Without her, p.1
Without Her, page 1
In place of pseudonyms, initials have been used throughout the text to protect the identities of the people involved beyond immediate family members.
© 2024, Text by Rebecca Spiegel
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
(800) 520-6455
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Published 2024 by Milkweed Editions
Printed in Canada
Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker
Cover photo by Alfred Stieglitz
Author photo by Isaac Lief
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First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Spiegel, Rebecca, author.
Title: Without her : a chronicle of grief / Rebecca Spiegel.
Description: Minneapolis : Milkweed Editions, 2024. | Summary: “A devastatingly beautiful debut memoir chronicling an emerging writer’s journey through loss, grief, and a personal and familial reckoning”--Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023054683 (print) | LCCN 2023054684 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571311962 (paperback) | ISBN 9781571317704 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Spiegel, Rebecca--Family. | Women authors, American--21st century--Biography. | Grief. | Sisters. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC PS3619.P5396 W58 2024 (print) | LCC PS3619.P5396 (ebook) | DDC 814/.6 [B]--dc23/eng/20240212
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023054683
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023054684
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Without Her was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.
for my family
& for you, reader
How can I live alone, without her?
—SOPHOCLES, Ismene in Antigone
Grief has a life of its own and its own work to do.
It is born howling, it labors, it grows old.
—DONALD HALL, Life Work
I want to know about my particular grief,
which is unknowable, just like everyone else’s.
—SARAH MANGUSO, The Guardians
PART 1
IT WAS MARCH 26, A WEDNESDAY. I was at work and it was the sixteenth birthday of one of my students: she brought in a cake covered in white frosting, pink sugar, and black stars, and I gave her a hug and a dollar, which—as is custom in New Orleans—she added to the other bills pinned to her school uniform hoodie. She left my classroom shortly before the lunch period ended; my cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen, rolled my eyes. It was my sister Emily’s college friend Z. The last time she’d reached out to me was to ask if I’d heard from Emily, but that was two months ago, a few days after my sister was admitted to an inpatient program at a psychiatric hospital.
“This can’t be good,” I said quietly. I stepped out into the hallway, dragged my fingers across dips in painted cinder-blocks, took the call.
“Hello?”
“Have you heard from Emily at all? I can’t get hold of her.” That same question—she was panicked.
“No—not for the past couple days. I sent her a G Chat message on Monday, but she never answered.”
I wasn’t alarmed. This wasn’t new. My sister was a bit slippery, hard to keep track of. Especially lately.
“People are saying a body was found in a car on campus, and I keep trying to call Emily, but her phone keeps going to voicemail and I’m freaking out.”
“Okay. Okay. Hang on. Let me try to figure out what’s going on. I’ll call you back,” I said.
I was calm and direct, but I could feel my thinking begin to cant. I’d graduated from the same college in Colorado two years earlier, and I still had the school chaplain’s number saved in my phone. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to try to call Emily.
The chaplain picked up, said, “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Becca Spiegel.”
Before I could say another word, he said, “Becca, I’m so sorry …” I heard words like “dead” and “family” and “legally, can’t initiate contact.” Flooded by hot disbelief and cold certainty, I asked him if I could tell my parents to call so he could tell them what he’d just told me. Asked him to tell Emily’s friend Z.
I hung up, walked straight down the hall, through two doors, outside, sat down at a picnic table, surrounded by concrete and aluminum, chain-link fence and rubber track, high school bleachers, 1.32 acres of artificial grass.
I sent two identical text messages: one to my stepfather, one to my dad. “I need you to call the college chaplain. Here is his number.” The aim was neutral urgency. The shock split through my body; my mind was almost blank. Time hovered over Earth like a fog.
I called J. We’d begun dating during our senior year of college, then shared a home in New Orleans until he’d moved back to Colorado with his band two months ago, to finish writing an album and grow a vegetable garden. When I hung up, I had a missed call and new text message from Z: “The chaplains couldn’t tell me anything and she’s still not picking up. They said the parents might know though. I’m really sorry for calling like this.”
I wrote back: “No, it’s OK. Thank you for calling me. I asked the chaplain to tell you. It was her in the car. I’m so sorry.”
My next thought was of the flight to South Carolina I had scheduled for the next day, to run a two-hundred-mile race from Columbia to Charleston as a member of a twelve-person relay team. I had been looking forward to the trip.
I called the captain of the team. Tried to leave a voice-mail, but erased it accidentally. Sent a text instead: “I do not think I can get on a plane tomorrow. I will explain more, but I just found out my sister died. Please tell the team I am so sorry to pull out.”
I went back inside the school building, straight to the windowless office of a school social worker with whom I worked closely, Ms. A—big heart, quick wit, no-bullshit attitude. She called everyone baby in the way many Louisianans do. My discussions with her were usually about how to best support the students we shared, but sometimes we talked about her own sister’s mental health history, and Emily’s.
I knocked. Ms. A called for me to enter and I opened the door. She was wrapped in a cheetah-print Snuggie. (The school building was air-conditioned far too effectively.) Between us was a wide mess of desk: stacks of IEPs, framed photos of her two kids, potted plants. Tall, light-gray file cabinets where all the paperwork would end up eventually. A lamp instead of the harsh, fluorescent lights. I couldn’t speak. I began to heave.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s my sister … She’s dead.”
She let out a breath and hugged me. She directed me to take a seat; her office became a concrete block-and-tile sanctuary. My stepfather called. He found a way to perform calm and steady. I asked if my mother knew yet, and he said yes. I asked if I should look at flights that would get me home that night. He said to find one that worked best for me and not to think about the price.
Ms. A let me use her computer, then left to tell our principal. She returned with a gentle, well-mannered colleague and friend of mine named KC, who volunteered to take me to the airport even though it was her birthday. I accepted the offer but would not let either one of them drive me home. Insisted I was okay. Returned to my classroom, tried to shield my face from my co-teachers and the students they were helping, grabbed my bags, and left.
At the intersection of North Claiborne and Franklin, the light was red. To the left was a station that sold fresh meat, fried chicken, and discount gas. To the right, thin rectangles of fencing and wood siding in old, tired shades of yellow, white, or red. The lid of one black garbage can was propped open by too much trash. On another was written “Thou Shall Not Steal.” The weather was cloudy, 55 degrees, mild wind. Bland. The ring of my phone startled me. I didn’t want to answer, but I had to. It was my dad.
His voice was low and flat. He sounded tired. “What’s up? I assume it’s Em?”
“Did you call the chaplain?”
“No, not yet … What’s going on? Did she try to kill herself again?”
I said, “No, Dad. She’s dead.”
He said, “Seriously?”
I said yes and that’s all I know. Please, please call the chaplain.
I made it home. I don’t know how. I can’t believe I convinced anyone I could drive. And yet I was lucid. Absent-minded but thinking in tasks, in lists, in practical matters. I walked up three steps, turned a key, flipped a light switch.
It would be a few hours still before I could crumble, and even then, that’s not the right word or metaphor. It’s not a falling apart, either. Closer to disintegration or the chair you’re sitting in breaking, giving way to the floor, but the floor’s not there, and then you’re not even falling, because that’s too predictable, logical—you’re just existing. It’s not pressing pause, but nothing is playing. It’s not blank, but there is nothing there. It’s knowing you’re boarding a plane to go home in a few hours but having no idea for how long—knowing you’ll have to dress for a funeral, but what could you possibly wear?
I stuffed a bag: a black dress, boots and bras, leggings. Sneakers and headphones for the runs I assumed I’d need. A blue shirt with white embroidery that I first wore in a fitting room shared with Emily, bodies bumping in a full-length mirror as arms moved in and out of sleeves. I put on a necklace she’d gifted me and packed a pair of earrings she’d made. Toothbrush, sweatshirt, socks. All so obvious and normal, so practical and not at all.
KC WAITED WHILE I FOUND MY PHONE and wallet, turned off the lights, locked the front door. In her car, on the highway, I became aware that I had my hands clasped in my lap and could feel every single bone in them. Little wooden dowels, my skin like tissue paper, like I might break, rip, tear. Beyond that: nothing. Just glass and steel and the smooth skin of KC’s hands—one on the gearshift, one on the wheel.
I looked out the window, sat very still. How had Emily distorted my words? How could I have been more clear? I was afraid that she’d left believing I didn’t love her, or that I hadn’t wanted her there. Had I made her feel like a burden? There was no way for me to know. So many times I looked into her eyes and thought I saw them water, but there were never any tears. When she left New Orleans, I sent her a postcard. Did she get it before she killed herself? It said, “I love you, I’m sorry, I’m so glad you were here.”
As I sat at the gate, waiting to board the plane that would take me to Philadelphia, the texts started pouring in. People I hadn’t spoken to in years—I didn’t know how they already knew. I copy-pasted the same “thank you” to each. There was a sense of setting down a weight I hadn’t known I was carrying, only to pick it up again.
Through the first two-and-a-half-hour flight, I cried quietly beneath the hood of an oversized gray sweatshirt. No one said anything or checked on me. I listened to the album Bon Iver on an endless loop.
During my layover at Chicago O’Hare, I walked until I found an empty waiting area by an empty gate. I located an outlet, sat on the thinly carpeted floor, and plugged in my phone. I noticed the time—it was already late, so I called my friend AJ, who lives on the West Coast. She listened as I attempted to make myself believe that this was really happening. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror: lids swollen, dark circles beneath, like I’d been punched generously in both my eyes. I got on another plane and continued to cry.
It was 1 a.m. by the time I landed in Philadelphia. I’d asked my father to pick me up from the airport and drive me to my mother’s house in Delaware. I stood waiting at the arrivals curb beneath lights far too bright. It was just below freezing. I wrapped my gray hoodie tightly around my body.
I soon spotted a navy-blue Prius. My stepmother was driving; my father opened the passenger door, extended his arms to me, and said, “I’m so sorry,” as if his own pain were irrelevant. For most of the next twenty-five minutes, we rode in silence. Nothing registered, not even the dark—it could have been any time of day, on any planet, in any year.
The Prius pulled into the driveway of my mother and stepfather’s house. A motion sensor registered our presence, and a small floodlight screamed from the upper left corner of the garage. My stepmother said, “Good night, sweetie.” My dad told me to try to get some sleep.
“I’ll try. Get home safely. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I love you.”
I closed the car door and turned toward the house. The windows were dark, but the front door was unlocked. It squealed as I closed it behind me, and my heart beat as if I’d broken curfew. I walked down a hallway—past the stairs that led to the basement, past the kitchen on my left, the office on my right, past a bathroom. From the doorway of my mother and stepfather’s room, I could see two lumps beneath a down comforter. I didn’t know whether to climb into their bed or go upstairs to my own room. It seemed safest to stay silent.
My mom muttered my name. I took two steps into the room and was by her side of the bed. I leaned down to hug her and felt her hair damp with tears, her forehead oily, her cheek warm and puffy against mine.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, I felt a dull, constrictive sting. I lay on my side, adjusting to the thin line of sunlight between the windowsill and the blinds. Too quickly, I remembered where I was and why. I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror above my old dresser, adorned with books I had yet to read, a frosted bottle of the pink perfume I wore in high school, and a small collection of junk mail sent to me at my parents’ address. I needed ice and coffee.
I descended the burgundy carpeting of the staircase, holding tight to the banister’s wood. In the kitchen were my mother, stepfather, and Aunt K, my mother’s friend of thirty years. As soon as I’d gotten the news, I called K. I knew my mom would need her. She’d taken a red-eye from Los Angeles and had just arrived.
I hugged each one of them tight, then took a bag of green peas out of the freezer and held it over one eye. I sat on a stool at the high-top table, joining my mother and Aunt K. My stepfather poured coffee from a stainless steel French press, offered me the mug. I lowered my face over the steam, my uncovered eye on my mom. We were both in our pajamas, our phones face up on the table. New messages appeared on both screens in steady streams. I removed the bag of peas, blinked intensely several times, and covered my other eye. I asked, “Did you guys get any sleep?” but all I got were shrugs. No one said much. What was there to say? Aunt K answered the landline when it rang. We were each our own impenetrable system, states of matter cycling—solid, liquid, gas.
That afternoon, my mother and father had an appointment at a funeral home. My mother didn’t feel fit to drive; despite my dread, I volunteered. My parents had spent most of my life hating each other, and they’d just lost a child. As I pulled my mother’s SUV into a small parking lot behind the memorial chapel, a three-story home made of beige stone, I braced for a fight over a casket or urn, or the cost of the funeral. Across the street were a liquor store and paint center. Had the three of us ever been in the same place and been so impassive? My mother seemed reduced next to me, like boiled down sugar water. A petite body, blue eyes, brown hair. I walked over to my father, wrapped desperate arms around his middle. To do so in front of my mother felt strange and logical. My forehead brushed the copper-white wires of his long goatee; he smelled, as ever, of Listerine. When I stepped back, his bright brown eyes were dull and tender behind their frames—no trace of their habitual glare.
The funeral director wore a suit and tie. We followed him through a narrow hallway with somber lighting. I watched and listened as he showed us models of caskets—equal parts salesman and counselor. My mother said mostly nothing; my father said “cremation.” The director extended an arm, told us to have a seat. My father and I took the two chairs in front of the director’s desk, while my mother faded into a plaid love seat in the background. The director handed us a catalog of urns, the whole range, very fancy to very plain. I stopped paying attention. On the corner of the desk were a flimsy box of tissues and a ceramic pot containing a pink orchid that I couldn’t make sense of. It was papery. It was dead.
We departed the funeral home together. I hugged my father again and told him I’d see him soon. My mother and I got into her car. Stop signs, traffic lights, the click of the turn signal. It all felt far away.
That night I woke at an odd hour and turned from my side to stomach to back, wishing to not be conscious. The handful of plastic stars on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom glowed in the dark. J, who had arrived a few hours earlier, lay next to me, sound asleep. I grabbed my iPad, walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs without turning on a light. On the sunroom sofa, I wrapped myself in a blanket, turned on the device: a stream of public tributes to my sister filtered through blue light. To see how others were memorializing her on social media inspired both comfort and contempt—I wanted my pain to be shared, but particular to me, unique. I wanted them to remember that I was the one for whom this loss was truly devastating.
At 4:23 a.m., I posted:
For anyone who, like me, is searching for something to do to honor Emily’s life, three potential options come to mind:
