'It was as if my heart was beating and I was trying to will it to stop. 'I was saying it out loud over and over again, because it was the only thought that I was capable of having: 'Why don't I just die?'' he says. Back then, Jayson remembers, he had only one recurring thought. It would have been impossible for Jayson to imagine such a scene in the days and weeks following Greta's death - and the Greenes did not get to this point easily.

And they dote on their son, Harrison, who's just arriving home from day care with his mother - Jayson playfully calls him Monkey Butt, and asks if he wants to take his shoes off downstairs or upstairs. They seem very close, picking up easily on each other's cues. They are warm and welcoming, quick to smile and laugh. When you first meet Jayson and Stacy Greene, you'd be hard pressed to see any sign of the tragedy that struck out of the blue four years ago. Greene began keeping a journal, which turned into his new memoir, Once More We Saw Stars.

It struck Greta in the head, and she died three days later. The two were sitting on a bench on New York's Upper West Side when a brick came loose from a nearby building. His 2-year-old daughter, Greta, was visiting her grandmother. The result is an amazing and inspirational exploration on the meaning of grief and the interconnectedness of love and loss.Four years ago the unthinkable happened to Jayson Greene. Their second child was born a year later, and Greene movingly writes of the joy he felt holding his newborn son along with the simultaneous metaphysical connection he experienced with Greta. Then, on what would have been their daughter's third birthday, they tried a New Age healing ceremony in New Mexico that took them on separate vision quests that allowed them to confront and be at peace with their grief. Afterwards, back home, Greene, jogging through Central Park suddenly felt the world becoming 'thin, translucent' and he sensed Greta's presence. After two-year-old Greta was killed when a brick fell from an eighth-story windowsill in New York City and hit her on the head (also injuring his mother-in-law), Greene and his wife Stacy descended into despair and realized they must pass 'through some magnificent, terrible threshold together.' Grasping for solace, the couple attended a retreat at the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts, for people who have lost loved ones, which featured a medium and daily yoga sessions. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation-and a book that will change the way you look at the world.įreelance journalist Greene struggles with the 2015 death of his daughter in this heart-wrenching yet life-affirming memoir. 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. 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. 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. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. “A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.”įor readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief.Īs the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Once more we saw stars