The Loneliest Places

A child's suicide pitches you into a hellish place of fragmentary images, the deepest depression imaginable, efforts to destroy yourself, and an almost complete break with what's happening in the world around you. That was the author's experience. The essays in this book began as a ch...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dickinson, Rachel
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Cornell University Press 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501766091.001.0001
Description
Summary:A child's suicide pitches you into a hellish place of fragmentary images, the deepest depression imaginable, efforts to destroy yourself, and an almost complete break with what's happening in the world around you. That was the author's experience. The essays in this book began as a chronicle of the author's life after her son's suicide. The pieces became much more. The author writes the unimaginable and terrifying facts of heartbreaking loss. She tells stories from her months on the run, fleeing her grief and herself, as she escapes to Iceland and the Falkland Islands—as far as possible from the memories of her dead son, Jack. She frankly relates the paralyzing emotion that sometimes left her trapped in her home, confined to a single chair, helplessly isolated. The tales from these years are bleak and the author's journey home, back to her changed self and fractured family, is lonely. However, she describes how hope was sighted, allowed to perch, and then, remarkably, made actual.