#47 — When Someone Dies Why Does Everyone Stop Saying Their Name?

Content note: This episode includes discussion of a suicidal crisis and the loss of a pregnancy. If that's not something you need to sit with today, that's okay.

The caller keeps their twin daughters' ashes inside a teddy bear on a shelf beside their bed. Scarlet and Violet, named in part for Pokémon. Most mornings, the caller picks up the teddy bear and says good morning.

That practice, deciding exactly how to speak about someone who's gone, started before the caller needed it for themselves. Sitting with an aunt who'd lost her son to COVID, the caller decided to stop guessing and just ask: do you want me to say his name? The answer was yes. It made her smile. Bobby.

The caller's own losses run deep and start early: a partner who served in the Air Force, killed in Afghanistan when the caller was twenty one. Two suicide attempts in the years that followed, and a German Shepherd, untrained but fiercely loyal, who stayed close through the worst of it. A trip to a war zone in Ukraine for work with National Geographic that, oddly, helped bring the caller back to themselves. A pregnancy loss for medical reasons in 2025, in the middle of which a stray cat showed up outside the door and never left. They named him Sergeant Scout.

Through the work of Dr. Katherine Shear, the caller found language for what they'd been carrying: complicated grief, something closer to an infected wound than a stage to move through. Naming it didn't heal it, but it gave the caller a shape to work with. What never changed was the instinct underneath all of it: ask, don't assume, and keep saying the names.

Topics covered:

08:26 — Frankenstein, grief as creation, and Mary Shelley's own losses
10:55 — A suicidal crisis, flatlining twice, and what the caller remembers from those moments
21:26 — A war zone in Ukraine, National Geographic, and finding language for grief through Dr. Katherine Shear
33:17 — Asking an aunt whether she wants to hear her late son's name
34:32 — Scarlet and Violet, the teddy bear, and a stray cat named Sergeant Scout

Related episodes:

• Anonymous #14 — Is It Possible for a Father to Make Peace With the Death of His Son?

• Anonymous #32 — What Do You Do With a Faith That Can't Explain the Worst Thing That Happened to You?

• Anonymous #34 — Can The Losses That Broke You As A Teenager Also Be The Things That Made You?

Book recommendation: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here.

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