“Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it,” he writes, “a blinding fission of every emotion.” A bitter rage made Greene hate the “unexamined happiness” of the people-especially parents-he saw around him while Stacy was forced to confront not only her own anguish, but that of her mother. Overcome with grief and guilt for having “failed this little person so completely,” the couple struggled to fit the shattered pieces of their life together again. Shockingly, a brick from an eighth-story windowsill fell on Greta’s skull, causing irreversible brain damage. One day, Greene and his wife, Stacy, left Greta with her grandmother. Until we're not anymore.A Brooklyn-based music journalist’s account of his 2-year-old daughter’s accidental death and his journey to acceptance of her passing. And so that will be an absence that we contend with for for every single day that we are here. But we will always have had a daughter here with us on earth who is not here. There is a way, says Jayson, in which grief and love become synonymous: "Grieving her is in part a way to express our love for her, as is remembering her joyfully. But we are choosing to live - and that means moving foward, aware that grief is now a part of life. We are not moving on, says Stacy, leaving Greta behind. "And I think that's something we talked about, just making sure that our intention was true and that we weren't putting some burden on him to be something for us, because that would be unfair to him as a person." "He is his own person, we did not replace Greta, we had another child," she says. And they know they have to guard against their own fears and expectations for Harrison. They have met many grieving parents who could not. Stacy says they know they are lucky they were able to have another child. That process of opening themselves up also allowed them to see a possible future - a future that would include another child.
Grieving her is in part a way to express our love for her, as is remembering her joyfully. And I didn't want to leave my wife or my family necessarily, but I was very, very clear that what I wanted was for all thought and feelings and sensations to just stop." I didn't want to have to do anything to make that happen. "It was as if my heart was beating and I was trying to will it to stop. "I was saying it out loud over and over again, because it was the only thought that I was capable of having: 'Why don't I just die?'" he says. Back then, Jayson remembers, he had only one recurring thought. It would have been impossible for Jayson to imagine such a scene in the days and weeks following Greta's death - and the Greenes did not get to this point easily. And they dote on their son, Harrison, who's just arriving home from day care with his mother - Jayson playfully calls him Monkey Butt, and asks if he wants to take his shoes off downstairs or upstairs. They seem very close, picking up easily on each other's cues. They are warm and welcoming, quick to smile and laugh. When you first meet Jayson and Stacy Greene, you'd be hard pressed to see any sign of the tragedy that struck out of the blue four years ago. Greene began keeping a journal, which turned into his new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars.
It struck Greta in the head, and she died three days later. The two were sitting on a bench on New York's Upper West Side when a brick came loose from a nearby building. His 2-year-old daughter, Greta, was visiting her grandmother. How?įour years ago the unthinkable happened to Jayson Greene. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.
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