Once More We Saw Stars

March 15, 2019
A Brooklyn-based music journalist's account of his 2-year-old daughter's accidental death and his journey to acceptance of her passing.One day, Greene and his wife, Stacy, left Greta with her grandmother. Shockingly, a brick from an eighth-story windowsill fell on Greta's skull, causing irreversible brain damage. 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. "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. After feeling Greta's presence in a local park, the author suddenly realized that "there will be more light upon this earth for me." He and Stacy began attending grief workshops, one of which included a medium who encouraged them to "pay attention to signs" from their loved ones. They also decided to leave the home where Greta "padd[ed] agreeably around every corner" and start a new life--complete with what they hoped would one day be another child--elsewhere in the city. They took up yoga while Greene "became a prospector for safe screaming spaces" where he could release pent-up emotional suffering. After the couple discovered they were pregnant, they went to see a ceremonialist in New Mexico who they hoped would help them process Greta's death along with the impending birth of the son who would never know his sister. The powerful visions of death and rebirth they experienced helped them to understand and embrace the brokenness within themselves with love, grace, and gratitude. Compassionate and sensitively told, Greene's story accomplishes an exceptionally difficult feat: transforming tragedy into both a spiritual journey and a celebration of wonder.A poignantly uplifting memoir of moving forward after terrible loss.

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Starred review from April 1, 2019

On a Sunday morning in spring, two-year-old Greta Greene was resting on a bench on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her grandmother when the unthinkable happened--a piece of debris fell from the building above them and knocked her unconscious. She died the next day. In this unforgettable memoir, author Greene, Greta's father (contributing editor, Pitchfork Media), writes about what happened after the accident as he and his wife began a journey of healing. They explore different grief-support options and enroll in a retreat called "From Grieving to Believing," where they consult a medium who tells them to pay attention to signs. They also join a local group for bereaved parents and lash out at the moderator after she's aggressive and inappropriate. The author occasionally seeks out empty New York streets and screams into the vacantness. But eventually, in the wake of their sorrow, they choose hope, deciding to have another child. VERDICT After suffering an unimaginable loss, the author's ability to pursue fatherhood again while still honoring the daughter he lost is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and its capacity to love. Heartbreaking and inspiring. [Prepub, 11/26/18]--Erin Shea, Ferguson Lib., CT

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
Journalist Greene went through perhaps the most horrifying experience possible for a parent and lived to tell about it in clear, richly detailed prose. The author's two-year-old daughter, Greta, was sitting on a bench outside a Manhattan building with her grandmother when a chunk of brick from a windowsill fell from the eighth floor and hit Greta's head. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was declared brain dead, leaving Greene and his wife, Stacy, to say goodbye while waiting for her organs to be donated. This gripping memoir follows the couple into and out of the depths of grief, through ordinary and less ordinary days, as suicidal despair alternates with howling anger at the universe, and as they make the fraught decision to try to have another child. Greene, remarkably, pays as much attention to the particulars of the people and places around him as he does to his own unsugarcoated experience of the tentative but real return of hope and pleasure in life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)