Winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize, The Loved Ones is a collection of short autobiographical essays exploring death, grief, and memory. Madison Davis recalls the deaths of several members of her family throughout the collection, examining the ways we, as humans, attempt to bury our dead. Though the essays are not in linear order, the narrative of Davis’ grief is clear; there is no singular way to heal from death and grief, if we ever do.
The collection is divided into four parts: “Kill Me Good,” “Mercy,” “Inheritance,” and “Carrion,” though they should not be considered chapters. There are brief sections within each part, just a few pages long, functioning as different vignettes of Davis’ memory. In addition, there are some entries consisting of snippets of poetry that Davis has written in relation to her intense grief: “We are attached. Slipping–but attached” (47). As a whole, the series serves as the way Davis has chosen to bury her dead, inside herself and on the page.
The first section of The Loved Ones, “Kill Me Good,” primarily focuses on the murders of Davis’ cousin, Tanner Pehl, and his friend, Sarah Clark. In between the details of the murders, Davis examines the history of her grandfather, Wilbur, and grapples with her feelings about the death penalty as punishment. Wilbur attended the last public hanging in Kentucky in 1936, “found his grandfather Counsil hanging from the rafters [of the family barn],” and grew up to “fit into the violent spaces of his father” (23). Justin Crenshaw, the man that was found guilty of the murders of Tanner Pehl and Sarah Clark, was either going to be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. The violent histories of Davis’s own family, the United States, and Justin Crenshaw swirl together until she can no longer tell what to think, or what she’s supposed to think. Davis questions herself and the justice system; she can’t help but wonder if we should be “playing God” by taking anyone’s lives into our own hands.
In the next section, “Mercy,” Davis remembers the deterioration of her father’s health due to multiple sclerosis. She considers what it means to know that death is approaching; what it means to be trapped in your own body, unable to decide for yourself when it’s time to let go. Included in this section of the collection are several entries from her father’s journal, before he became so ill: “Well, I’m now stating that I wish to die if I have irreversible brain damage. There, I said it!” (62). Davis read most of her father’s journal when she was older, and she remembers “selfishly” clinging on to him, not wanting her father to die. It’s not until now that she considers that perhaps it is more of a mercy to all those involved to let go. Reflecting on this, Davis observes “What a gift to choose the day. Not to wait until the decay takes over, until you can no longer speak or beg or run from what chases you. Not to die in the crisp bright sick of the hospital, but to contemplate. To take control” (62).
In the next section, “Inheritance,” Davis recounts the details from when Solomon, her brother, has gone missing. Three days later, his body is found in a car wreck along with one of his friends. The loss of a sibling “is the death of the self and one cannot eulogize oneself because the words are always outside of the body” (86). Because she cannot ease her own grief, Davis wonders if she can perhaps tackle someone else’s; her grandmother, who lost her brother in World War Two. Fritz was reported as “killed in action,” and no more information was given to his family. Davis travels to the place where Fritz was killed: “The Winter Line,” a fortification built in Italy by the Axis Powers during the war. While in Italy, Davis ponders how Fritz felt when he died, and draws parallels between her great-uncle’s life and Solomon’s. She wonders if Fritz was afraid when he died. She looks at an old picture of Fritz and sees “A bit of Solomon maybe in the cheekbones, maybe in the refusal” (96).
In the final section, “Carrion,” Davis blends the aftermath of each death into one overarching question: How do we bury our dead? Placing a body in the ground does not mean that the aching grief inside of us will be eased. Our memories of the dead blur with the present, until we live in a thousand different moments at once. In her childhood, Davis knows that she and Tanner must have walked directly past the spot he was to be buried: “I wonder if there was a shiver when time folded in half there. I wonder if he liked the view or if he hardly noticed” (142). Davis has built every section to reflect the sentiment of time “fold[ing] in half,” whether it be her aunt walking through her old house which has been reduced to cinders, replaying snippets of her life, or a brother lost to World War Two and a brother lost to a car accident.
Davis has somehow captured the ineffable feeling of emptiness when someone you love has been lost to you forever. Details from memories bend and change in the face of grief, and Davis expresses how deeply human it truly is. She doesn’t want to forget the details, forget specifics about her brother, her cousin, or anyone she loses, but once we lose the details we begin to fill the gaps with things we are no longer sure are correct. Every time we find holes within our memories, we attempt to fix those holes with words, but “memories become more unreliable when they are fixed with the wrong words, and they are always the wrong words” (14).
Beyond the raw humanity in her words, Davis is a poet at heart. The way she expresses her feelings through words is intensely emotional and beautifully crafted. This book is a heart-wrenching fusion of real life events, internal speculation, and poetic existentialism. The questions Davis asks herself are questions many of us contemplate: “If an afterlife exists, it must have a new set of rules, and what purpose can it serve to apply our rules to a game that requires death before entry?” (71). Davis intimates that there is little relief in grief, and no shortcut to healing other than living through it. For those of us that have struggled to bury our own dead, Davis reminds us that we are not alone.
And how do we bury the dead? Are the dead truly buried once we lower them into the grave, or do we bury them within ourselves, folded into time and memory, inescapable and indescribable? Do we blend them into a smoothie and drink them, as Davis and her family do to honor Solomon? There is no correct answer. Death is inevitable. But, as Davis describes, what makes us alive is what we do in the face of it:“How easily we succumb to death. How small we are in the face of it. It is the time for dying everywhere. But I feel left again in the wake, still breathing” (160).
