Immediately after learning that Dan had died, I messaged his two sisters. Thank you for being such a good friend to him, one of them wrote back. He loved you very much. Dan had been one of my best friends since we were fourteen. Perhaps because I was in shock, my fingers slipped and I accidentally replied by sending his sister a ridiculous GIF.

I quickly deleted it, and we have not discussed it. I am devastated by Dan’s death, but right after the GIF mishap, what stung was that I desperately wanted to tell Dan about what happened. He would have found it hilarious. 

Dan’s sense of humor was brilliant, self-deprecating, and generous. He was the first friend I made in high school in Toronto, and it was his humor that drew me to him and kept us close. His yearbook quote was a wildly out-of-place reference to fighting a man with a purple hat. It still makes me laugh all these years later in its outright absurdity. 

That said, he did once lock me in a locker and leave me there. And on multiple occasions, he threw my school bag into the girl’s changeroom so that I couldn’t retrieve it. You’d be forgiven for thinking he was my high school bully and not my friend, but our bond never wavered through more than three decades. 

I am devastated by Dan’s death, but right after the GIF mishap, what stung was that I desperately wanted to tell Dan about what happened. He would have found it hilarious. 

For a time, Dan was a college instructor, teaching things like video game design and computer graphics. But his adult life was largely spent as an entrepreneur, He founded multiple companies and gave many young people their start. 

It was also spent chasing adventure. He loved racing dirt bikes; driving boats; and especially, flying planes as an amateur pilot, his lifelong dream. I was scared to go flying with him, but friends told me that in his first plane, the door would routinely swing open in-flight. It was the passenger’s job to hold it closed while Dan flew the plane. He said to me several times that he figured he’d die in a plane crash—but the freedom and sheer joy of flying was worth it to him.

He was wrong about that. On April 30, Dan was shot in the middle of the day in an idyllic Toronto park usually filled with kids and dogs; the very place where I am sitting now writing this. It seems to have been essentially random. There was briefly a small impromptu memorial at the site—a candle, some flowers, and a wooden toy plane—but when I went to visit less than a month after his death, it had all been thrown out.

Dan loved his wife and his family dearly, and he had a special place in his heart for his wide circle of friends. His funeral was the closest thing to a high school reunion that I have been to. Even those who hadn’t seen him in years said they would never forget the mark he left on them with his warmth, kindness, and humor. None of us could believe he was gone.

I was a pallbearer. As we buried Dan, three planes were flown overhead by pilot friends of his, one of them his own. On the second pass, it split off from the others and disappeared into the distance—the “missing man” aerial salute. But it wasn’t the planes that I’ll remember most. It was catching sight of the dirt at the bottom of his grave as we lowered him. When the casket was down, I touched it once to say goodbye. 

I’m sorry I accidentally sent that GIF to your sister, Dan. I know you would have found it funny that I did that. I’m just not sure she did.

I loved you, too, and the world will never be the same. 

But I’m still angry about that locker incident. Jackass. 

Gregory Levey has just finished writing his first novel. Dan helped edit it.

The post I Accidentally Sent a GIF to My Dead Friend’s Sister appeared first on Modern Loss.

A few months ago, a friend from high school with whom I hadn’t spoken in years sent me a text that he’d seen an article I wrote about my second-trimester miscarriage. He and his wife had recently experienced a late pregnancy loss, and it had nearly broken them. 

He proceeded to reveal intimate details about how they found a way forward. But unlike the hundreds of other messages I’d received, this one offered something unique: an offer. If my husband ever needed someone to talk to, he’d be happy to meet him for a cup of coffee. 

I was touched by this sentiment but suspected my husband, Ben, would never take him up on it. While supportive of me sharing my deepest feelings on the Internet, Ben is not someone who readily offers up his own. At that point, he had shared little about what he was carrying but I passed along the offer, hoping that if he was ever ready to open up more, he’d remember someone had already pulled up a chair. 

The causes of miscarriage remain largely unknown. Many of us who go through it are left with unanswered questions and a profoundly isolating sadness. Increasingly, the mothers’ sides of these stories have been pulled out of the shadows. We lean on our girlfriends, share on social media, and even write personal essays for public consumption. We commiserate over our shared grief. The male perspective, though, is mostly tucked away, often turning partners into silent sufferers on the hoped-for road to parenthood.

We’ve had some glimpses into men’s hormonal response to fatherhood. Regions of the brain linked to attachment and caregiving strengthen when men become parents. But little has been studied about how men respond to and overcome pregnancy loss. 

Those early days carry moments for both parents that feel isolating at best, and crippling at worst. There’s no question we have a long way to go in supporting birthing parents through the emotional aftermath of a miscarriage or stillbirth: After my D&E I was given a thick packet of materials about abortion services, but nothing about the grief that would ultimately consume me. The few resources I found had weeks-long wait lists.

If finding support was this hard for someone like me, imagine how much harder it is for fathers. The person men are most likely to turn to for such a thing is the one navigating her own rollercoaster of emotions and hormones. It’s hard to find peer support groups or therapists specializing in paternal loss, and society loves telling men their role is to be the strong and stoic ones. But what happens then when they’re struggling to carry their own weight? 

I attended a pregnancy loss support group after we lost our daughter. Of the six families in the group, only one partner came regularly. My husband opted out. This father was navigating many of the same feelings as the mothers, but he voiced another layer of frustration: When he went back to work, most of the heartfelt condolences and well-meaning check-ins were directed at his partner. “How’s your wife doing?” was a common refrain, as if this tragic outcome hadn’t happened to both of them. 

In follow-up appointments with the obstetrician, he noticed that she directed her advice about grief to her patient. He felt cast aside because he was no one’s patient, existing in the periphery of a system built around someone else’s care. 

When he went back to work, most of the heartfelt condolences and well-meaning check-ins were directed at his partner. “How’s your wife doing?” was a common refrain, as if this tragic outcome hadn’t happened to both of them. 

These experiences are often referred to as disenfranchised grief–when society signals that all or part of your grief is less important, or isn’t aware of it in the first place. If a man doesn’t receive social validation that his loss is valid, he’ll naturally be less inclined to seek out support. It’s time for our systems to widen their lens and support both parents through loss. Until that day comes, fathers will have to find ways to reach for one another in the spaces where formal support still falls short.

Last week, another friend reached out after her own miscarriage at seventeen weeks, eerily close to the point when we’d lost our daughter. When I told Ben what had happened, he didn’t hesitate: “Tell her that if her husband ever wants to talk, I can share what helped me.”

I paused, reflecting on the same invitation he had received just a few months prior. Ben might not have accepted it, but he clearly realized the power of extending a hand to someone else in the early days of a tough journey.

Vaughan Bagley writes on Substack for her newsletter, Becoming Mom, where she shines a light on the winding, sometimes painful, path to motherhood.

Author’s note: If you or someone you love has recently experienced a pregnancy loss or stillbirth, consider reaching out to the Sad Dads Club to explore their suite of mental health services for men, fathers, and non-birthing parents.

Image: Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942)

The post No One’s Patient appeared first on Modern Loss.

“Is this your first pregnancy?” Patients and caregivers ask me this all the time when I make rounds at the inpatient hospice facility where I work.

“No,” I tell them. “I’m actually expecting my sixth baby.”

They blink. “But you look so young! And you’re a full-time doctor!”

Then I share my go-to joke: “It must be my coping mechanism for being around so much death. I’m just trying to repopulate the earth.”

I say it lightly. But it actually holds one of my deepest truths: nothing makes me feel as alive as having sex with my husband.

Being so close to death every day has made me extraordinarily aware of what it means to inhabit a body that is warm, responsive, desirous, and still here. Sex is comfort, connection, and release. 

When you’re trying to conceive, it also carries the incredible possibility that intimacy might become a person. Not just pleasure in the present, but a wager on the future.

My husband and I both come from small families, and I didn’t grow up imagining a big one. Our first attempt to become parents, in our early 20s, ended in a second-trimester miscarriage. When our son was born a year later, we were in awe.

Loss hovered at the edges of that pregnancy. We’d taken nothing for granted; not one ultrasound, not one reassuring heartbeat, not one weekly milestone. When our son finally arrived, I felt something bigger than joy. Relief, gratitude, absolutely. But also astonishment that life had taken hold. Each time I’ve held another of my newborns, I’ve been struck all over again by how improbable and fragile life is.

Like death, sex has been pushed out of public life. It is something hugely important that many of us experience, but few of us talk about honestly. I remember reading The House of God in medical school and being uncomfortable by how much space it gave to sex and desire. Now, years into clinical practice, I understand better why. 

In hospice, I’ve witnessed how illness can overtake not only a body, but also a couple’s private language of touch. We’re comfortable talking about caregiving in practical terms:medications, mobility, bathing, exhaustion, back pain, interrupted sleep, anticipatory grief. But sex and physical intimacy are still relegated to hidden corners, hushed tones, and anonymous online fora. Illness, death, and grief don’t only change how we care for each other. They change how we touch each other. 

We can be heartbroken and still want to feel pleasure. We can recoil from touch one day and crave it the next. That whiplash is the body’s way of trying to survive overwhelming circumstances.

A sick person’s body can turn into a medical project. The person you once undressed in a playful, mutual way is now someone you undress to change a dressing, clean a wound, or help to the bathroom. The body you once associated with pleasure is now a map of incisions, bruises, drains, and catheter sites. Sometimes desire disappears under the weight of fear and fatigue. But sometimes, confusingly, desire intensifies.

I’ve heard people say that after a near-death experience, or after a funeral, they went home and had the most intense sex of their lives. I have heard recent widows describe a sudden surge of libido, only to feel ashamed that they could want anything at all. But to normalize the body’s insistence on life, even in the middle of loss, or in the presence of death, is not to minimize grief. It is to admit that human beings are complicated. We can be heartbroken and still want to feel pleasure. We can recoil from touch one day and crave it the next. That whiplash is the body’s way of trying to survive overwhelming circumstances.

People don’t always need solutions. Sometimes they just need the reassurance they are not alone in feeling confused, shut down, or unexpectedly full of desire. They need permission to be complicated. If sex is one way life begins, it can also be one way life continues—through touch, connection, and the tender act of choosing each other again and again in the shadow of loss. 

Dr. Charlotte Grinberg is the founder of To Life Primary Care in the DC area with additional expertise in end-of-life care (as a hospice doctor) and beginning-of-life care (as a childbirth doula). She writes on Substack at The Bookends of Life.

The post What Death Taught Me About Sex and Desire appeared first on Modern Loss.