Life Among the Savages

 Grief memoirs are my personal candy -- the loss of a marriage, the loss of a loved one, the loss of one's own health. "In Love," "Strangers," "Getting to Know Death," "Shattered," "Awake" -- this stuff is thrilling to me.

My daughter's own loss is (just slightly) pedestrian. She lost her security animal -- a stuffed dog, "Tiny Doggie." The literary world is weirdly silent on this topic. Of course there is "Knufflebunny," but that book ends with the *recovery* of the bunny. It's like there is a knife attack in the Salman Rushdie story -- and then Rushdie's face magically heals itself.

It was so strange to watch my daughter's journey through grief. She would be fine -- she would forget the loss -- and then the memory would come roaring back. On one level, I know how this is. I can recall getting bad news; I would wake up in the morning, and for a moment, I'd be fine, but then I'd remember the thing I didn't want to remember. But adults often repress feelings of grief; the grief isn't often "written on the face." With Susie, you always (always) get "an X-ray of the soul."

The other issue here is that I have compassion fatigue. A big (unhelpful) part of me wants to say, "It's just a grimy scrap of fabric. Toughen up." I wearily consult with Google -- "how to manage the loss of a stuffie" -- and I read aloud from an AI script.

"I know that nothing can *replace* your lost item...."

"We can draw and frame some portraits of our missing friend...."

Grief stories sometimes end with a "primal scream." My daughter -- who is sophisticated enough to respond to compliments by saying, "You're too kind" -- allowed herself to become briefly, fully deranged. She drew paper dog bones for her lost stuffie -- in an effort to lure her out of the particular closet, or bin, or briefcase that she may have chosen.

That was our low point. We now seem to be doing fine.