Book Review: "Grief is for People" (Sloane Crosley)

 

“Heavy is the enchantment of places you know you will never see again”

-- Sloane Crosley

I have been trying to make a better effort at reading books outside my comfort zone -- which has recently been the thrillers that I seem to devour during the course of an academic semester.  When I saw the summary of the book Grief is for People by Sloan Crosley, I knew I had to read this memoir.  All I knew before I picked up the book was that Crosley experienced a robbery in her New York City apartment in 2019 and then, a month later, she lost one of her closest friends/ co-workers to suicide (book editor Russell Perrault).

I don’t know many people who haven’t experienced some sort of grief in their lives.  Although I adored someone like my grandmother when I was little, I guess I knew that she would die because she was -- as my 20 year old self would say -- “old.”  I was close to her, though, and struggled for a few years without her presence in my life.  Having spent almost every summer of my childhood with her, it was disconcerting that her presence was missing from the events of my life that kept happening even after she died.  Honestly, even today I miss her sometimes with an ache that is hard to explain.  

But I think it is different when people die unexpectedly.  My dear friend and former teacher, Les, died in 2010 and his death was harder to deal with because it came at a time in which (1) I was dealing with cancer myself and (2) I never thought he would have been close to dying.  I miss our calls (since we lived across the county from each other) about academics and life and marriage and teaching and my dissertation (which he never even knew I eventually finished).  He was older, yes, but he wasn’t supposed to die at that moment.  I know it sounds like a cliche, but I thought we had years left.

So maybe that is why Crosley’s book made me dog-ear so many pages.  Though she has written a bunch of books, this was my first encounter with her work.  So here are a few thoughts about her memoir.  

Let me start with the way she organizes the book.  I think a lot of us have heard of the 5 stages of grief.  A psychologist in the 1960s -- Elizabeth Kübler-Ross -- came up with the five terms and it is these five stages of grief that organize the book into five parts: Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression and Afterward (instead of “acceptance” which I think was a clever twist in the language).  Both events -- the robbery and the death -- are twisted together as Crosley tries to come to terms with these two events.

I have personally only been robbed once -- and it wasn’t even my stuff that was stolen.  Many years ago, my husband had his car parked in our driveway and someone broke the window to steal the stereo (which was broken!).  It did feel a little unsettling that someone had ventured into “our space” so I get why that feeling can be overwhelming when you are the victim of a robbery.   For Crosley, this feeling was much worse because the robber entered her home (coming in the window over her bed).  This person stole jewelry that had sentimental value and -- while “thieving” -- the robber broke one of the drawers of the furniture the jewelry was stored in (a piece of furniture that she bought with her friend, Russell).  

So from the start, these two events get twisted together.  Once two events follow each other in the way that this did, I am sure it can be difficult to remember what the first event felt like without thinking about and remembering the second.  Crosley is clear that for most people, the idea is that “grief is for people, not things” (34) so we feel guilt, perhaps, when we feel grief for a stolen ring (because it is not an irreplaceable person).  As she works through her “guilt” about Russell’s suicide (I think like how most friends would react), she has to trace her feelings through a complicated relationship and ultimately how she will live beyond these two events.  At one point, she says “Human beings are the only animals that experience denial” (6) and we see that in action as she considers her friend’s tragic decision.

This memoir was heavy.  I have been feeling a bit down myself but I did notice that there was something therapeutic about reading the words in this book.  As Crosley says in a place in the memoir where she talks about writer and critic A. Alvarez (one of my favorite writers), “None of us is the exact same person we were an hour ago” (87).  

I am not the same person after reading this treatise on grief.