The death of my daughter is a subject I talk about briefly because there is nothing more tragic.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
For years following the death of my mother, I wanted to write about her. I started writing what I thought of as personal essays about growing up as her child, but I never could finish any of them. I think I was too close to that loss, and too eager to try and resolve things, to make her death make sense.
There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.
What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.
There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.
My wife had a miscarriage. We have rarely talked about it. It did make me more aware of the sanctity of human life, how precious every child is.
We all had lots of stories of our sad experiences - they mourned the death of my wife with me - but we were hopeful that the children would return.
I had a daughter and lost her a long while ago. That's too sad a story to go into.
My wife Cecily Adams was dying of cancer, my daughter Madeline was struggling to overcome an autism diagnosis, and my father was dying, all at the same time. Writing the journal was a cathartic experience, and an extremely positive one.
For every story you hear that's tragic, there's another that's equally tragic or more so. I think you come to look at it as part of life.