Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief

by Radix Media

Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief is an anthology that weaves together a broad collection of voices to illustrate the many forms of loss. The topics range from the inevitable breakdown of a relationship to an immigrant family struggling to retain their culture as they attempt to assimilate. In their interpretation of the book’s theme, the selected stories run the spectrum from heartfelt, raw, and powerful to lighter and humorous. This body of work reveals how, despite the differences of our day-to-day lives, we are all connected.

167 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aftermath is a work of art, and I will treasure, share and revisit it soon. I found a few new favorite short stories. The attention to detail and pride of workmanship in the creation of the book is evident and impressive, and the subject matter I think is important... reading this has been a comfort to me, as I have been grieving much lately. It made me cry several times, for different reasons. I did kind of read it all at once, and when I finished reading, I felt refreshed emotionally, inspired creatively, and grateful for the thoughts and cares and visions that went into the sharing of these experiences and stories. Many contributors in one book makes for a satisfying experience, and Aftermath is a collection of works from talented and wonderful minds. ~Thank You!

[Abby Rosenbaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feeling really thankful for how raw, exposed, & diverse this collection of grieving is.

Trying to hold hands with my grief as I attempt to make sense of the fact that it has been one of the only constants in my life for the last ~4.5+years. Juxtaposition exists deeply within the interweaving of my endless forms of grief…I feel so fractured & stunted & numb, yet I am overflowing with a deep abundance of Big feelings for who/what/where I love. Reclamation & surrender sit on my shoulders working to balance the heaviness & liberation of it all. How powerful it is to be the one who gets to repair & rebuild my roots when I had no say in them getting ripped apart; what a beautiful foundation for reclamation, community building & deepening, and strengthening the fragility of life. Carrying the life of all those I’ve lost through the letting go & giving into the music, through revolution & fighting & collective care, through my body and mind being repeatedly welcomed & held by the land & the constant cycle of teeming queer life, and through the shameless embrace of who I am/am not and the possibility of all that is to be formed/built.

“Nothing in my life is unchanged by grief” (pg. 157)

“And so your neurons steer you off a cliff. Every day. This is what losing a loved one means: the daily careening of mental electricity into the gaping chasm of their absence. The daily plugs and crash of a whole highway’s worth of cognitive impulses, plummeting into the smoldering wreckage of yesterday’s.
The abscess never goes away. Gradually, over months and years, your neurons learn to direct traffic around it. The topography of your brain is always marred, but you just learn to live with it. You work around the abscess. This is the best way I can describe grief.” (pg. 146)

[Stefanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured 3/4ths of Aftermath on an airplane, weeping quietly into my handkerchief so as not to disturb the passengers on either side of me. Each piece is beautifully crafted, and placed into this anthology with the utmost thought and care. I appreciate the array of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art (photographs, illustrations, comics); that the various mediums are interspersed throughout the book. I kept three bookmarks during my read: in both the front at the table of contents, in the back by the list of contributors, and by my continually progressing page, so that I could easily flip from front to middle to back and identify whether the prose in front of me was fiction or nonfiction, and what I could learn of the author. I learned so much about others' grief, of my own grief, of the grief I did not realize I embody. I felt the tyranny and the liberation of grief, of the longing and sweetness and complexity that each story sang to me. I wish for more literature of this style and nature.