Alum Explores Grief Through Memoir

TW: This story includes mentions of suicide and eating disorders.

It was March 26, 2014 when Rebecca Spiegel ’12 received the phone call that would change her life. She was teaching in her classroom in New Orleans and the call was from her younger sister’s friend at college. This call would be the start of Spiegel’s journey with grief following the on-campus suicide of her sister, Emily Spiegel ’14. It is also the opening scene of her newly published memoir, Without Her: a chronicle of grief and love.

“I didn’t start with any intention for the writing,” says Spiegel. “The origin of this book was just the way that I was processing the loss of my sister and my grief and just trying to find my way through it.”

Spiegel began the therapeutic writing as posts on Medium, an online writing platform. She shared these bits of her journey and, as the following of the story began to grow, the seeds were planted for the idea of a book. When she started attending an MFA program, she realized this was the material she wanted to work with and began shaping the vignettes into a longer format. She graduated in 2020 with an early version of the manuscript as her thesis.

“Not having that pressure from the beginning of writing a whole book was essential,” Spiegel says. “I don’t think I would have been able to be as honest with myself if I was always thinking this is going to be something bigger or that there was going to be an audience for this.”

Spiegel also notes that it was writing about her grief that helped her fully explore those emotions and come to a deeper understanding of herself and her sister. She writes in the book: “It’s possible I’m mistaken, but had I not been writing about my grief, our loss, I don’t believe I would have had occasion to ask questions, and without an occasion, I wouldn’t have asked. Too risky. It’s not sufficient, the wanting, to overcome the lonely wondering, the fear of what will be unearthed, the missing, the hurt.” (Spiegel, 99)

But now, over ten years after the loss of her sister, Spiegel has published the compilation of what came from that questioning. Without Her explores the lives of Spiegel and her sister leading up to Emily’s suicide and Spiegel’s life afterward. The non-linear narration, a spiraling weave of memories and present day, begins with the tragedy and follows Spiegel through the five years that followed.

In the opening pages, the reader is immediately pulled into the author’s first stages of grief through the sharp focus to detail and simultaneous feeling of complete disorientation in the moments after shock.

“I felt so unbearably present and so deeply absent at the same time.”

Spiegel, p.21

“That first part of the book is actually one of the last things I wrote,” says Spiegel. “I had to mentally and emotionally bring myself back there. I was really in a different place as I was writing. The story of those first few days after my sister’s death, when I traveled home, the funeral… what details came back to me. But it was sort of like transporting myself back in in time. And it was interesting to see how clear my memories were. Because I hadn’t really revisited them. I think I avoided doing that.”

Spiegel writes intensely and beautifully about the transitions in grief and the constant resurgence of emotions in even the most mundane scenes of life. She intimately portrays the thoughts and feelings of trying to hold on to that loved one while also allowing oneself to let that person go.

“For me, one of the hardest paradoxes of grief is needing distance from that moment of loss and the pain of the grief, but also desperately trying to stay close to the person who’s not there. It wasn’t something that I intentionally set out to write about. It was just a strong feature of my experience. Negotiating that desire for and utter resentment of distance.”

Another throughline present in the story is the struggle with eating disorders that both the author and her sister shared.

“That wasn’t something I intended to write about. I think it became part of the book because I couldn’t explore the history of Emily’s mental illness without starting with the eating disorder. It was a huge part of her life, and therefore my family’s life,” says Spiegel. “Part of the project of the book was I was kind of trying to trace what happened. How did we get to this point where she ultimately died by suicide? And in terms of diagnosable mental illness, it started with an eating disorder. That exploration became part of the book.”

And, in terms of her own eating disorder, Spiegel recognizes that, since it was a fact of her life at the time, it was a necessary part of the story.

“It was a feature of my existence prior to the loss and afterward, and I think also, in a twisted way, it made me feel connected to her. It was a shared experience. A lot of this book is about figuring out who I am without my sister. She was someone who I felt comfortable talking to about how hard food was.”

Members of the CC community will immediately recognize the campus in descriptions of Emily’s college life and the location of her eventual suicide. However, Spiegel made it a point in her writing to never actually name the school.

“I didn’t name the school because in some ways the story has nothing to do with it. And I have a protective impulse. I love Colorado College. I think that the people did everything they could for Emily. I didn’t want the space it happened in to become the point. I think if I had named the college, I would have been more worried about whether or not I was portraying it in a negative way or in an overly positive way. Was I being fair? And it didn’t matter to the story. It felt beside the point.”

When asked what she would like people to take from reading the book, Spiegel hopes that readers come away with the reassurance that it’s okay if it doesn’t get easier.

“Whatever it is, whether that’s grief itself or a mental health struggle or whatever. It’s okay. I think we have a desire for completion. Like, okay, I’ve done grief. I’ve checked it off. And the same thing with someone who has depression. They want to say, ‘I’ve conquered it, it’s over.’ Things just don’t work that way. And a lot of our narratives are kind of overly optimistic, or you could say dishonest, about how things actually happen. So, I’m just hoping people take some comfort in the idea that you can still be stuck in something and also be totally okay at the same time.”

“…my life had become steady, stable, sturdy. Even now, same as ever, I am fine. My sister’s absence, once corrosive, is just a thing. Until grief reappears, settles into my system and leads me to dark corners of my mind, desperate measures of my body, mornings when I pace circles around my heart.”

Spiegel, p.242-43

Spiegel knows she could not have made this journey alone, that she depended on the memories of others to draw out some of the most poignant times in her writing. She also realizes that the process of writing this book allowed for others in her life to explore and process their own feelings.

“People were open to having conversations,” she says. “I was so surprised by how welcome those were and once I started having conversations with my dad, my mom, other family members, it opened things up. They wanted to share more with me. It was kind of a vehicle for their grief too.”

Spiegel now teaches writing in Philadelphia. When asked when she plans to write her next book, she says, “maybe never.”

“A fortunate and also unfortunate thing about this project is that it was so urgent and necessary. I don’t have that same feeling of urgency with anything else. So, it sort of feels like I don’t have anything else to say. But who knows.”

Without Her is published by Milkweed Editions and available September 10, 2024.