Learning to Say Goodbye

When four people Alexandra loves die in quick succession – her mother, two close friends, her childhood best friend – grief becomes both a wilderness and a guide.

The losses arrive without warning and without goodbye. Her mother, dying of cancer, refuses to acknowledge what's happening – so Alexandra plays along, keeping things “light-hearted” until it's too late. Her best friend Kathrin is killed in a car accident while Alexandra is at work in Dubai, a continent away.

Four losses. Zero goodbyes. And a wound that can't heal because it never gets properly tended.

But grief, Alexandra discovers, can be a doorway. Following breadcrumbs she doesn't fully understand – a business card here, a repeated word there, a stranger's knowing eyes – she finds her way to Reiki, to pediatric hospice, to sitting with dying children and their families. She learns to hold space for the unbearable. She discovers that the thing she feared most has become her calling.

Told with candor, lyricism, and unexpected humor (including a shoulder critic who appears in tiger-print Speedos), Learning to Say Goodbye is: