Without Her: A Chronicle of Grief

(Paperback, Paperback original)

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A lucid memoir reckoning with grief and the search for understanding in the wake of a sisters suicide.

Rebecca Spiegel is working as a teacher in New Orleans when she learns of her sister Emilys death by suicide. Shocked, she flies back to Philadelphia. To family. To funeral preparations. To the service. Only after she leaves her parents house does the shock give way to grief.

In the years that follow, Spiegel embarks on a physical, mental, and emotional voyage. She visits Emilys dorm, digs through her computer. She parses old journal entries and emails. She recalls Emilys visit to New Orleans mere days before her death, wondering what signs she might have missed. In documenting the last traces of her sisters life, Spiegel also confronts their parents failings, as well as her familys history of depression, anxiety, OCD, addiction, and disordered eating. She faces her own regrets too. I wish I had untangled myself from myself, she writes of her sisters final visit. I wish I had been able to see that I was okay and she wasnt.

With each powerful detail resurfaced, Spiegel attempts to put into words what is incomprehensible. She plumbs the depths of her loss in an effort to understand her sister, to uncover logic where it is most elusive. What she finds instead is that there is no narrative on the other side of grief like this. There is no answer, no easy resolutiononly those that leave, and those that keep living. Unflinchingly honest, visceral, and raw, this courageous elegy lays bare the hard realities of surviving the loss of a loved one.

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Praise for Without Her

Without Heris one of the mostsensitive, profound, and honest accounts of grief and suicide loss Ive ever encountered. In beautiful and bracingly direct prose, Spiegel describes the indescribable experience of losing someone who has shaped your very sense of self. This book is a gift to those seeking to understand what its like to sift through the unanswerable questions left in the wake of a loved ones suicide, or to anyone trying to keep going after losing someone they dont know how to live without. Chris Stedman, author ofIRL

Author Bio

Rebecca Spiegel teaches writing in Philadelphia, where she lives with her family. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Without Her is her first book.