Hey, it's NPR's book at the day.

I'm Andrew Limbaugh.

The writer Sloan Crossley has a book out now called Grief is for People.

It's a memoir about how she dealt with the death of a loved one.

And there's been a lot of stuff out there written about grief, you know, what it is, how to deal with it.

But in this interview with Empires, Aisha Roscoe, Crossley points out an aspect

of grief that I'd never realized before. She says that as she was dealing with the feelings

from, you know, the actual loss, there was a parallel emotion beside her. One of that questioned,

does she even have the right to be this sad? The answer is yes, of course, sure,

but it's one of those things that's hard to convince yourself of. He heard talk about that

and why she thinks the journey doesn't end at acceptance in a minute.

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Many of us have been there, the confusing days and weeks and months following the death of a loved one.

At some point, someone will give the well-meaning advice to remember the good times.

Sloan Crosley says after her friend's death by suicide, that advice was, quote, like feeding steak

to a baby.

I have read the grief literature and the grief philosophy and God help me listen to the grief

podcasts. And the most practical thing I have learned is the power of the present tense.

The past is quicksand and the future is unknowable. But in the present, you get to float.

Nothing is missing. Nothing is hypothetical.

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