He wrote about their daughter’s sudden death. Then his wife did the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/05/06/dispatches-from-grief-danielle-crittenden-memoir/ 

Part of what made the loss of their daughter so acute was that Miranda had seemed to have recovered so well from the brain tumor that scared her parents when it was first diagnosed in 2018. It turned out to be benign, however ruinous to her pituitary gland. But treatment took its toll. Just as Miranda was approaching the five-year anniversary of her brain surgery — an occasion for the party she was planning, with “tumor-tinis” and “MRI-jitos” — the Frums received the devastating news one morning: Miranda had been found dead in her New York apartment by her cleaning lady at 9 a.m.

So, she had a “conversation” with Miranda, and her daughter “told” her she needed to write it. That it would help other parents. That of course she should promote it: “You want a book about me to be a failure?” she could imagine Miranda saying.

The list of acclaimed writers who have lost a child and written about the experience may be longer than the list of those who lost a child and did not write about it. One way or another, the sorrow works its way out through prose.

A convert to Judaism, she learned in a more visceral way about Shiva, the Jewish period of mourning. Previously, she had questioned its value — all those friends and relations intruding on a time of personal grief — but she came to this understanding: “The instant earth closes over the grave, the community opens its arms. The family need only exist and receive. Permission to fall apart arrives exactly when you need it most.”