After Everyone Goes Home

AFTER EVERYONE GOES HOME

A companion for the part of grief nobody sees.

Everyone knows what to do when somebody dies.

The messages come. The flowers arrive. People fill the house. There are funerals and food and phone calls and endless cups of tea.

People ask how you are.

People remember.

And then, eventually, everyone goes home.

The messages slow down. People return to work. Life starts moving again. The world becomes painfully ordinary while yours has been permanently changed.

And nobody really tells you what to do with that part.

After Everyone Goes Home is a 75-page grief companion for the days, months and years that follow loss.. when you’re functioning again, but something in your life will never be quite the same.

This is not a book about “moving on.”

It won’t ask you to find the lesson in somebody’s death, turn your pain into purpose, release your grief from your body or become grateful for what losing them taught you.

Sometimes you don’t need another person trying to heal your grief.

Sometimes you need somewhere your grief is allowed to exist.

Inside, we talk about the things people don't always say out loud: the anger, guilt, numbness and relief. The stupid little things that unexpectedly break you. The belongings you can't move. The voice note you can't delete. The people who stop saying their name. The friendships that change. The milestones they should have been here for. The strange guilt when life starts becoming good again.

We talk about identity after loss, the future you thought you were going to have, continuing to talk to somebody after they die, spirituality and signs without telling you what you should believe, and what it might mean to build a beautiful life that still has a person-shaped space inside it.

There are reflections and writing prompts throughout, but this isn't homework. Read it from beginning to end. Open it on the days you need it. Ignore the prompts entirely. Come back six months later.

There is no correct way to use it because there is no correct way to miss somebody.

I wrote this for the person who is tired of being asked if they're “doing better.”

For the person who laughed and then felt guilty.

For the person who would give anything for one more completely unremarkable Tuesday with them.

For the person who believes they're still around and still desperately wants them physically here.

For the person who is building a wonderful life and wishes they could see it.

And for the person who sometimes just wants to say:

I fucking miss you. I wish you were here.

You don't need to let them go to keep living.

You don't need to stop missing them to be healing.

And you certainly don't need to turn losing them into something beautiful.

Maybe the grief stays because the love did too.

After Everyone Goes Home - €35

A quiet place to put the things you’re still carrying.