Editor’s Note
Hi friends,
I’m thrilled to introduce you to someone this issue: Jackson Burgess, literary editor of GraveSite’s forthcoming print magazine.
Much more on that to come, but first, a word on Jackson: He reached out to me in the earliest days of GraveSite, when we were little more than a landing page and a dream, with even bigger dreams for us.
He’s super credentialed — a dual-admit to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (for the uninitiated, that’s a really big deal) — but also a true believer in GraveSite’s mission and, as you’ll see in his essay linked below, a gorgeous writer.
In tracing the spirals his grief, Jackson shares that he keeps a shard of gravel from his brother’s death site in his pocket. It’s got me thinking about all the vestiges of my beloved dead — tangible or otherwise — that I’ve claimed and kept close.
My stomach flips each time I thumb through my wallet and pass my mom’s old driver’s license, which I tucked in there when clearing out her apartment. Or when I feel the grain of my desk brush against the strong silver links of the bracelet I’ve worn every day since finding it in her jewelry box. Or hear her laugh increasingly in my own.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As Jackson writes, “The most pernicious falsehood people hold re: grief is that the griever doesn’t want to be reminded. On the contrary, these little remembrances are often all we have left.”
Thanks for being with us.
— Delaney + Team GraveSite
P.S. We’re hosting a special open house for our members-only book club next week. Join us?
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Short Read · Slice of Death
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What Cannot Be Wept Will Be Dreamt
One writer’s poignant take on spiraling sibling grief
Jackson Burgess
Writer Jackson Burgess and his brother Truman. Photo: Jackson Burgess
In the awkward little jeans pocket no one knows what to do with — the one my brother Truman once joked was meant to hold “a sneaky little treat” — I carry a jagged piece of gravel from the parking spot where he died. Every time I reach for my phone, my fingers brush it through the denim, triggering a reminder. That’s the point. The most pernicious falsehood people hold re: grief is that the griever doesn’t want to be reminded. On the contrary, these little remembrances are often all we have left.
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Long Read · Feature
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In the Netherlands, Your Final Resting Place is Not So Eternal
The cemetery owners are looking for someone to pay the rent.
Molly Quell
The Netherlands, a country of 18 million, is about a third larger than Maryland, with nearly three times the people. About one-sixth of its land has been reclaimed from the sea, which means, in many areas, groundwater levels are too high to be used for cemeteries.
With such a densely populated, low-lying country, the Dutch have gotten creative about making enough space for everyone, including their dead. One solution: recycling grave plots.
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Read in Peace Book Club is Open
Special Open House for Member Benefit
Join the Read in Peace Community
Swap thoughts on each month’s pick, vote on the next read, and meet fellow book lovers.
We’re kicking off RIP with a special open house hosted by author, professor, and book club convener extraordinaire Molly Horan, who’ll tease how discussions will look going forward, and tee up our first read, After Life by Gayle Foreman.
“It’s a really interesting look at how different people deal with death and grief differently,” Horan says. “It is fantastical, obviously but still grounded in the emotional realities surrounding death and mortality.”
Join us next Thursday, November 19, from 7-8 p.m. ET. RSVP for free here.
Beginning next month, RIP discussions become reserved for GraveDiggers, with a limited number of spots available for purchase.
ICYMI
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Death Tech Talk
What do death, the early internet, and Rodney Dangerfield have in common? More than you might think, we learned from vintage tech journalist Ernie Smith in our recent HellFireside Chat on how to leave a strong digital legacy.
Other digital death downloads
GraveSightings · Death News from Elsewhere
The common murre — a California seabird — is dying en masse. “What makes its predicament heartbreaking is how well equipped it is to live,” Jill Stegman writes for the Sierra Club.
Grief: It’s the climb. And the case for taking a ‘widow gap year.’
Johns Hopkins student Sebastian Alderman says his uncle is one of so many ghosts that follow him.
Longevity bros are just the latest “traitors to creation.”
When looks kill: Garbage Day’s Grant Irving on losing his brother to the wellness industry. He’s not the first, according to a new Hulu documentary on looksmaxxing.
And “mogging” has officially hit the mainstream as Collins English Dictionary’s word of the year. The term, used when someone dominates in an aspect appearance or performance, was popularized by infamous looksmaxxer Clavicular.
The NYT obit desk’s philosophy on covering death by suicide: “One of an obituary writer’s challenges is to destigmatize talking about it while maintaining a barrier against the act itself.”
What the VA gets right about death: A doc’s diagnosis.
Cataloging ‘dying places’: A new UN standard “creates a common language for recording where people are cared for and die, paving the way for more consistent death registration and international comparison,” according to a press release from EOLinPLACE, a project of the European Research Council and the University of Coimbra.
When it comes to getting killed onscreen, Sam Rockwell and Steve Buscemi see things differently. Maybe Rockwell’s more gung ho because he’s the one doing most of the killing. Clock his body count in our “Dying to Work” interactive essay.
Why this letter writer to Slate’s advice column is acting all squirrely over his girlfriend’s tattoo honoring her dead dad.
Gif by peacock on Giphy
Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Delaney Rebernik
Co-Founder and Executive Producer: Alexis Haut
Audience Editor: Charli K. Elder
Managing Editor: Jennifer Baik
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