The Obscure Word That Helped Novelist Jesmyn Ward Process Her Grief

When I buried my father, a man who bequeathed me his entire face but very little of his time, I turned to words from Jesmyn Ward.

I didn’t feel appropriately shaken, and certainly this was a problem.

By my late 20s, half my family spanning four generations were dead, each person lost to some calamity […] ...