Evermore is dedicating this Father’s Day week to bereaved dads who will always be fathers.

In a new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, father Jayson Greene vividly recounts the raw feelings after his two-year-old daughter Greta died and his continuous journey through grief.

A stunning accident claimed the life of two-year-old Greta Greene in 2015, when a piece of masonry fell from a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and struck her in the head.

In a new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, her father Jayson Greene vividly recounts the raw feelings after the loss, his journey through grief with his wife Stacy, and the couple’s striving toward hope.

Q. You’ve spoken about writing as a tool for survival. Is that what brought you to write this memoir?

A. Journaling is a common approach to grief. I wrote a book because I’m a writer, but writing is an instinctual thing. I mean, I’ve been to Compassionate Friends meetings and other sorts of grief retreats.

People have written pages and pages and pages about their child or their loss, because writing is a profound way to process grief.

Q. How is promoting the book and talking to people and continually retelling the story?

A. It’s cathartic.

Telling the story of what happened to Greta is a way of testifying. I think that’s probably true for many.

One of the things that you do when you go to a grief support group is — because there might be somebody new there every time — you retell the story. And you know, every time you do that, it’s a way of acknowledging that you’ve been marked, because people might sort of intellectually know, ‘oh, yeah, there’s, there’s Jayson, that horrible thing happened — they lost their daughter, and how tragic.”

But in the course of a regular day, it’s not exactly at the surface of your interactions with people. It’s often several layers down. Sometimes you yourself forget the degree to which you are always grieving that person. I’m doing what most grieving parents do in a somewhat different set of circumstances. And through the sort of conduit of a book, and I’ve written the book, and it’s out there, and people are asking to speak to me.

I am grateful for the fact that I’m able to talk about my Greta all the time right now. And there’s a context for it. And there’s a receptive audience for stories about Greta.

There are a lot of people who will listen to me talk about her life, how much we loved her, how much we still love her. And what happened. So in some ways promoting this book has been healing.

Q. What would you like people to know about Greta?

A. She was very talkative from a very early age. She learned how to talk really early on, around 13 or 14 months- words and some sentences -which was startlingly early. But it gave us a chance to hear a lot of what she thought which was very, very meaningful. We feel very lucky to have had that.

She was very opinionated. And she had a really developed sense of humor. She always seemed to be smiling at a private joke.

Q. What does it mean to be a writer finding the right words and language to convey the vast and continuing consequences of grief?

A. As I’ve talked to people, I have learned a lot about the words that we assigned to our feelings. I’m a writer. And that’s basically what I spent my life doing is assigning words to my feelings, I’ve thought about it maybe a little bit more intensely, because it’s been my focus forever.

Healing has been a word that’s meant something to me. I remember thinking about my grief as a massive wound, even right in the days after the accident, My mind seized on this metaphor of wound care — the idea that I had massive life-threatening wound on my body, and if I didn’t spend every single day cleaning it and tending to it, and changing the bandages and applying salve that it would infect and kill me.

That’s what blunt force trauma, emotionally speaking, feels like. That’s what acute shock and catastrophic loss feels like. It is very literally threatening the fabric of your existence.

Everything you’ve ever understood is completely destroyed in an instant and that does feel life threatening. I mean, it is not going to literally stop your heart. But it feels like annihilation, because it erases everything that you thought you knew, it erases all your context.

Q. Jayson has written a Washington Post column about being a grieving parent on Father’s Day and other holidays. He says people struggle to know what to say to grieving parents.

A. People worry so much about what to say to grieving parents.

I always try to say that you’ll never say the right thing because there is no right thing to say what’s most important is that you listen to the person, and that you’re there for them.

The other thing I would say to that person who’s worried about what to say, is that you might step on a landmine. And that’s also not the worst thing that happened to that person that day.

If you’re talking to someone who’s just lost their kid, you saying something dumb is not going to matter. all that much, because they are grieving something so much larger than you, or your concerns about what to say. The only thing you can really, truly offer — the only true currency you have — is yourself. And if they get mad at you, just take it as part of what you can be there for, but they’re processing a lot of feelings. If they momentarily flare up, and you have the strength to absorb that and sit there with it and allow them to work through it, the chances are that they’ll probably vent at you and then soften and say that they’re sorry. And then you can both sit in that together.

Q. As you have what have other grieving parents connected with?

A. The stuff about the shock really speaks to grieving parents, as much as I can tell.

When I was sort of reeling from the loss, I had the nastiest, most poisonous, bitter thoughts I probably ever had in my life. And they’re all very clearly rendered in the book.

I think a lot of people have felt that — it spoke to memories they had. People have found a lot of resonance in some of those feelings — I don’t know that those kinds of feelings have made it to the page in a lot of published books about grief.

Q. What is your favorite passage in the book?

A. Probably the last two pages where I’m talking both to Harrison (his living son, who is now three years old) and to Greta, because it’s such a hard, hard and long journey to the place where I felt like I could hold them both inside of my heart.

I wrote it shortly after Harrison was born, and he was still very new to the world, closer to where Greta was, than he is now. Now, he’s very much of this world, which is a joyful thing. But you know, it also means that there’s distance between who he is and who Greta was. But in that moment, they were very close. And so I felt like I could sort of address them both. And it was maybe the only time in my life I’ll be able to feel that and so being able to capture that feeling and write it. To have it be the last two pages of the book is very meaningful to me.

Also read:

• Am I Still a Father? — After his son Jon’s death, Ron Kelly helps other fathers live with their grief.
• Two dads, one mission: Better bereavement leave.
• Son’s death launches father’s re-education into the dangers of teen driving.

Kevin, fierce protector of his nine siblings and Nancy and Ray’s son.

A Bereaved Mother’s Day

Nancy is the unflappable mother of ten and leads her large family with grace, instilling a deep love for life in all her children. As a psychotherapist who specializes in addiction and trauma, she has a soft spot for people and falls in love easily, especially with children. Kevin was no different.

Kevin joined the twelve-member brood at the age of fourteen. “We got a call from a foster care agency saying he had nowhere to spend Christmas, asking if we could we take him for a couple of weeks,” says Nancy. “So, we did. And we fell in love with him.”

While it took some time to bond, Kevin soon curled comfortably into his new life, even joking that the family must have lost him at birth and it simply took 14 years for them to find him. “He was able to overcome the experiences of his past and learn to love and trust. It was a beautiful thing to witness,” she says.

By 16, he would bristle whenever he was asked if Nancy was his “real” mom. He told her “I decided that ‘real’ means you Raise me, you Enjoy my company, you Answer all my tough questions and you Love me — that’s REAL.”

He became a fierce protector of his nine siblings as well as an overall optimist and frequent smiler.

Kevin was the kind of young man who brought his mother flowers for no particular reason. And from the time that he began his first job as a teenager, he would request every Sunday off, because “that’s our Family Day day.” With a large family, celebrations are frequent and four years ago, the day before Mother’s Day, was no different.

The family was celebrating Ricky’s 11th birthday, Kevin’s younger brother, with several friends when 25-year-old Kevin headed to work. Just as they lit the candles on Ricky’s cake, officers arrived with the news that — literally — knocked Nancy off of her feet. Kevin had taken a shortcut to work, jamming to music with earbuds while walking along a Vermont railroad track. He was killed instantaneously by a train.

The Mother’s Day card he had purchased lay on his bed, unsigned.

Anniversaries

The weeks leading up to the fourth anniversary of Kevin’s death have been particularly difficult. “For some reason, the three-year anniversary was easier for me than this one, and there is no rhyme or reason for it… I’ve come to accept that I can’t predict the best or worst days,” Nancy said.

She always prepares for Mother’s Day, birthdays and anniversaries. She and her husband, Ray, Kevin’s stepfather, take the day off work. “But there are some days I can’t prepare for,” Nancy confides. “There is no explanation as to why certain days just take your breath away and knock your feet out from under you.”

Nancy takes a lesson from another tragic loss in her life. Just before Nancy’s 10th birthday, her older foster sister, Elaine was murdered. Pictures of Elaine around the house just disappeared.

“We never talked about her — she was completely gone. My parents said they were advised to not take us to the grave or talk about her,” Nancy said. “That was a big mistake. It made it very hard to cope with the grief. My husband and I have made a conscious effort to go the other way — Kevin is not a forbidden topic.”

Nancy talks about Kevin in a vibrant, vivid way, and encourages the rest of her children to do the same. He loved to sing constantly, “but was awful,” laughs Nancy, noting that he often put his family in stitches with his off-key stylings. He had a big sense of humor, a habit of blurting out movie spoilers and disturbingly stinky feet. He had a strong Christian faith and regularly assisted with the sound equipment at church.

Making memories

Each of her children chose a support buddy to be with them through the wakes and funeral. “I think that was the therapist in me,” says Nancy. Friends and family members were tasked with keeping a special eye on the children, whether they needed a drink of water or a person to lean on. “It helped us to know that just for a little while, we could just focus on Kevin and our own grief,” says Nancy.

At Kevin’s wake, Nancy and Ray invited people to sculpt their memories of Kevin out of clay and make two copies — one to stay with Kevin in his coffin, the other to keep. Memorabilia included shakes with straws and two impressions of the sheriff’s badge demonstrating who Kevin was and all the people he touched.

Balls of blue yarn, Kevin’s favorite color, were situated throughout his packed service. Attendees tossed the yarn creating such a giant web that firefighters teased it might be a fire code violation. But it “showed how Kevin connected us all in his short life. We put a piece of blue string in each program as a reminder that Kevin built connections between people and that lives on.”

Struggling to parent surviving siblings

The hardest period Nancy remembers was a few weeks after Kevin died. “The sympathy cards stop coming and people aren’t bringing meals anymore,” she said. “You’re expected to function, and you don’t even know how.”

Nancy couldn’t even go to the grocery store — “people would come over and say ‘are you okay?’ And you’re thinking ‘just let me grocery shop, I’m barely hanging on.’ I started grocery shopping several towns away for a while to not have people approach me.”

She also began to feel fear for her other children that was sometimes overwhelming.

“For a while, I was so scared that they would die that I set up a system with them,” Nancy said. “We picked out the panic face emoji. If I sent it out to them it just meant ‘I need to know you’re alive’ and they would send back kisses and hugs.”

Nancy and Kiki talk about Kevin and railroad safety.

The profound loss challenged her beliefs as a parent. Her catchphrase for all of her children had long been “I gave you life to live!” She had encouraged them to move fully into their lives, and travel. Kevin had done mission work in Mexico. “After Kevin died, I just felt like I changed my mind — I gave you life to be in a bubble, to stay safe and protected from everything. But they would bring my words back against me… It’s hard. What if living life means you’re taking risks that mean you could die?”

Finding purpose

Nancy had gone back to get her Master’s Degree in Psychotherapy and finished her program just weeks before Kevin died. Around that time, she began to feel uncertain that she should go on and pursue her PhD.

“It was one of those times when the roles reversed. All of a sudden Kevin was lecturing me, “Mom, it’s been your lifelong dream to get your doctorate. Don’t give up, don’t stop.’ And he ended that speech with ‘besides, I’ve been waiting to call you Dr. Mom.’”

She postponed her PhD program for nine months, but realized how heartbroken Kevin would be if she didn’t finish. “So, I started it — and I have felt him with me all along the way,” Nancy said.

While rearranging her bedroom to create a space to study for her spring exams, Nancy found the last birthday card Kevin gave to her. “When I opened it, it said ‘I can’t wait to call you Dr. Mom.’ It was so strange to have found that right as I started the exams.” Nancy has stayed open to, and taken comfort in, any sign that connects her to Kevin.

“I’m a logical, scientific person, but I need those signs,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just our intense need to feel him with us that makes us read more into something than is really there. If this is the case, I don’t want to know because I choose to keep feeling those connections with him.”

Then her exams fell on the anniversary of his death. At first it was really painful, but then I realized it was kind of his way of saying ‘I’m there, I’m with you.’ When I do finish (in 2020), I’m going to change my license plate to Dr. Mom.”

Blessings of love and a life to live

The day after Kevin died, Nancy’s best friend called and told her to look outside. There was a double rainbow. “I like to believe it was Kevin’s Mother’s Day gift to me.” The first time Nancy shared her sister’s murder publicly was in 2012, then “on the way home, a double rainbow appeared,” she says. “Kevin and I talked about that as Aunt Elaine sending her blessing of love.”

As Nancy’s two youngest children, Kiki and Ricky, headed out to do mission work with homeless individuals in Boston, she said “part of me is like, ‘don’t go out on the streets of Boston — that’s dangerous!’ And another part of me feels like ‘live every day fully because you don’t know how many you might have.’ This is the biggest balancing act.”

For now, however, Dr. Mom will continue to look for double rainbows and telling her children ‘I gave you life to live.’

Evermore is immensely grateful to Kevin’s mom Nancy for sharing her experience to benefit other bereaved parents and families.

The death of a child is considered one of the worst traumas any human can experience with cascading consequences that endure for a lifetime. How society responds can make all the difference. That is the national imperative we will continue to address. Toward that end, republishing and citing our work is highly encouraged!