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I don’t know about you, but whenever I have been in moments of profound grief, I focus my thoughts as much on fixing the grief as actually feeling the heaviness of loss. It’s destabilizing to feel unmoored, floating, and so so sad that I give equal psychic attention, or maybe more, to dreaming up all the steps I will take to get myself out this pitiful hole.
Those elaborate maps and blueprints for hole-escaping, though? It’s a ruse. But we try anyway.
Writer Cody Delistraty’s grief after the death of his mother was more like a scavenger hunt. He studied and witnessed all sorts of modalities of grief-fixing – reading books, laughter therapy, pharmaceutical intervention, AI-assisted chats with his “mom” – and tells us about the search in his book The Grief Cure and in our new episode this week. Listen here.
One of the most arresting moments of my conversation with Cody was when he talked about the comfort that visual art, specifically the art of Agnes Martin, gave him.
Cody brought tears to my eyes as he described the tidy perfection in a Martin painting, and then, to look closer and see small messes, errors, and proof of a person’s best efforts at orderliness that still belie a human hand. If you live near me in the Bay Area, you can go see a room full of Agnes Martin paintings at SF MOMA if you want to go see for yourself.
And if you or someone you know is currently wrestling with how to live through grief, I recommend you check out Cody’s book here.
Mountain Mama goes home.
Speaking of art and grief and memories you hold close – this week, I got to go home to Charleston, West Virginia.
It had been a few years since I’d been home, and Appalachia delivered a string of perfect September days. I drove around town to visit old haunts, and I was struck by how much the art in town shaped my perception of things. It started with the new mural at the airport baggage claim – John Denver always gets me weepy, close readers will remember. That was just the start. There are new paintings all around town, fliers for music shows and festivals, and thriving shops that give you a sense of the taste of the people putting out a shingle.
On the Friday night I was in town, I heard cheers from a big crowd gathered in a newly renovated park — and I realized it was a professional wrestling match! An Appalachian Wrestling Championship bout, complete with people taunting, whooping, and rollicking inside the ring and out.
There was also heaviness. Grief is always part of visiting a hometown, particularly one your whole family has left. I visited my grandparents’ gravesite and drove past my old childhood home. Time keeps always marching on, but you really feel it in a place with so many ghosts.
The prompt for my visit was my 25th high school reunion. It was so great to be back with people who I grew up with, some who still live there, and some who came in for the occasion. We asked about each other’s lives, work and families now, and because we have a history with common origins, we also updated each other about our siblings and parents. We talked about friends who are gone. And we traded core memories about our extreme P.E. teacher who graded us on how many pushups we could do (really!), everyone’s home phone numbers that we remember, and the dance routines Mrs. Hill would let us perform in front of the whole class in 3rd grade. We would’ve slapped on TikTok!
For the actual reunion, we gathered in the box of the local Atlantic League baseball team. The game ended, there was an incredible fireworks display, and at the very end, they played Country Roads and we sang arm in arm.
I cried, and then, because this was with high school friends, got savagely made fun of for it.
Other recommendations
Some other things I think you’ll enjoy:
Inside Out 2 – I was late to this party — it’s already the highest-grossing animated movie of all time — but if you also haven’t seen it, it’s time to join in! I found myself referencing it repeatedly at the reunion because it’s about Riley’s chaotic feelings as she hits puberty, so it came up as we talked about being teenagers and, for some of us, now raising teenagers. For all of us with internal battles inside our heads between Joy and Anxiety, it will hit some tender spots.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles – I raced through this novel during my travels. The plot revolves around young single motherhood, professional wrestling, and Only Fans, and it will make you think about complicated family relationships, the politics of sex and motherhood, and America’s miserable childcare policies. And I also came away inspired by Margo to trust more of my own wackadoo creative impulses.
The Washington Post is doing a series of profiles of public workers and I liked getting to know about this federal employee who’s worked on workplace safety in coal mines. Written by Michael Lewis. More of this kind of storytelling please on the vital and too-often invisible work of governing. (I would’ve missed this piece if Tommy Tomlinson hadn’t pointed it out in his great newsletter.)
Heather Knight in The New York Times on one migrant family in San Francisco. This piece is an up-close portrait of the hurdles and available services for newly arrived asylum-seekers in San Francisco. It includes the scene at a school gym as it turns over from an overnight shelter for migrant families for the next school day. And I learned that in San Francisco Public Schools in 2024, about five percent of the students are homeless.
The Worst podcast! - It’s actually not the very worst podcast, but that’s the name of a new show produced by my friends at Canadaland. I got to be the guest on episode 2. It’s like nothing you’ve heard.
Mother Lear at Cal Shakes - If you can be near the Bay Area in the coming weeks, go see this original theater production about “an irascible middle-aged scholar with dementia who communicates with her caretaker daughter using only the text of King Lear as the two struggle with aging, love and their own balance of power.” Totally. My. Jam! And if you’ve never taken in theater before in the beautiful outdoor setting at Cal Shakes, prepare to be wowed.
Until next week,
Anna
Listen to our latest Death, Sex & Money episodes
9/10 One Man’s Meticulous Quest to Cure Grief
8/27 Two Friends, at 35 and 95, Confront Loss and Find Hope
8/20 Life and Death Inside the Playboy Mansion
8/13 Miranda July’s Perimenopausal Thriller
8/6 A Former Debt Collector’s Unpaid Bills
7/30 Olympic Legend Greg Louganis on Outliving and Outperforming Expectations
My grief after losing our 5-year-old daughter to cancer in 1985 has never fully gone away, as it shouldn't. The edges of our grief gradually became less sharp, than ragged, and then somewhat smooth. Having a very active 3-year-old bouncing around helped distract us, as did the pregnancy with our third daughter, who was born a few months later and had the same cancer 3 and 1/2 months after that. The daughter born 3 years after that did not have the same cancer that I had passed on, which was an immense relief. I learned to live with the expectation that things at the moment are fine, and that I cannot be reading more into things than are actually there. I have learned to not catastrophize things that are going on, although I will readily admit that it has made me somewhat callous toward people that easily lose their $hit over things that are easily rectified. (Examples: undescended testicles in a newborn, appendicitis, tonsillitis... all these are fixable. I just have to remember to use my sympathy face.)
The room with the Agnes Martin paintings is my favorite sacred space in the Bay Area! I wish the museum treated it as such and demanded silence in the space for contemplation. Holy Holy
Holy