The Long Goodbye

Meghan O’Rourke discusses how unprepared she was for the intensity of sorrow she felt after her mother’s death, and looks at what it means to mourn today, in a culture that rarely acknowledges grief. The Long Goodbye is a record of her interior life as a mourner, an attempt to capture the monumental agony and microscopic intimacies of grief. It looks at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond, and show how her family persevered even in the face of immeasurable loss.