The Lingering of Loss

July 14, 2019 1:36 PM

The whole year is a near-blackout, except that I remember how each day carried my baby closer to life and her closer to death.
posted by Ahmad Khani (5 comments total)

I danced around reading that piece for days, and finally settled in to read it late in the week, almost self-protectively, and then could not stop calling people to talk about it. (I'm an oldster. We still talk on the phone about things, evocative and otherwise.)

Lepore's use of language in talking about the nature of loss of a friend and how it reverberates through the years, about the power of friendship to define one, and generally about womanhood and motherhood (separately and interwoven), is evocative and compelling. I called my best friend of 34 years and insisted she read it right away. We are not Jill and Jane, but we also are. This reminds me I've read too little of Lepore, and need to rectify that.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 2:36 PM on July 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

My best friend died in October and the loss is still as fresh and painful as it was on day 1. Slightly less harrowing, but still fresh and painful. Reading this was awful and beautiful at the same time.
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:57 PM on July 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

Beautiful. Thank you.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 3:19 PM on July 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

This was so beautiful, despite it also being so painful to read. Thanks for posting it.
posted by PussKillian at 5:09 PM on July 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

The two lines near the end about songs - magic. I had to save them to my own commonplace book.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:00 PM on July 14, 2019