David Kessler

Someone said that to me after my son died.

Everything happened for a reason.

I went, yeah, what do you got?

I could use a good reason.

Here's the thing that I really got.

I remember maybe at a year sitting in pain going, I don't know about this one.

And I thought about, I live in a little neighborhood and all these little cute houses.

And I thought about

20, 30, 40 years in the future, the teenagers would be riding their bike and they'd go, hey, what's that house there with the spider webs?

Is it a haunted house?

And they would go, oh, that broken down, dilapidated house?

It's a grief expert whose son died and he never came out again.

Mel, I could find that in me.

I could find, I could lock the door and never come out again.

And I'll tell you, I'm not the only one that feels that way.

And I had to really understand it is a decision.

And meaning helped me get to that decision.

Oh, that's one of the first things I learned when I was researching this book, is that the meaning is not in the horrible event.

There's no meaning in a child's death, a spouse death, a parent death, a tragedy.

There's no meaning in all these losses.