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The Disappearance: A Primer of Loss
What do you do, how do you live, when both of your daughters are killed on the same afternoon? On April 30, 1980, Genevieve Jurgensen found herself facing that question when she lost her four- and seven-year-old daughters to a drunk driver. Here she presents her search for an answer.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
August 13, 2023
I live to understand, and I understand to live.
My entire life’s journey after Izzy’s death summed up in one sentence.
My entire life’s journey after Izzy’s death summed up in one sentence.
November 25, 2012
In a series of letters to a friend Genevieve Jurgensen tells about the deaths of her two little girls, Mathilde 7 1/2 and Elise 4 1/2, in a car crash.
To say that it is devastating is really understating it.
It brought back a lot of memories for me of Nov 30, 2004 when my son passed away suddenly in a tragic accident, a house fire in our case.
I remember the sudden irrevocable knowledge of his death, how it couldn't be undone. He was alive and then he wasn't, just like that. I remember going over and over it in my mind trying to change it somehow, I mean how unlikely was it that those exact circumstances could take place with this result.
I know how it is to live in two places in time; the time of the death and the after. I have never left the time of his death completely.
I completely resonate with her statement: "Suffering was the last way in which I could love my children."
Still, I thought I was doing OK emotionally reading this book until page 95, when I fell apart completely, sobbing, with of all things, jealousy.
She writes, "This month the girls would have been seventeen and twenty years old."....
"On the 8th of October, Elise's birthday, my mother rang me at work; she wanted to speak to me on this day. I know that she will also ring on the twentieth." (Mathilde's birthday)
These words strippped away the anesthesia that everyday mundane life confers and I was thrust into the midst of my pain once again. And it was partly because her family remembers her girls birthdays and visits their graves, and mine does not do these things or very rarely.
I have all the letters and cards that people wrote to our family after Kalman's death. But now, 6 1/2 years later, there is only one sister of Kalman who consistently remembers Kalman's birthday and will most often call. No one else calls. In fact, hardly anyone visits the grave unless I fly down to L.A. to visit it myself. This doesn't mean people don't care, but I have to ASK them to care. Please call, please remember, please, please, please.
The fact that Genevieve's mother, the girl's grandmother, calls on their birthdays, 12 years after their deaths, just, well like I said, I was jealous. It got me tied up in knots of grief and feelings of failure. I got a headache and broke out in itchy skin and was snapping at everyone and couldn't bear to hear noise. A sorry condition!
Reading this book is a lot like listening to a mother talk about her loss in a mother's bereavement group. I never knew Mathilde or Elise except through their mother's writing but I have some knowledge of them now, their memories are held in sacred trust in my heart.
To say that it is devastating is really understating it.
It brought back a lot of memories for me of Nov 30, 2004 when my son passed away suddenly in a tragic accident, a house fire in our case.
I remember the sudden irrevocable knowledge of his death, how it couldn't be undone. He was alive and then he wasn't, just like that. I remember going over and over it in my mind trying to change it somehow, I mean how unlikely was it that those exact circumstances could take place with this result.
I know how it is to live in two places in time; the time of the death and the after. I have never left the time of his death completely.
I completely resonate with her statement: "Suffering was the last way in which I could love my children."
Still, I thought I was doing OK emotionally reading this book until page 95, when I fell apart completely, sobbing, with of all things, jealousy.
She writes, "This month the girls would have been seventeen and twenty years old."....
"On the 8th of October, Elise's birthday, my mother rang me at work; she wanted to speak to me on this day. I know that she will also ring on the twentieth." (Mathilde's birthday)
These words strippped away the anesthesia that everyday mundane life confers and I was thrust into the midst of my pain once again. And it was partly because her family remembers her girls birthdays and visits their graves, and mine does not do these things or very rarely.
I have all the letters and cards that people wrote to our family after Kalman's death. But now, 6 1/2 years later, there is only one sister of Kalman who consistently remembers Kalman's birthday and will most often call. No one else calls. In fact, hardly anyone visits the grave unless I fly down to L.A. to visit it myself. This doesn't mean people don't care, but I have to ASK them to care. Please call, please remember, please, please, please.
The fact that Genevieve's mother, the girl's grandmother, calls on their birthdays, 12 years after their deaths, just, well like I said, I was jealous. It got me tied up in knots of grief and feelings of failure. I got a headache and broke out in itchy skin and was snapping at everyone and couldn't bear to hear noise. A sorry condition!
Reading this book is a lot like listening to a mother talk about her loss in a mother's bereavement group. I never knew Mathilde or Elise except through their mother's writing but I have some knowledge of them now, their memories are held in sacred trust in my heart.
June 27, 2012
Given facts first, you might resist this memoir. You might shrink in horror at the thought of it. But if it arrived in your mailbox as a letter? If Genevieve Jurgensen were your friend? Intimate, honest, originally written as letters to a friend, the voice of THE DISAPPEARANCE is irresistible. It begins: “You never knew our daughters, neither did you know me as I was when they were alive. I will have to tell you everything...” Only through letters has Jurgensen had the courage to revisit the hours and days and years after the simultaneous deaths of her children – two girls, seven and four – killed by a drunk driver. Jurgensen does not romanticize her children; she barely had a chance to know them, especially the four-year-old whom she remembers best by her clothes. But she remembers the searing pain of losing them. Why be seared ourselves? Because of the life that loss affirms. As the letters progress, as we come ever closer to revisiting that awful day, Jurgensen finds herself telling us of subsequent children, her job, her ordinary life. There is a rawness to the composition that makes THE DISAPPEARANCE perhaps less than a perfectly-shaped book. But in its rawness lies its integrity. Unsure at first that she has the courage to write this story, Jurgensen ends up making her readers courageous with her.
June 16, 2008
If this book doesn't break your heart... then you don't have one.
(A french translation) The phrasing in the book can catch you off guard. Jurgensens' creates a achingly beautiful language to communicate both the life and death of her two little girls.
(A french translation) The phrasing in the book can catch you off guard. Jurgensens' creates a achingly beautiful language to communicate both the life and death of her two little girls.
November 15, 2008
The lovely language Jurgensen uses to tell us of the utter devastation when both her children die makes this book a superior read. She tells her story through a series of letters written to a friend whom she met after her daughters died. Although each story of loss and grief is unique, there are commonalities to the emotions of grieving, and Jurgensen captures them.
August 27, 2008
Your heart will shatter. Devastatingly beautiful book. The most loving and mournful story I have ever read.
September 21, 2011
After I heard a portion of this book read on This American Life, I was completely moved. This book is heartbreaking and wonderful.
March 9, 2021
Absolutely amazing yet heartbreaking insight to what it is like to experience loss, death, and the stages of grief moving toward acceptance. I love the format and content. 10/10
November 8, 2011
I've had this book waiting in the eaves, so to speak, for a couple of years, but it was somehow never urgent enough to pick up despite the fact that I really was interested in reading it. It did not disappoint, even after all that time of built-up waiting. It was luminous and poignant, with a wonderful lilt that came from being translated from French; it was not spiritual at all, but it was still fascinating. Fragile, and yet solidly there on paper, it made you wonder about how it came to be there if it was so tenuous, and yet there it was.
August 19, 2008
The Disappearance is a book of letters to a friend, in which the author discusses different aspects of her bereavement over the death of her two daughters in an auto accident.
If you have ever lost someone close to you and you can cope with your grief rising to the surface and spilling over top, this book a moving story of one woman processing her pain.
I somehow lost this book and have recently added it back onto my "wish list".
If you have ever lost someone close to you and you can cope with your grief rising to the surface and spilling over top, this book a moving story of one woman processing her pain.
I somehow lost this book and have recently added it back onto my "wish list".
April 27, 2010
Beautifully written - I enjoyed reading every page.
I should clarify. The Disappearance: A Primer of Loss is a collection of letters that describe the years following a tragic car accident in which the author lost her two young children. Although the subject matter was dim, Jurgensen's tone was poetic and thoughtful. It felt as thought she were writing her letters to me personally.
I should clarify. The Disappearance: A Primer of Loss is a collection of letters that describe the years following a tragic car accident in which the author lost her two young children. Although the subject matter was dim, Jurgensen's tone was poetic and thoughtful. It felt as thought she were writing her letters to me personally.
August 22, 2008
I was crying in the first 10 pages. A beautiful story about the loss and devestation a mother experiences when both of her children are killed in a car accident. Your heart breaks right along with her and you find yourself constantly wondering how she is able to go on each day.
April 21, 2007
Act I of a This American Life episode entitled "Loss" is a reading from this book. It's lovely and devastating all at once.
August 18, 2025
This was definitely different to anything I’ve read before. I did enjoy this though and it was nice and easy to read through. It had an atmosphere of its own, as heartbreaking as genevieves story is, it was actually very calm and gracefully written.
The reason i gave it three was just because sometimes the writing itself seemed a little scattered. Im unsure if this is a translation issue or because this is a book of letters so not everything will make sense. But sometimes it was a little confusing remembering who is who, and she would randomly mention other people and i didn’t know who they were.
I also would have liked to have seen more detail on the grief and its affects but again i understand that this is just letters that have been published so i know its not going to be as detailed as a novel.
Regardless there were some beautiful and heartbreaking quotes in here and i feel like I’ve lived a life time whilst reading this, and i hope genevieve and her family is doing well today.
The reason i gave it three was just because sometimes the writing itself seemed a little scattered. Im unsure if this is a translation issue or because this is a book of letters so not everything will make sense. But sometimes it was a little confusing remembering who is who, and she would randomly mention other people and i didn’t know who they were.
I also would have liked to have seen more detail on the grief and its affects but again i understand that this is just letters that have been published so i know its not going to be as detailed as a novel.
Regardless there were some beautiful and heartbreaking quotes in here and i feel like I’ve lived a life time whilst reading this, and i hope genevieve and her family is doing well today.
January 7, 2020
I went into this one blind. An ex-girlfriend told me that she loved this book, and I wanted to read it to have the shared connection, so it's a bitter-sweet sort of book for me, didn't make it out with the same person in the end. Honestly, going into this book blind, blindsided me and my emotions. Tears fell in the first few pages were completely unplanned. The book didn't have the consistency I would have liked, but I can't find myself rating it any lower than a four considering the author's circumstances endured to create this work of art. I recommend it to clear out those dusty tear ducts. (:
March 1, 2025
Haunting and lyrical letters and meditations on loss. A little repetitive, but understandably so. A downer, but full of love for those lost and present. A throughline runs through the book for certain, and it’s well-written,
but it is bleak.
but it is bleak.
January 24, 2021
Beautiful book, though the translation was sometimes clumsy.
May 18, 2024
Hideous and intensely beautiful
April 30, 2025
Wauw. Wat een boek. Dit moest ik echt even verwerken en gaat me nog lang bijblijven. Zo treffend hoe de auteur het verdriet en gat dat haar dochters hebben achtergelaten verwoordt. Het briefformaat is heel bijzonder, maar effectief. Heel droevig maar met een sprankje hoop.
March 11, 2017
Read after daughter died.
October 16, 2007
Read in English Translation: This is a deeply moving book about a mothers' grief at the death of her young daughters ( 5 and 7 yrs) in a car accident. It is beautifully and elegantly written. It opens a window into grief and suffering. Written as a series of letters.
I understand that the book is autoboigraphical.
I understand that the book is autoboigraphical.
June 9, 2008
Jane Miller assigned this book and the class divided up on its merits. I said that I cried and I did. Even though the letters that make it up sort of whirl and the fact that they were written is just about it in terms of writing. The class was bored about it and said so. Nonetheless, I did and that is at least a 4 regardless of whether the writing is capable of holding up what happened.
March 11, 2015
I thought losing my parents was hard, I cannot comprehend losing my children. This book is heartbreaking and poignant and I cried though much of it. What an amazing woman, mother and writer. My favorite quote: "I love the living for all their miasma and I love the dead for their temerity". I highly recommend this book to anyone who has suffered a loss, just be forewarned, it's hard on the heart.
July 3, 2016
I first heard of this book during an episode of This American Life and the excerpt was so poignant and gut-wrenching I had to stop working and just listen.
Reading the full book has the same effect. Brutal honesty mixed with poetic prose addressing the unimaginable deaths of the writer's two little girls.
Reading the full book has the same effect. Brutal honesty mixed with poetic prose addressing the unimaginable deaths of the writer's two little girls.
June 2, 2007
This memoir was written by a woman who lost both her young daughters in a car accident. I don't know if it's because it was translated from French or if it's just the overall effect of the book, but it didn't engage me.
February 25, 2019
This is a terribly sad but equally beautiful book. Life is full of unimaginable catastrophes; how people are able to cope and move forward is nothing short than a miracle. I want to think that by visiting the author’s hell and coming back we can become stronger.
September 5, 2008
Excellent writing.
February 23, 2012
Heartbreaking!
June 7, 2012
I am unsure if I couldn't get emotionally involved with this book due to writing or translation...
May 6, 2013
Beautifully written and translated, stunning and honest portrait of life and grief.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews