Grief Is for People

Part 1 introduces the two events that are intricately linked for Crosley: the burglary of her apartment and the death of her friend by suicide. The proximity of the events, which occur exactly one month apart, leads Crosley to regard them as connected. This section provides the backstory of these two key events, laying the groundwork for an examination of how the two events have impacted the author in intersecting ways.

The narrative suggests that the monetary value of the stolen jewelry is of secondary to their emotional value, particularly following the death of Russell. Crosley notes that some of the items were gifted by her grandmothers, one of whom Crosley says was a cruel person who didn’t play a large role in her life. While jewelry is often valued for both its monetary and emotional value, Crosley complicates this idea through the concept of inheritance from a person who was not loving. However, the link between the jewelry and Russell, established through anecdotes such as the job interview and the cabinet purchase, underscores the idea that physical objects can serve as vessels for memory and emotional connections. It is important that the jewelry was kept in a cabinet that Russell convinced her to buy, as these overlapping losses deepen the pain of each event. Similarly, the large ring that she wore during her interview with Russell caught his attention, layering the jewelry with greater meaning. Russel noted the ring on her resume to distinguish Crosley from other candidates. Her jewelry, then, is subtly connected to Russell and to their friendship, thus introducing the theme of Making Meaning of Trauma.

Crosley’s search for the stolen jewelry takes on an obsessive fervor. However, this is not motivated by a need for vengeance or a desire for justice to be carried out—instead, Crosley feels as though some cosmic balance has been upset. By successfully retrieving the items, Crosley believes that she will be able to return a kind of stasis to her world. This mirrors her reaction to Russell’s death, as she grapples with her inability to rewrite or undo the past. As the section unfolds, Crosley blames herself for the theft, examining her life and her actions to determine what she could have done differently to prevent the theft. The event becomes less about the loss of the items themselves and more about the loss of control—the invasion of Crosley’s home is alarming, evidenced by her repeated shock at her luck for being out of the apartment when the burglar entered. It is as if by locating and retrieving the jewelry, Crosley will be able to regain control of her life, preventing further incidents that are outside of her control from occurring. The theft of the jewelry, then, is not tragic or grief inspiring in and of itself; it is only so because the jewelry is linked to Russell and he dies unexpectedly and so close to the occurrence of the burglary. This temporal proximity allows Crosley to view the two events through a lens of symbolic causation, suggesting that one loss foreshadowed the other. It is as though the theft should have foreshadowed that more loss would follow, which enhances her guilt. The interplay between the loss of control over tangible objects and the irrevocable nature of death becomes a central thread in Crosley’s exploration of grief.

By titling the section after the “denial” stage of grief, Crosley, as the narrator, acknowledges the way her thinking about the theft (and, later, about Russell’s death) is flawed while offering a sense of survival, which advances the theme of Methods of Working Through Grief. She clings to the belief that the jewelry should be easy to recover, as if getting the jewelry back will erase the event entirely, as well as the trauma that followed. The same is true of Russell’s death: By pretending that he is still alive, she need not work through her grief about his death. This denial also highlights the human instinct to seek control or resolution in the face of chaos, an instinct that Crosley reflects on throughout the memoir. Importantly, Crosley tackles the taboo subject of death by suicide directly—by not speaking in euphemisms or talking around the means of Russell’s death, she honors him. This narrative choice also challenges societal discomfort with discussing suicide, adding a tone of honesty to the memoir. Controversially, though she dislikes the choice he made, Crosley suggests that it is important that she respect that this choice belonged to Russell alone. As she works through her grief in subsequent sections, her views on suicide will prove to be complex and shifting, which is foreshadowed by the nuance of her emotions in this first section.