THE TRANSIENT

The memoir describes the author's experience of living through and with the sudden loss of her youngest brother, Dave, who died in a car crash at the age of 22. From the inarticulate childhood joy of first holding her tiny baby brother, to the stunning near-muteness that overcomes her adult self as she holds his cold body a few hours after he was killed, and through the hours, days, months, and years beyond, THE TRANSIENT details the trauma and the author's integration of it in the long aftermath. Each brief chapter presents a single aspect of her experience, such as visiting the site of the crash, helping her parents choose a cemetery plot, accidentally dropping a photo of Dave through the floorboards of her porch and using string, duct tape, peanut butter, and a mashed-up marshmallow to retrieve it, and finding ways not only to survive holidays, but also to keep living through the seemingly endless hours of pain in ordinary days. These accounts are each followed by a meditation, creating an atmosphere of companionship in which the reader is acknowledged and included. Unlike books which feature academic research, statistics, and interviews with many people, THE TRANSIENT is an intensely personal journey that is not simply narrated but instead is shared between the author and the reader, with each small step tenderly contemplated.