Grace is Gone

At this point in my career, I’ve had a pretty wide sampling of the swath of experiences writers tend to have. But one I had not encountered until recently was the death of a former client. To be honest, I was (and still am) stunned at the impact it had on me.

Nearly ten years ago, I worked with a client who I’ll call Grace because that word perfectly describes her essence. While I’ve had other clients who I’ve grown closer to than Grace, there were certain extenuating circumstances about the time we spent writing together that made our experience unique: 1. we lived in the same town in pre-COVID times, which meant that we often met in person as opposed to over the phone or video chat, and 2. I was going through a highly unstable and volatile period of my life. Normally, clients aren’t privy to the day-to-day happenings in my life because our time together is about them, not me. But, at this particular moment in time, that wasn’t possible. I couldn’t hide what was happening in my life, especially because Grace and I were working face-to-face. I didn’t like it, but the fact is that Grace knew exactly what was happening in my personal life. That kind of exposure made me feel vulnerable and cringey, like I was attempting to be professional while naked. Particularly because, at the time, I was hiding the reality of my situation from my family and loved ones, coupled with the fact that I had just moved to a new city where I had no friends. Grace knew things about me that literally no one else did. Nonetheless, I can see—especially in retrospect—how much I needed someone in the loop and on my team. By default, that person ended up being Grace.

In addition to all of this, it just so happened that Grace and I were the same age and from the same hometown. Because of that, we had a certain shared language and sense of familiarity with similar touchstones—something that tends to be rare in adult life if you move away from your location of origin, as we both had.

Grace also happened to be deeply intuitive. It wasn’t until years later that I appreciated exactly how intuitive she was, when many of the (seemingly unlikely) things she’d told me would happen came to pass. At the time she predicted these future events, I had rolled my eyes in response. They sounded completely outlandish. She just smiled her small little smile as her eyes curved into moon shapes—the smile that quietly said, “We’ll see.” And, indeed, I did come to see that she was right about some really big things that it turned out weren’t so outlandish after all.

But that was all nearly a decade ago, and lasted for a relatively short period of time. Grace and I both moved away from the town where we lived when writing her book. We touched base a few times on the phone after that, and then stayed in touch via social media as people do, but that was pretty much the end of it. I was only loosely aware of what was happening in her life, and what I did know was out of context in the way that social media so often is.

It just so happens that I also worked on a book with Grace’s best friend, who now lives on another continent. A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and a video that Grace’s best friend had posted started to roll. It was a shot of the two of them walking down a beach. How sweet! I thought. They’re together. As the video continued to play, I saw it was actually a montage. And then I started to get a sick feeling that something was off. I skimmed down to read the caption, but the words didn’t compute.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” my daughter asked as I played the video for the third time in a row, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was watching a memorial.

Grace was gone.

We understand that the deaths of those close to us are going to be gutting, nauseating, heartbreaking, and all of the other adjectives that reference the sensation of having your heart violently pulled out through your mouth. But every now and then there are those other deaths, the ones that are seemingly less connected to your day-to-day life, that unexpectedly rip the carpet out from under you. As it turns out, Grace’s death was one of those for me. To be honest, I’m not even sure why. I do know that I feel haunted by the fact that there are kids left behind and I know how very deeply she loved those kids with her whole entire heart. And probably the fact that we’re the same age plays into it as well.

A couple of years ago, Grace reached out to me via social media. She seemed to be sharing with me that she was in a similar situation to the one I’d been in when we were working together. I wrote back words of support. Was it possible that all the while Grace had been helping me through that horrific period of my life she’d been going through the same thing, unbeknownst to me? Or did she land here coincidentally, unexpectedly? Could I have done something more than what I did in that DM? Offered more support, as she had for me all those years ago?

All of this has reminded of how much intimacy there is in the work I do. It’s this bizarre scenario where I’m basically asking a stranger to trust me and tell me all of their most intimate details and most important information. Yet, in this case, it appears that perhaps I ultimately knew so little; ironically, in an isolated scenario where my client knew so much about me. We created something and put it out into the world together. That type of work creates a lasting bond … admittedly in a way and to a degree that I didn’t even understand until now. In the end, I think that’s what I’ve learned this week: that that bond is even stronger and more lasting than I gave it credit for.

I am glad I knew Grace. I’m so sorry she’s gone.