Every Story is a Story About Loss

Here’s where grief and loss are showing up lately

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“Eventually, if you cannot stop mourning, the person you love will come to be made only of grief.” —Kathryn Schulz, Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness

Every book is a book about loss. I found this sentence in my journal and though I’m sure the idea came from somewhere or someone else, I can’t trace the origin. (Send me the attribution if you know it!)

It feels very true lately that every book, every story, every poem I read is about loss. Not only death of a loved one and the mourning that comes with it, but all of the other types of loss. Ecological, academic, financial. All of it.

I made an incomplete syllabus of grief/reading list about loss a few months back, but I could keep adding titles to it and still never find them all. Or maybe I’m just trained to look for it now. I can sniff out grief no matter how many layers it was buried under.

Here’s where grief and loss are showing up for me lately. (Don’t worry, I’m ending with kittens and positivity if you keep reading).

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Image via Bookshop.org

During a summer of wildfires, floods, and heat waves, I picked up Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, which I can best describe as an ecological dystopia.

I could, of course, also describe it as one of the most original and haunting books I’ve read in a long time. When I reread it, I’ll pay more attention to the gorgeous and surreal writing, to the question of how-did-she-do-it in the prose. But on my first reading I’m struck most by the nature of loss woven into a story about drought and climate change.

Loss hit me again when the book ended. I don’t even know how to process what I just read. It’s not like anything I’ve read before.

Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz

Image via Bookshop.org

Full disclaimer: I haven’t finished Kathryn Schulz’s stunning memoir Lost & Found yet. I am going to go ahead and say it anyway, though. This is one of my favorite books of the year. Maybe in my top ten of all time. Check in with me in a few days.

There’s no surprise that this book is about loss. It’s in the title and the book description. However, it’s also a book about happiness and finding love. That mix, combined with Schulz’s precision has made me cry and chuckle and hold the book to my chest more than once, as if afraid someone would try to take it away from me.

And yes, I’ve already highlighted, written in the margins, and bookmarked the hell out it. It’s that kind of book.

The Cuts at West Virginia University

Image of students protesting at WVU—via Washington Post (Leah Willingham/AP)

7% of faculty—eliminated. 32 majors (graduate and undergraduate)—cut. Including World Languages. Including Creative Writing.

If you aren’t familiar with what is going on at West Virginia University, I suggest starting with The Cost of Loss at WVU, written by the fantastic Rachel Rosolina for The Belt.

So many other writers have been much more articulate about the issue than I can be right now, but it’s a conversation worth paying attention to because of what it says about Appalachia. And academia, especially where the arts and humanities fit into the state of education in the United States.

As Rosolina writes:

“A more complex argument for finding a route forward other than cutting programs, however, is a question of value. Just as we have seen what our land and health are worth to coal and timber barons, we must also ask what our voices are worth. From the arrival of industry, the diverse people of this region have been told we are not good enough, not smart enough, that our accents are too strong, that we are not worth investing in—that we are worth actively stealing from. Appalachian value has always been in line with the profit we can turn for someone else, and WVU has seemingly bought into that worldview.”

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I don’t know where to end here except to say that yes, sometimes things feel dark and ominous. Like The Tower card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. I often picture that image of upheaval and calamity when I read the news or go to work.

But I also know that the flip side of loss is a whole spread of revelation, growth, rehabilitation, and awakening. I’d rather end there because honestly, I feel hopeful lately, in a changing of the seasons sort of way.

For me, there are kittens playing on my back deck, a new semester of not-yet jaded college students, and pumpkin spice lattes on the horizon. Which means maybe I’m not-yet all the way jaded either.

They don’t have names yet. Look at their little tangled legs.

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Lots of book recs. A few writing prompts. And sometimes some big writing news.

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