Genre: Autobiography & Memoir
Length: 256 pages
Audiobook Length: 7 hours and 1 minutes
First Published: 2019
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Rachael’s Review
One ordinary day, 2-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandma on a park bench when the unimaginable happens. A loose brick falls from the windowsill above her head, striking her unconscious and leading to her death. Jayson Greene’s emotional memoir tells of the anguish he and his wife experienced during this horrible tragedy. Yet, even amid such agony, Greene recognizes that this will not be the end.
A story of finding hope and the power of love, Greene’s memoir is a heartbreaking look at the unimaginable pain of losing a child. Although not religious, the Greenes turned to spiritualism to help with their grief. At its most haunting, Greene describes Greta’s last days and the complicated feelings of having another child after Greta’s death.
Publisher’s Description
As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter’s trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it–that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation–and a book that will change the way you look at the world.
Quotes from Once More We Saw Stars
“Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it, a blinding fission of every emotion. The world is charged with significance, with meaning, and the world around you, normally so solid and implacable, suddenly looks thin, translucent.”
“We learn to live with the sadness like a great, lovely companion, because it’s a soft sadness that softens the heart and makes you open to everything.”
“Grief is a reflection of a connection that has been lost.”
“What do you call parents who lose children? It seems telling to me there is no word in our language for our situation. It is unspeakable, and by extension, we are not supposed to exist.”
About Jayson Greene
Jayson Greene is an American author, music critic and editor. His memoir Once More We Saw Stars is about the death of his two-year-old daughter in 2015.
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