We are all going to die. For most, avoiding the topic is easy. We live in a culture that encourages the living to move forward with experiential blinders, avoiding the dark, and the depressing, and the morose. It is this particular affective distance that creates and maintains basic barriers between the living. In short, it isolates those that have been affected by loss.

I write and talk about death openly and earnestly, and there always comes a point where I am asked how I came to this work. My subjects and readers see my youth, privilege, and buoyant demeanor, and they infer that I chose to work on death because I am secretly ill or somehow damaged. What is not apparent is my struggle to cope with the loss of a friend and partner who represented so much more to me. And when I first started my work around death, I stumbled forward in an attempt to make sense of this tragic loss. I was able to identify death as a critical topic when considering what my ideal relationship could be with other human beings.

Talking about death is a radical and political act because it works to subvert our daily social structures that teach us to turn away from these difficult conversations. I want to help others communicate about death. I want to help them learn in a more gentle way what felt so disruptive and painful for me: death is real, around us, and accepting it allows us to better humanize others, find deeper capacity for generosity, and express with more intimacy our appreciation for what and who we love.

My work is my own way of pushing against the culture I grew up in, which mourns in the dark, without support, love, or critical inquiry. I had to discover the language in which to explore loss. I found resolution in philosopher and theorist Judith Butler’s writing: “Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. This seems so clearly the case with grief, but it can be so only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. One may want to, or manage to for a while, but despite one’s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel.”1

Matt was my first love in the storytelling way depicted in teen genre movies, cliché for cliché. As an angry, depressed, and outspoken young lady, I had met my match. Matt was hilarious, too, and a troublemaker. And he was wickedly smart. I understood his antics as a familiar and comforting way to respond to the experiential absurdities inherent with coming of age: he pushed against the world in ways that made sense to me. My memories of him are still so vivid, as spending that part of my life with him by my side was the first time I truly felt comfortable. I had the space and capacity to live those moments fully—without worry for my safety, the trustworthiness of others. I now had someone to lean on.

Just before college, but after a series of high school break-ups and reconciliations, we found ourselves seated across from each other in a booth at Dennyʼs. We swore a pact to reconvene the relationship after we had graduated. I noticed the waitress pitying Matt’s freshly shaved head as he ordered Moons Over My Hammy; she incorrectly believed that he had cancer. Our meal was free.