The Paikin Podcast - Danielle Crittenden: Parental Grief and Navigating an “Alternate Universe”

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Danielle Crittenden joins Steve to discuss her book, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable, being deported to an “alternative universe,” her daughter Miranda’s diagnosis with a brain tumour, Miranda’s unexpected death, navigating the “bureaucracy of death,” why “everything is wrong” about parental grief, the physicality of grief, EMDR therapy, not letting grief control your days, and learning to live with the unthinkable. Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail]  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everybody, Steve Paken here. I have done literally tens of thousands of interviews over the years, but I think this one is going to be the hardest. Stick around and find out why. I am very pleased to welcome to the Paken podcast, Danielle Crittenden. She is the author of a new book called Dispatches from Grief, A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable, and Danielle wrote this book because her daughter, Miranda,

unexpectedly and tragically died about two and a half years ago. And as I welcome you to this show, I want to start with an apology. And you and I emailed a bit about this last night, so you know where I'm going here. I want to apologize for what I surely during the course of this conversation at some point will inadvertently say that will be stupid or thick-headed, not meaning to say the wrong thing, but probably will at some point.

So I apologize in advance. There is literally nothing you can say to me, Steve, that will offend me or seem stupid. Or that you haven't heard before. No, it's more that when a tragedy of this kind happens to you and you get what I call deported really to the alternative universe and people who have the good fortune not to be in this universe, it's like speaking another language.

And of course you and others don't know what to say. And of course you're going to say well-meaning things that some people might be taken aback by. But there is, I have great empathy and sympathy for those who are trying to understand, but, you know, you simply can't until tragically you are here. So let's have that conversation and see how we do here. Okay. Before we talk about your daughter Miranda and how she died, I really want to know a lot more about how she lived. Yeah.

Take us back. Your first encounter with her. What was that like? I have a theory that when children are born, they arrive, well, of course, they arrived already their personality baked in, and there's not much you can do about that as a parent. But also the way they enter the world is sort of symbolic. And Miranda entered the world quietly and then noisily, that they put the little hat on her in the delivery room and it was like, get this hat off me. It's not stylish. And just went mental that someone had put this hat on her. And it was very

funny and that was her. I mean, she was the most independent little girl, an adult woman. From moment one. From moment one. And very headstrong and wonderfully, I mean, just unbelievably witty and quick-witted just. But she also was very adventurous, put us as parents through the ringer as a teenager. In fact, she came and lived in Canada for two years in high school. Away from you folks. Away from, and with my parents. Because it was getting to the point where I think she needed to be away from us, and we probably needed a break from her.

But she got on wonderfully with my parents and my stepfather, Peter Worthington, the journalist, he was in the Army and he knew how to manage what we thought of as an unruly troop. So they actually, it was wonderful, and she became very close to them. And then she went on to live a really interesting, life. She traveled. She worked in television. She worked in Toronto television. She was a great booker. She went to Israel where she became spotted for a model and she did fashion for a couple years. And then she came back and worked in Los Angeles and social media and doing all kinds of things. But eventually she moved back east during COVID and then to Brooklyn where she died in

her apartment at age 32. More on that later. There must be a story behind her first name. Funnily, it was just something David and I, Miranda, had always loved and like the Shakespeare bent of it. You know, for the longest time, I just assumed that the Miranda rights, which you have to be read in the United States, had something to do with it, but no? No, actually, her birth announcement was, I took a headline from the Wall Street Journal that Miranda rights were the right decision. I think it was just Miranda was the right decision. And yes, yes. you tell a number of very funny stories in the book about her, and apropos of your comments that she was a very headstrong person who did her own thing. She Ambush interviewed Vice President Cheney at some point when she was 12?

Yeah, maybe 10? Maybe 10. Maybe 10. What happened there? So she grew up in Washington, D.C. with us, obviously, and until she had to be shipped to my parents. And she, you know, it was an interesting political time. David, my husband is. very involved in politics. Your husband's David Frum, just in case we haven't said that yet. Yeah, and so she got used to a lot of interesting people coming to the dinner table.

I think Christopher Hitchens gave her her first sip of scotch. She liked to boast. At what age? I'm thinking 13. Okay. I'm not probably much too young. At one point, she started her own newspaper called The Animal. And every summer, when David was involved with a think tank, then a conservative think tank,

we would do this summer retreat in the mountains out west. And Dick Cheney, you know, a lot of people were there. I mean, our son Nat went fly fishing with Gerald Ford and had no idea who he was. He said, Dad, I went fly fishing with that nice old man there. But Miranda was doing her own newspaper and called The Animal. And she decided she saw Dick Cheney at a reception. And she marched, she got a little pen and paper, she marched right up to him and said,

I'm Miranda from of the animal. and I have some questions for you. How did he react? He was so startled, he bent down and he answered her questions. Why was it called the animal? I don't know. Okay, well, that's pretty cool. All right, so eight years ago, she's diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Does anyone know how that happened? No. And we have no idea how long it was there. It was incredibly rare. It wasn't malignant, but it was a very dangerous brain tumor and that it was vascular, which means to get it, to cut it out of the brain is like dealing with a bomb,

that unless you get the surgeon who knows how to handle that, you know, you could have a terrible hemorrhage. And it was 10 hours of surgery. It was 10 hours of surgery, and we did find the right neurosurgeon, but that was its own adventure. But she was having vision problems, and a doctor kind of caught it

that something was wrong, something was off. And they diagnosed this. There's only been three of these tumors since the 1950s found. And I said, just like you, Miranda, to have such an original tumor. And so it was a real struggle to find the right doctor who could manage it. And he removed it and told her she would now have a perfectly normal life. It had eaten her pituitary gland.

And so you can medicate for that. And for the rest of her life, she would be on a combination of medications and hormones. And she took care of herself and she checked in with her endocrinologists and things. But her doctors did not warn her that if she didn't get certain levels right of hormones and things, she could suddenly die. And, you know, she had a compromised immune system. And that's what happened. And only retroactively did I learn that.

that could happen. Did she ever sort of get back to and define this however you want, but after the surgery was over, did she get back to her normal self? Yeah, it took a couple years and because you have to play with these things, and I think in playing with them, she probably compromised herself unwittingly. But she was in a very good space. In fact, just before she died, she was planning a five-year post-tumor-free party and and she rarely threw parties for herself. So, I mean, it's incredibly poignant. And it was very typically her.

She was going to have two martinis, MRI Guitas, getting it all ready to celebrate this passage in her life that she felt she had conquered. And she was really happy where she was. And then she died. So she was making plans for the future. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Okay, here we go.

Let's move to the events of two and a half years ago, how did you get the news that something was amiss? David got a phone call from one of her best friends in Brooklyn who had been contacted by a cleaning lady they shared, who had gone in the morning after she died, and found Miranda. And the friend called David at about 10 to 10 in the morning and suggested that Miranda was unconscious, but didn't, you know, then suddenly handed him to a police officer. And, you know, you and I go back a long time in news. And when you hear that sound of the police radio in the background, nothing good is going to come of this conversation. And he explained how she'd been

found. And I kept waiting for him to tell me that she was dead. And he kind of danced around a bit. And it became clear that she was. And so we packed overnight bags and got up, we were in D.C., got up to New York as quickly as we could. But by the time we got there, they'd taken her to what they called the medical examiners building in the states, the morgue, and sealed off her apartment. So by the time we got there, they were gone, she was gone, and we had no legal access to even her apartment. How is that possible? It's what I began to call the bureaucracy of death. We had to get a court order eventually to go in it.

But you're her parents. I know. It's unbelievable. We can't get access to her computer. We can't get access to her phone. We got court orders to do that. And they don't want you. It's insane.

You tell a story in the book about how your son Nat woke up in the middle of the night, the night Miranda died with a feeling of dread. Right. How do you explain that? I can't, but I've subsequently learned that this is quite a common thing. He woke up at, he was living in Los Angeles the time, so it was midnight his time, 3 a.m. Miranda's time. And that is the time they figured she died at that hour. And he sat bolt up right in bed with a terrible, terrible feeling of dread.

And I subsequently learned that this happens with siblings and other close friends or relatives. that they know before the call even comes that something has gone wrong. Martin Short talks about this in his book, about how he was at summer camp, and he woke up with that same feeling of dread, and a few hours later, the camp director came up to him

and told him his brother had been killed in a car accident. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot we don't understand, and I'm not a woo-woo kind of person, but I also write in the book without leaning too heavily into it, and I think this is also common.

things happen that seem like messages from them that can in no way be explained. Like Nat waking up in the night, like a white lily, her favorite flower, growing suddenly in time for her birthday out at our summer cottage in a place where no white lily had ever grown. And it came up through the boards of the deck. And there was no explanation for it. And it's bloomed every year since for her birthday. Now, does your other daughter, B, wonder why she did not experience the same thing? She's a little resentful. Well, I wonder, you know, why Matt and not her?

She was a little put out. But she is also, they were very close. There was a 10-year age difference. B was 22 when Miranda died and Nat was 30. But they were, she was like, Miranda was like her older, cooler mother. She seemed to visit B a lot in B's dreams and materialize. And I was very envious of that because I think when you see the dead in your dreams, they're more real than you can imagine them when you're conscious. And so I was very desperate that I had a dream about her.

But it took a while. It took a while, but it happened. Yeah, the first ones were not nice. Do you know exactly what Miranda died from? Yes, I had to be a sleuth about it. The examiner, medical examiner, never came to a firm conclusion. But what I was able to piece together is it was a shortage, low cortisol hormones, and it eventually led to adrenal failure, which I think is what happened.

Is there anything that could have prevented it, do you think? Yeah, she could have known better about her meds. And I think when somebody, when this happens to you, when anyone close to you dies, tragically or suddenly, your impulse is to go, why, why, why, why, why, why? Why didn't they leave the house five minutes later? Like Martin Shorthbite, you know, why did they have to be in that car at that moment? And as David said to me to console me, he, you know, because I was going, why, why, why didn't they catch this with her meds? Why didn't she do this? Why didn't she do that? He said, Miranda was never going to live like a sick person. Miranda, like she lived her whole life, lived the way Miranda lived. and we couldn't control that. You have to come to some sort of, I don't even want to say acceptance,

but there's nothing you can do. I think when the brain is racing to reconstruct how it might not have happened, you have this, it's hoping that at the end of this, you'll be able to bring them back. You know, like you're looking for the spell

that is actually going to bring them back and they're not coming back and that's what you have to accept, that whatever you do, whatever they could have done, they're not coming back. And that's probably the hardest thing, especially as a parent.

I still wake up two and a half years later, and my first thought is, Miranda's still not here. Miranda's gone. And it's something you never get used to. Is there a point at which a mother says, but my goodness, she packed as much into those 32 years as many people do in 80 or 90?

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. It just is the wrong order is the universe is turned upside down because you are always expecting to die before your children. And I think this is why parental grief is one of the hardest, maybe the hardest, is because everything is wrong about it. And you would so much have rather you had died than your child. And it's just a very hard. thing to accept. And one of the things and the reasons I wrote about it was how really devastating this type of grief is. It's easy to say that. It's easy to kind of, yeah, well, you know, she lost her child. She's pretty upset. There's not just the emotional grief that you go through. There's a physicality to the grief that you go through. And I had no idea I was writing a book. I just started taking notes like the old reporter in me does. And I would find myself like I'd wake up and my chest was like ice picks were going into it.

It was like Prometheus having his liver ripped out every morning, you know, by an eagle. Like I was in such physical agony and on top of the emotional distress. And you have panic attacks. Your judgment is on. like you're just not in control of yourself at all. You get clumsy. Probably shouldn't be operating a vehicle. You know, it's, and I would find myself like howling in ways like an animal.

I think the word is keening, but I would, it was as hard as it is possible to cry. And just until you collapse and you're whimpering and then you calm, but you're still heaving. And I thought, and after this happened a few times, I was thinking, God, this is so crazy. I've never experienced this. And so I would go write it down like a reporter, what it felt exactly like to do that. Because I guess the old reporter in me, what I learned from my stepfather, Peter, was when something happens to you, you write about it. Not as a journal, not as some confessional. You write about it.

as a reporter would. And so you have this ability to kind of stand back, look at what just happened to you, and kind of clinically note it down before the next wave hits you again. But I presume it was a catharsis as well to put all that down on paper. No. Not even a little bit. Really? Okay. It was, I know you'd think, right? Like you think, well, I've got that out of my system, but, you know, grief doesn't work that way. And it was more, I felt like a foreign correspondent. I'd been given this horrific assignment. And there was a part of me that wanted to convey to those who weren't in this alternative universe what it was like. I mean, I could be in a war zone, whatever. But I was taking notes because I needed, and I don't know why I

needed to do this, but I needed people to understand what it was like and how unendurable it was. and when I finished what became a book, again, it was just reporter's notes, which is why it's called dispatches. I sent it to a, you get to know other people in your community in the alternative universe. I showed it to one of these mothers and she said, you know, thank you now. I have something to show people. Because people's lives move on, of course. The world moves on, of course. But you don't move on.

And people can wonder why you don't move on. or you don't move on as quickly as they think you ought to move on. And so I guess it was a way to try and communicate to others. This is what it's like. And please give me grace and space. There are some parts of this book, as I was reading it, that are just so agonizingly difficult to read. And of course, we put ourselves in your position

and wonder how we would react, were we in the same place? I mean, here's a line here. nothing can prepare you for the sight of your dead child. Can you describe the circumstances under which you saw that? Yeah. So after we got to Brooklyn, we, she'd been taken away. And we had to, we wanted to bury her in Canada near our summer cottage where she'd been spent every, in fact, the first time I went there was pregnant with Miranda.

So there for over 32 summers. And you're making, just imagine though you're trying to make these decisions. One of the things like the last conversation I had with her was she was, we were texting back and forth. It was just before Valentine's Day and she was going out to some event and she texted me her outfit, which we did all the time. And now literally three days later, I'm on computer with a funeral director saying which coffin do you think would suit. your daughter. And it's surreal and you're in shock. And so they released her from the examiner's building and she went to this very historic

Jewish funeral home on the Upper West Side. It's very beautiful. And I write a little bit about the Jewish rituals of death, which are unbelievably humane and kind of carry you through. including when they someone dies, they wash the body, but they treat the body as always as if it's a living person. They never treat it indifferently as an object. It's not yanked around.

It's treated like in a high-end salon. And they wrap the person in a shroud. She was laid out for us in a chapel. And she used to, she loved Beauty and the Beast. You know, every girl loves, it seems like, loves the Disney movies. And they had laid her out in this historic chapel under stars, like painted stars, arching over her. And she was at the front of the chapel wrapped in this kind of royal blue blanket.

And I thought, oh, my God, it's like a Disney princess who is, but is never going to wake up. And so when we went in to see her, they asked if we wanted to see her. they asked if we wanted to see her face. And it's odd when it's your, or maybe it's not odd, it's your child. All you want to do is hold them, which you wouldn't think you'd want to do

with someone who is dead, but you do. And the mother and me had to see her. And she was just so cold. She was so cold. And I always thought, how much Miranda hated being cold. And she was just frigidly cold.

But it was her face and it was her beautiful hair. And yeah, so it's terrible. But you feel, you also feel very strongly. It's still her mother and this need to take care of her and need to make sure everything goes right for her. You know, until she's scared. There's a ritual in Judaism called Shiva, where people gather for,

is the Hebrew number for seven. You gather for seven days. And, you know, in most occasions, pretty much everybody you know shows up for those seven days or some of those seven days. But then it's over. And I wonder if you could talk about that contrast of having so many people that you know show up to express their sympathies. But then, of course, as you point out, 90% of them, life goes on after that. And then you're left to deal with everything else. Well, the beauty of Shiva, and I'm a convert to Judaism, and from like a waspy background. So the idea that seven people, you know, for seven nights, people are going to be coming into your house to sit with you just seem to me the most invasive idea you could imagine. And you're like, do I have to feed them?

Like, what am I going to do? Yes, you do, actually. No, they bring food. Well, they bring the food. But there is food. I mean, it's a Jewish event, Danielle, so there's got to be food. No, there's food and scotch. And the grieving family is not supposed to do anything.

That's the point of it. And of course, again, that tradition beautifully understands that that first week is going to be one of the hardest. Because it's also, you're saying last Thursday, Miranda was alive. Last Wednesday, Miranda was like each day of grief, you were confronted with what exactly was happening the week before. And so, yeah, so at the moment where you are at your weakest, people are just friends there are just there. They're feeding you, they're taking care of you, they're letting you sob, they're telling funny stories.

And it's a real mercy that gets you through that first week. And then a year later, you regather again at what they call an unveiling, the memorial. You don't have to, you have to rush to get the body in the ground under Jewish law, which is very harrowing, and you may have to think of all these details in the state that you are in within two or three days of the death, but they give you a good year to put a headstone.

And so you can take time with that. And with Miranda, what we decided we wanted to do was I wanted to create like a wildflower garden and a place where we could come and sit, not just visit, but sit and be with her near our sons. summer cottage. So that's what we did. And it's a very, very beautiful spot where she is. You were told at one point that flowers are not really a part of this whole thing. Yeah. How did you react to that?

The night before, I wanted to get her 32 white lilies for her coffin. This was February. So it was very hard to find a florist who could do this. And I finally did. And she said to me very gently. Well, you know flowers aren't traditional Jewish funerals. And I say, yeah, well, fuck it. She's having them. And the woman, the floors roared with laughter and said, I like you. We're getting them to her. And we'll be back right after this. I've got to make a very hard turn here. Okay. With apologies. Harder than we've been so far. Well, that's a very funny story. This next question I'm going to ask is tough because I remember the first funeral I went to where it is the tradition that one takes a shovel, turns it upside down, and actually

puts the first clumps of dirt into the earth because you are obliged to sort of bury the deceased yourself. Yeah. And the sound of, I will never forget the first time I heard that sound, and it wasn't for a child, it was just for a grandparent, and yet it was still. The finality. Oh, my gosh. The sound of that dirt hitting the top of a coffin I mean. Yeah, it's, it's again, though it's, and I mean, it was horrible, obviously, but I appreciate the Jewish sense that forces you to confront that the death. There's no magic around it.

There's no, they're off with Jesus now having a great time. It's, you know, we don't know what heaven is like. So the first time it happened for me was when David's mother died, Barbara from, and we were at her gravesite. And I remember that. That was a new custom to me that the family does the first shovel. And then everybody, all the mourners take a turn and then, you know, it's filled in. And I just remember that. The sound of dirt hitting the top of a coffin is, yeah, such finality.

And so when Miranda was buried and it was in this rural cemetery, in February, it was, everybody was shivering. And I just, and it was, I just thought of the coldness again and, and watching her descend. And then the rabbi handing the shovel first to me. And yeah, it was. Do you ever think, screw it? I'm not going to do it. No, what I did do, I do remember going in as like, you know, very angrily.

Like, like, this is ridiculous that. we're doing this and that she's there and, you know, the whole surrealness of of it. But yeah. There are unfortunately too many stories in this book of encounters that you had either with authorities or well-meaning people that did not go well. And I want to tell one of those stories, well, I want you to tell one of those stories right now of trying to get back into the United States with your Canadian rather than your American passport and the welcome you received from a Border Guard. One of the things that in the early days after Miranda died, I gather we can swear on this program, David calls it called this the I have no more fucks to give period of our grief.

If anybody came at me, they were just going to leave, bruised and bleeding. Like you just have no time for, I should say people who are cruel, people who are indifferent. You have, of sudden this enormous empathy for suffering. I felt like I'd put on 3D glasses or something and suddenly saw all this suffering around me that I hadn't seen before. I was suddenly aware of it. But I also had zero tolerance for anybody

who was even pedally cruel. So when we were crossing back, from the funeral, you know, her siblings, some cousins, and I had my passport had been in the process of being renewed, my U.S. passport. So I traveled on my Canadian, and never thinking that would be an issue, we're coming back, and we're just so exhausted and weary with grief and spent,

and it's about 7 o'clock at night. And we get pulled aside. I get pulled aside into that, you know, one of those waiting rooms. He said, I'll just be quick. And I said, why am I being pulled aside? I said, it'll just be quick. Just sit down. We had the two dogs with us.

We had Miranda's beloved little dog and our dog. And anyway, we sat there for an hour. And finally I was called up to the border guard. And he looked at me and he was so smarmy. He was so like officious. And he's just like, so I see your traveling on a Canadian passport. I said, yeah. Why is that?

And I said, well, it's because my U.S. passport was being renewed. I see that. It's in the system. Like, well, if you know that, why are you asking me that? And he goes, well, because, you know, he's allowed. You're supposed to never know. country, blah, blah, blah. He said, so I suppose you must have had a really good reason to leave the country, didn't you?

A really good reason. And I said, yes, I had to bury my daughter. And David, who was standing next to me, said it was like I had just shot him and his body flew back and hit a wall. He was so horrified what he had just done and embarrassed. And he goes, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, go on, go on, go on. I'm sorry for your loss, miss, you know, go on. But you just keep encountering that kind of, I mean, everybody who is grieving has a story about some absurd over the top beyond she's in a better place thing.

But it's just part of the process, you know. It's going to happen and you can either decide to get offended by it or in this case, start to laugh about it. But you didn't get much of an apology, did you? No, no. They just get very uncomfortable. I want to read this excerpt from the book, which is so hard to read, but... Okay, here we go. This is you.

My heart ached unceasingly. I mean that literally. The pain simmered in my chest like a covered pot. Then several times a day, and without warning, it would boil over. My knees would buckle, my body would slump. David would find me on the bathroom floor or crumpled beside a chair, keening in agony. I've never cried this hard or in such an animalistic way. The whales began in my throat and gradually descended deeper and deeper into my gut, and no noise emerged at all.

Danielle, you talk in the book about one of your grandmothers nursing the agony of losing her child, who was 20 during a war. And one of the way she did it was to drink. And you are candid enough to tell us, you tried that too. Did it work? No. Didn't help. Well, no, actually, what is fascinating, again, to go back. to the physicality of which I've become very interested in is when you lose a child as a parent,

your mortality rate goes up. Like you are more likely to die within five years of your child than, you know, other people. And the reasons cited are, one, you become an addict, as my grandmother did, two, you commit suicide, which I also wrote about following the physical description that. I probably see if you've known me for a long and probably, maybe one of the least suicidal people you could have imagined. I can confirm that. But you've, the pain is so bad. You suddenly think.

And it's a delusional thinking because, and horrible for a mother to think, because you've got two living children, you've got a husband, you've got people. But the pain is so bad that you, anything, including not being alive, seems preferable than having to wake up again to that pain. And then the other thing is you just stop taking care of yourself. You know, you just, you don't care. You don't go to the doctor. You don't. And so in my grandmother's case, her son, her eldest son, Philip, was killed on his first mission out in World War II in a plane. He was shot over Belgium.

And she lived in rural Australia, which you can imagine how sympathetic that world was back then with my grandfather, who was rough and tumble. and she just sat in a corner and drank herself to death. She died within five years of Philip. And the whole family was in denial that a mother would want to kill herself that way because, you know, you just didn't do that. That would be weak. But only retroactively was I able to piece that together and then understand what she was going through.

And her name was Beatrice and we named our youngest after her. But did you have to get to a place in your own life where you consciously said to yourself, okay, that's not going to be me? I can't let that be me. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a struggle. Look, you know, I've said to my doctors, you know, if you put, drugs are not my bag, you know, you could give me painkillers.

I'll go off them the minute pain stops. But if you could inject red wine into me, we'd have a real problem. And so, no, it's something you have to just be very conscious of and have support, like David as well. Like, we just have to be very, very careful. But the temptation is strong. But you do feel better when you don't. And so it's, yeah, it's an ongoing struggle because there are just days where you have to do something. Yeah, like go to the funeral home and look at your child or go to her apartment and clean that.

up. Where you thinking, okay, that's it. I'm out of here for the evening, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, eventually you did seek help from a therapist and asked her, what is our goal here? And she said, our goal is for you to be able to manage your thoughts and not let them manage you. Our goal is for you to control your days and not let your grief control them. Yes. Are you there yet? Um, yeah, reasonably so, yes. So that therapy, you, you know, you know, is called EMDR therapy. It's for post-traumatic stress syndrome, PTSD. And I write about how unbelievably hard it is

for someone in severe psychological distress, as I was, to get help. And David and I, we have pretty good health insurance in the States. But you call people, oh, we're not taking patients on. There was a famous grief center in Washington. And then you call and you get a recording saying that, you know, 18 months,

were booked up, but, you know, if you're feeling suicidal, please hang up and call 911. Like, unless I was to declare myself suicidal and go to a hospital emergency room, I could not get therapeutic help. And finally, I was just Googling and Googling because I felt I can't, I can't keep going on like this. I need help. And I found out about EMDR, and which is I motion deprocess. You know, don't hold me to this. And it was discovered in, or a female psychologist theorized in the late 80s that the brain does not process trauma like other memories. And so it sticks in your brain unprocessed with the brain not knowing what to do with it and not being able to accept the reality of it. So the classic is the soldier on leave walking along the street, a car backfires and suddenly he's back on the battlefield and he's screaming.

And she theorized that it was because the, not just it hadn't been processed, but it was present. When the brain couldn't process it, it then kept it present. So it was always there waiting to jump out at you. And so she started using this technique where you'd watch a dot go back and forth on a screen, recount. As my therapist said, the only way to get a song that's stuck in your head out of your head is to listen to the song the whole way through, which I didn't know. So you would recount in detail what that trauma was. And in many cases, including grief, it's multiple. Like there's so many layers that you have to work yourself through.

But by watching the dot, it got the two sides of the hippocampus talking to each other. And now they've proven this on MRIs, that this hypothesis is actually true. I use hand buzzers now connected to my computer and I see my therapist virtually. On an MRI, they will tell someone to think of normal memories, going to the store, whatever, and then they'll say, okay, now think of your traumatic memory. And the brain just starts lighting in places that it doesn't normally light. It does act like it has no idea what to do with this. And so by going, talking through, like seeing Miranda in the funeral home, like that was something

could throw me to the floor, just even thinking of it, let alone talking about it. And so she goes, okay, let's start. Tell me what happened when you walked into the funeral home. And the buzzers are going. And by the end of it, it felt like an exorcism weirdly. Like, I don't know what happened, but suddenly it was like, okay, that one, I'm okay, now. let's go to the next one. And it also helps with the Y, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, when after someone has died,

because the brain cannot accept the reality of this shock. It just can't deal with it. And then you're nervous. And that's why you get this physical reaction too, because your nervous system can't cope with it. And so by going through this therapy, which I still do weekly and sometimes twice weekly at first, enabled somehow my body to adapt and my brain to settle. And it doesn't mean you're better or that you're accepted or you're quote unquote through it because I don't think you're ever through it.

But I can manage in the way that I couldn't initially. I want to talk about your other two kids. And one of the, I think, most poignant things your husband, David, said to your other daughter, Beatrice. And here's the quote there. David said, Your mother and I will never be our former selves. Miranda's death is the defining fact of the rest of our lives. But it is different for you.

This isn't the defining moment. It will change you, but you have to keep living in a way your mother and I don't have to do. Our wish for you is to keep living the life you have beyond this. That's just brilliant advice. have they been able to do that? To some degree, yes. My son, Nat, is married, and he just blessed us with a granddaughter.

Congratulations. So that is kind of healing and amazing. Named? Abigail. And B, who, as I said, was intensely close, she kind of threw herself. She was in the last, she was in her junior year of college. And she coped by, I quote, many of her, some passages from her essays that she studied, you know, classical history and also

ancient history, the Greeks. And she channeled her grief a lot through those stories of how ancient Greek is and how great figures in history have dealt with it. So she kind of threw herself into that. And I said to her at the time, I said, B, if you were to drop out and become a meth addict, I would totally get it. And she didn't. She went the opposite way. And she graduated. Now she's working, you know, as an enslaved paralegal in New York, she's been busy, busy, busy, busy and kept herself busy. It tends to catch her, like, suddenly, and she just gets overwhelmingly sad.

It's just grief is never linear as these people make it out to be like you'll be here, but then you'll be here and then you'll be fine. It's more like a tide. Like it just, you'll be fine, you'll be walking along, and then suddenly you'll just feel this huge suck and you're just pulled back and thrown under the waves. And so that's how it's been for her. But she did say very poignantly recently, she said,

and she wasn't saying this grudgingly. She said, like, you and dad, you know, you only have to get through the next, what, 20 years or so. I have to get through my whole life without my sister. You know, she's not going to be at my wedding. She's not going to be if I have kids. And she wasn't at her graduation. Like, like, it keeps taking us by surprise.

eyes. And I think I feel how it's become for me now is like a chronic disease that you learn to live with it. You learn to live with this pain that that flares up often. But you try and learn to live in the moment to take pleasure in what you can take pleasure in. And you know, and you just kind of get used. Oh, there it is again. I'm going to be sad. I'm going to be sad for the next few hours or anniversaries. come around. We just celebrated David's birthday and we're trying to be festive. It's just miserable. Miranda used to always do fun things on his birthday and there's things that just I don't think will be happy again or unequivocally happy and we will never be as unequivocally happy as we could be in the before time. I'm sure you learned a lot about your friends. I'm sure some who you could not imagine being there for you were, and there were others who you thought would be there for you and weren't. How'd you figure all that out? Well, you don't. It just happens, honestly. David has been through some political controversies in his time in D.C. He once said to me,

well, at least we'll know who our friends are. And I said, I was happier not knowing who my friends are. And in any kind of event like this, and I do a kind of taxonomy. of the people you meet in this world of how different people react to it. I tried to sort of categorize them. And yeah, there are the friends, the very close friends who just vanish. And you realize either they can't take it. It's too much for them. Do you ask them about it?

No. What are you going to do? Can't go there, right? No. Like, it would sound like I have a grudge or something. And one of the perspectives you get is I don't have time for that. If you don't have time for me, like fine. Good luck.

But I, you know, I get it. Maybe. And they're going through their own thing. things too, you know, but they can't take it so they go. Then there were people you never expect who suddenly, and this is one of the things when you cross into the universe, you suddenly realize it's way more populated than you knew, including by people you thought you knew. And suddenly, friends I had known for 20 years would say, well, you know, when I lost my sister, I was 22, and you're going, wait, you lost a sister, you never told me this. Because why would they? Like,

until you're in that universe, why are they going to launch this bummer fact about themselves on you? But suddenly they are the most empathetic. And they really step up because they know what you're going through. And by stepping up, I mean, they're just there for you. They show up. They ask you to go for a walk. They have coffee. They're just constantly checking in on you in a very nice way.

And they don't mind if you just sob and, as I say, become a grief bore. You know, you're just, they accept it. They understand it. And then there are the people who, the friends who keep trying to jolly you out of it, especially early on. And again, I get it. They see their friend and you're miserable and they don't like seeing you miserable and they want to tell you it's going to be okay, except they just have no nice way again fucking idea.

And so they're saying, you're strong. You'll get through this. Danielle, you'll be fine. You know, I know it's hard now, but it'll get better. You're just like, no, get lost. please don't say that to me. You smile and say thank you. I appreciate that.

But it's not the thing you want to hear because they don't know and you don't know. Has anybody been as bad as to say, oh, you'll get over it. Don't worry. Oh, yeah. People do say that? Oh, yeah. You'll get over it. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, no, no. And again, it's well-intentioned because they don't know. And they think they know something about grief, but they don't know about grief with the capital G. And that's what I guess was also behind the writing of it is not understanding the depth and culture and alienation of this world and how unimaginable it is. Like the one thing people say all the time to is I can't even imagine. And I was like, no, you can't. You lucky thought. You know, like, yeah, you can't. But again, it's coming from a good place. It's coming from a place of empathy. It's coming from a place of trying to make you feel better, and that I appreciate.

The most cliched question every parent and you have received it in the past and you will receive it again in the future gets asked is, how many kids have you got? How do you answer that? It's hard. I mean, initially, you just blurt out. I found I was telling everybody I'd lost to try the cashier. I lost my daughter. Like I just, just telling everybody. Then you learned, you know, then you shut up about it because now it's too, it's too much of a nuclear bomb to land on unsuspecting people. And what is so sad about this, and this is true of so many aspects of life, that things that were the most natural things to talk about in the world, especially two mothers meeting each other. Oh, how many kids do you have? Nothing nicer, lighter than that is now

one of the most fraught questions you can be asked. And I've learned to kind of do a mental tango as to how far I go in the steps before I level this bomb. And so sometimes I can get out of it really quickly. Sometimes I'll say three. Sometimes I don't feel like if I just say two, I think, well, I'm not going to get into this with you. I don't know you. You know, some people say, I have to say three because then otherwise you're, you know,

ignoring Miranda. Miranda is still your daughter. It's like, I know that. But I'm not telling this person that. But sometimes it comes out and you'll say, well, yes, we had an elder daughter and she died. And you then feel so terrible for the other person because they're just like, oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry.

And then you're comforting them. You're going, no, it's okay. Really? No, look, look, I'm used to it. It's fine. It's this strange, strange thing that you can't even talk about anymore. The most not, like, how's the weather, you know? It's hard.

You not only lost your daughter, but you also tell us that you have also lost a lot of who you used to be. Fun, adventurous, upbeat, Danielle. Do you think it's possible to find her again? Never in the way I was. I know, it's funny, I'm going to choke up. But sometimes I imagine I talk to Miranda. sometimes I imagine what she would say. And then there are other times where her voice just lands in my head,

as if she's replying to me, but in a way that I never would have thought or in a sentiment. So on this front, I had very mixed feelings about publishing the book, as you can imagine, and let alone mixed feelings talking about it and quote unquote promoting it. And so one of these anguished conversations in my head I was having and I said to her, well, you know, Miranda, at least this will keep your memory alive and out there. And I heard her voice very sternly say, Noma, what's going to keep me alive is you

and only if you live with a capital L. And I just, that has stayed in my head. When did that happen? Just before the book was. published. Where were you at the time? In my bed trying to fall asleep. So in the evening? Yeah. And you distinctly heard her voice say that.

And she's right. And so you try, and for the sake of your children and now for the sake of a grandchild. But it is a day-to-day thing. I know I'm positive. It will get easier at some point. There's a great reluctance early on in grief to leave that person behind. for your life to go on seems somehow like a betrayal to go on in ways

that are even festive seems worse. So part of that is getting used to the distance of the event itself. But it's also learning if there's something I can enjoy, I can laugh really hard.

I'm planning things. I'm working to be very social. I just know it's, again, the chronic disease. I know whatever I'm doing outwardly I'm still going to be feeling the pain inside. But I am making an effort to do that, and not least because of Miranda's stern voice to me. You did a podcast episode with your husband,

which was extraordinary. I'm a regular listener of this podcast, as so many others I know are. And there was one moment in the podcast where he was talking about you, and he said, you know, you're such a funny person. and then he said, oh, you were. And then he said, oh, you are.

And I think he, in just that sentence, encapsulated the conflict, I presume you are feeling inside of you, which is to say, can I be funny again? Can I be happy again? If I am, is that an injustice to my daughter? And how do you navigate all of that inside? Well, actually, I've always had a gallows humor. I can't. And I learned this also from my stepfather.

when Pete was dying, actually. He was on his deathbed, and he was very cheerful about it because he was ready to go. He wrote his own obituary. I remember. It was the greatest thing. If you're reading this now, I'm dead. Yeah. So he, we all got to see him one by one.

And when Miranda walked in, he pointed to the floor and he said, I'll see you down there. And she was so taken aback, but then they both laughed. And so it's, it's, it's, I. You know, like some of the stories in the book, as you point out, are funny. Like the, God, the hotel clerk who greeted us the night before we to clean her apartment. It was like, I won't even go into it. But it's so absurd. It's a memorable part of the book.

No question about it. But it's so absurd and so terrible in its own way that it's funny. So I haven't lost my appreciation of the absurd. And Miranda herself was so brilliantly and ruthlessly and ruth. quickly and funny about anything. I don't know. That I don't struggle with. I often think of the funny thing she would say, you know, in situations or or actually

really miss her. I think, oh, my God, I wish Miranda were here. She would, I wonder what she would say about that. A few more things before we sign off. Where is all of Miranda's stuff? So that is a very hard thing to deal with. In any death, you know, if you have to clean up after your parents or whatever, but a child is just awful. And she had some, she was like a fashion maven

and she spent way too much of her money that she didn't have on clothes. And so her sisters and her friends went through it and took the things that were meaningful to them. And they, they love them. They love wearing them. I have some of her shoes. We were the same shoe size. I don't like wearing them. I wear them, like I would wear them on this podcast if I had them with me. But I only like to honor her, to bring her with me. But things like furniture, it took me 18 months, us 18 months to get to the clothes. The furniture went into a storage unit. We're just unloading that now.

And then you had things, and I wrote about this, the little things, like, what do you do with, like, a pot of lip cloths that still has a finger indent in it? And I said, there, you know, there's no reliquary for relics like this. So I created one. I found a beautiful Japanese layered box. I think they use them for lunches or something, but it's, of course, gorgeous, these beautiful antique box. And in each layer I put, like I put her keys, her driver's license, another one I put Ringo's collar.

Ringo's a dog. Yeah, Ringo was her, and he died before the holidays, and that was its own Mishigas, as I say. But all those little trivial things that you don't want to just toss in the garbage. I've kept. Where? In this reliquary, in this Japanese box. Where do you keep that?

Oh, it's in my bedroom. So you see it every day? I see it every day. And if I want to look in it, I can look in it and I have pieces of her hair in there. I'm wearing a locket with a picture of her, and I have a ring I had made that has her hair in it. So I always try and have something of her with me or on me. Yeah, it's brutal. I mean, I know some parents, they keep the room exactly as it was.

You have to make all these tiny decisions that each one, like she's still on my electronics alone are ruthless. I call it digital haunting. Like she's still on my phone is one of my favorites. When do I swipe that off? You know, she still appears on my car. Would you like to connect to Miranda's phone? I get these stupid Facebook memories that attack me out of the blue just when I'm thinking I'm okay. here's where you were in 2018, fun times.

You're just constantly assailed whether you like it or not by memories. And then these physical things also take on. Now if I have, I don't know, like her face wash, when I decide to throw something out, I do the Marie condo. I thank it. In this case, I will, sounds crazy, but I will kiss it and then I will throw it away. That doesn't sound crazy. But you just don't, there's something about just throwing in the trash that.

I can't yet do. I get it. I get it. Well, let's leave this by you offering some advice to people. When they see you, for example, for the first time since Miranda's death, what should they say? Do they know about Miranda's death? Yeah, let's say they do, but this is the first time they're encountering you since then. What do they say?

You don't have to say much. What is weird is when they say nothing. That is what is strange. But if you haven't seen someone and you know, and even though you think, hey, it's been two years, they must be normal. It's always nice just to have a heartbelt. How are you doing? How is everything? That's it.

That's it. Because by this point, we know how to answer. We know how to behave in public. But you want that sense of a more intimate check-in. The how are you is fine. But it's how are you? Not, how are you doing? It's got some sincerity behind it.

Like, I understand. You've been through a lot and all okay. And then, you know, then you talk about whatever. Talk about Trump. It doesn't matter. But that's the way to handle it. And don't try cheer them up. Lean into the suck, as I say.

Lean into the suck. Lean into the suck. Can I get you another scotch or red wine? That's the way to do it. I can't thank you enough for a couple things. Number one, spending so much time with me here today. But also for having the guts to write this book, I mean, this is, this will help a lot of people.

This will help a lot of people because this is a subject we don't know how to discuss. And if anybody reads this, they will, they'll learn a lot about how to just navigate their way through this awful alternative universe, as you've described it. So can I say the name of the book again? Dispatches from grief, a mother's journey through the unthinkable. Thank you. It's so wonderful to be with you again, Steve. Danielle, I'm so grateful. Thank you so much.