I did this crazy thing. About nine months ago I saw an ad for a Día de los Muertos celebration at our local Mesa Arts Center. Instead of scrolling by, like a normal person, I decided this was an invitation from my dead son.
A little context: My book of poems, None of Them Are You, was coming out on the Day of the Dead, so the ad felt less of a coincidence and more like fate’s invitation.
So, I put in a request to have a book launch there, and they responded, Yes, and “These poems... are devastatingly beautiful, sorry for your loss does not even express what I want to say from one mother to another. But I would be honored to have you out in the storytelling stage.”
And so I was lucky enough to display my poems and have so many friends and family come and support me. Here are a few gifts from the two days that I don’t want to forget:
A school counselor with a bear t-shirt bought both my books and then told me a story I can’t shake. He works at a school where two kids just died. One from a car accident, another from an overdose. The car accident kid was memorialized, and the overdose kid was forgotten. I’ve heard this type of treatment with kids who die from suicide, and I wonder when we’ll stop seeing people’s end as their story.
My mom bought seven books.
Somehow I bonked my head the day before that left a huge bruise on my forehead. Even though I pasted that thing with makeup, my friend Jane said, “I was wondering if that was about Ash Wednesday.”
A couple asked me to write them a poem. They’d been married for 20 years, one of them had end-stage renal disease, and it turns out, her partner was a perfect match. Their love for one another sparkled out of their eyes.
I saw a woman take a photo of one of my poems on the wall. I am trying to remember this as my new goal post for success.
A friend of mine flew in for the launch with her husband. The two of them have been a doctor and nurse team in the pediatric Cystic Fibrosis world, one where death was inevitable but now with new discoveries, isn’t. They shared their views on how medicine treated people with incurable disease, and it got me thinking of how death-averse we are as a culture. How do you advocate for someone with a terminal illness when everyone sees death as failure?
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Luke Schmatz interviewed me and then he wrote our conversation up so beautifully: https://sadod.org/2026/10/26/bereavedauthorpublishestrimestersgrief
Also, if you’re up for some great punk music, he’s in the band King Rat.
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The audiobook version of The Trimesters of Grief is here! Erica Sullivan, a fellow Yalie, did an unbelievable job in narrating it.
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To order None of Them Are You, a collection of poetry from the first year of grief:
To purchase The Trimesters of Grief:
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