Scenes of Grief

Todd Meyers, A&S '06 (MA), A&S '09 (PhD), is a social scientist, and so you might think you know what to expect from Gone Gone. This is a book about drug overdose and grief, based on interviews with the loved ones of those who have died. So: ethnography.

And, well, that's not completely wrong. Meyers' book is a sort of ethnography. But it's also poetry. And lovingly crafted, heartbreaking prose. It's chaotic, overwhelming, and beautiful.

Those of us who spend our lives and careers thinking about drugs and addiction are rarely dispassionate observers. I'm certainly not. My writing is infused with my own story and those shared with me. Meyers' is too, but he's found a novel way to try to impact the reader. In the prologue, he tells us that "words fail grief not because they are unable to hold the experience but because when received they are assumed whole and unbroken, not as words as much as captured facts." This sentiment is echoed in Chapter 3 when one of the characters sits through a presentation on accidental overdose and prevention but leaves the meeting deflated. "Facts," Meyers writes, "do nothing for his loss."

So, if facts fail us, what might do better? The four chapters of the book describe tragedy, but not just with words. Meyers plays with sentence structure and page layout, as well as with names and pronouns. I found myself flipping back and forth trying to understand who died, who struggled, and why. But I eventually gave up and just let the stories wash over me.

I absorbed the stigma, shame, and guilt strewn across the pages. When a character in Chapter 1 tells us, "Imagine worrying's end," I felt the unnamable awfulness—the horror at being relieved when one no longer must worry about someone else. And in Chapter 2, when another character describes watching a loved one spiral into darkness with the language of "pre-mourning (God, what a thought)," my understanding was visceral.

Gone Gone is not like any addiction or overdose book I've read. I recommend that readers prepare themselves to be uncomfortable and try to let themselves feel what Meyers' subjects are sharing with us. It's worth the effort.