her cortisol levels. In early 2024, Miranda died suddenly at the age of 32 due to complications related to her cortisol levels. The next year was a nightmare for the shattered family; the author chronicles the “bureaucracy of death” as it unfolded over the traditional Jewish cycle of mourning, which “ends—or is supposed to end—at the twelfth month mark.” Although Crittenden and her husband, David, had both lost parents, Miranda’s death brought a new level of grief—the author saw herself as a completely different person after the loss of her daughter (“Our destinies and our very identities changed”). Unlike many self-help books and other memoirs about losing loved ones, this work does not give credence to the conventionally understood stages of grief or lean into saccharine euphemisms. The author’s pain is unvarnished—Crittenden writes about her state of shock with scant yet emotive prose that is moving in spite of its matter-of-fact tone. She’s even able to manage some humor, responding to someone’s casual “How are you?” with, “You meant, ‘How’s the abyss today?’” The author states that she “did not write this book to offer help. [She] wrote to express pain, to make sense of the senseless.” Although she doesn’t quite make sense of her loss, she does land on a somewhat hopeful note that will offer fellow travelers understanding and solidarity.

A moving and intimate expression of pain.