Jayson Greene, ONCE MORE WE SAW STARS
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.
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[0:53]I had a really emotional interview with Jason Green, who I had also interviewed on Instagram Live,
[0:58]so if you want to watch that, you can do that on my IGTV channel. Jason is the author
[1:03]of memoir Once More We Saw Stars, which is about the death of his two-year-old daughter in 2015.
[1:10]Her name was Greta, and for people who live in New York, you might remember reading about it
[1:15]because she died sitting with her grandmother when bricks from a nearby building fell on her head
[1:21]and ultimately killed her, which I will never forget because oh my gosh, it's like everyone's
[1:27]worst nightmare to have something like this happen. Jason is an author, a former music critic,
[1:31]and editor who served a senior editor of online music magazine Pitchfork, so he's a journalist,
[1:37]not just of this memoir, but of all types of writing, and he really openly shared his experience
[1:43]and his experience even writing the memoir, and I think he'll find it really eye-opening,
[1:49]illuminating, and just very emotional and important. Welcome, Jason. Thanks so much for coming on
[1:55]mom's don't have time to read books. Thanks for having me, Zippy. I really appreciate it.
[1:59]Nice, we can follow up our Instagram live little teaser with the full podcast, so thank you for
[2:04]coming on. It was so nice to chat with you, so I'm really glad we get to chat a little bit more.
[2:09]Yeah, any human interaction right now is good, I'll tell you. He's tall enough, and we'll
[2:14]cover you holes. Yeah, the times continue to get more and more craziest. I mean, I don't know,
[2:19]by the third time I interview you, who knows what's going to go on? God, let's not even go there,
[2:24]I know. Could you please tell listeners what your amazing, inspiring, beautiful memoir is about,
[2:31]please? I don't thank you. I wrote a memoir called Once More We Saw Stars, and it's basically an
[2:36]account of the 15 months that separated two of the most defining events of my life. In May of 2015,
[2:44]on May 17, 2015, my two-year-old daughter, Greta, was killed. A brick south from an eight-story
[2:51]window sill on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And Greta was sitting on a bench on the sidewalk
[2:57]with my mother-in-law, her grandmother Susan. Susan was hit in the leg, but Greta was trucking the
[3:03]head, and she never woke up. At the time she was our only child, we donated her organ,
[3:08]we swiftly became headline news, and my wife, Stacey, and I had to go back after 48 hours of
[3:16]saying goodbye to the life that we thought we were going to live with our daughter
[3:20]and make sense of what was left. And 15 months later, Stacey gave birth to our son Harrison.
[3:26]So the book I wrote measures the distance between those two places. It tries, it represents one
[3:32]person's attempts to sort of take stock of what just massive emotional trauma and loss
[3:39]will mean to a life first, my own, and my wife. And then as we become pregnant with her second
[3:46]child, both become sort of a reckoning for what that life may or may not mean for that child.
[3:51]And the title hints a little bit at the journey that I went on, where we were in a place of
[3:58]profound despair and darkness and over the course of the time of basically living through that
[4:05]trauma, of processing the massive sort of vacuum that was left in our lives after Greta was killed
[4:14]and preparing ourselves to be parents again, we emerged into this other place, what I kind of
[4:19]like to call cautious hopefulness. And that sort of the story. Well, I know when we spoke before
[4:27]we're journaling about it anyway and then made the conscious choice at some point to not just
[4:32]keep these thoughts for yourself but to share them with the world. Can you talk about that decision?
[4:36]Yes, I'm happy to. It sort of happened around six months after. I think it really
[4:40]called the decision and I'm, I mean, the decision to turn my journal into something else
[4:44]kind of happened when safety got pregnant. I had been writing about the feeling of living through
[4:49]this indescribable pain since the minute I got back to the hospital. I don't really know why
[4:55]or how I was writing, but I just know that it was in the moment something that felt very
[5:00]compelled to do. It was kind of part of my strategy for living through that, no, the next half an
[5:06]hour of whatever was coming my way. I would maybe I would be on the phone with my mother
[5:10]or perhaps with a therapist and I would be talking, I would be crying or whatever it was that I
[5:14]was feeling and I would be hearing myself say these things. You know, I would be explaining
[5:20]what was going on as best I could or just, you know, or just crying or saying why did this happen?
[5:25]And then after I got off the phone, I would sit there and I would almost listen to what I just said
[5:29]and then something told me to write it down. And as I did, I felt like something was something
[5:34]important to me was happening. So I kept doing it. And I don't think that a lot of people
[5:39]that I've talked to had told me anything similar about their trauma. Most people had talked to
[5:43]tell me that they were unable to write sentences or read or focus because of the acute nature
[5:49]of what they were living through. And I don't know why I was able to, really, but I paid attention
[5:54]to the fact that I was even through everything. And so I made it a bit of a practice and six
[5:59]months later, I had a lot of writing. And it was all for me, really. It was all just me making
[6:04]sense of my new existence and reconciling with all the nasty ugly emotions that come up when
[6:10]you're grieving. And then when Tasty got pregnant, I kind of looked at what I had and it just
[6:15]clicked into my brain. I was actually writing something for my son. And it's not explicitly
[6:20]for him then for myself as I prepared to be someone else's father. And for me, part of that
[6:26]became, I have to show this to someone else. This can't just be a private journal for me anymore.
[6:31]I had a real need to share it somehow. And so it started to become a book, at least in my brain.
[6:37]And I continued writing. I didn't change anything I was doing every day I wrote about what I felt.
[6:42]But as I did, I kind of, in the fact of my mind, was thinking a little differently about where
[6:47]where this journey was going and why I was taking the time to do it. And it was a very
[6:52]full evolution. You know, from there, I didn't show anyone a word, a word. And including my own
[6:57]wife, what I'd written, she knew I was writing. But just left me alone with it. She was doing her own
[7:02]private grieving as well. Until many weeks after Harris and our second child was born,
[7:09]about seven weeks after I had spent the first several weeks of his life, newborn baby sleep a lot.
[7:16]And so I was sitting there writing and it was kind of pouring out of me. And I finally stepped
[7:21]back and had been about a year that I've been writing and I said, someone needs to see this now.
[7:25]But only then that I really, I looked someone else in the eye and told them,
[7:29]I'm writing a book here it is. So I talk about this at length because it's interesting to me.
[7:34]As I hear myself talk about it, it emerged from such an internal place. And I only sort of
[7:39]understand the slow journey it took to becoming a book by talking about it because I didn't
[7:44]initially write any of these very intimate thoughts down with the intent of sharing with them with
[7:48]anyone. But that's exactly what makes them so good. I mean, other authors give advice all
[7:54]the time. Somebody I spoke to you earlier today just write as if you're talking to a friend,
[7:58]write as if nobody will ever read the words. And you didn't do that as a trick. You actually
[8:03]were doing that to, you know, as your own sort of therapy-based practice. And that's why I mean,
[8:07]people connect through words the more open you are, the more that the reader can, you know,
[8:12]see into you and connect. And I don't know. I mean, I think that's the gift of it as well.
[8:18]And I should have said earlier, you know, I'm obviously, I said this before when we spoke,
[8:22]but just to hear you talk about it, I'm just so profoundly sorry for your loss and what your
[8:26]family went through and you and everything else. And you know, I don't want to be glib about it
[8:30]just because we've already discussed it. But you know, it's, it's heartbreaking every, every time
[8:34]to discuss it. And I just, I know I can't feel what you feel, but I just want you to know that
[8:39]I'm here and that I, you know, my heart goes out to you in every way I can. So.
[8:42]And that's thanks a lot, Vivi. That means a lot. I appreciate that. Yeah.
[8:46]So how did, how did you, I know in the book, you talk a lot about, you know, coping and how you
[8:51]are getting through and whatever else. But how do you make sense of then having another child
[8:57]into a world that has sort of not been, you know, upholding its end of the bargain essentially
[9:04]and, you know, creating a safe place to raise a child's like, how did you, how did you come
[9:09]to terms with that? How did you emotionally even cope with that? Yeah. I mean, you're definitely
[9:14]interesting that you said what you just said actually that this idea that the world's not holding
[9:19]up at the end of the bargain because I, I felt that way very strongly after the freak accident
[9:26]that took credit. How could this happen? But I think in the time since I've come to have a different
[9:31]idea about what the world offers you or doesn't, you know, I, I mean, there are so many different
[9:37]ways to me to talk about my feelings through different lenses. But and one of them I haven't
[9:43]talked a lot about because it felt impersonal or it didn't feel like it fit me. But one that I
[9:47]thought about is political. And by that, I should say that I've been extremely fortunate. I live
[9:53]my life, the beneficiary of tremendous amounts of good fortune on exam and relatively speaking.
[10:00]You can be thoughtful about your privilege to a certain stand, but you still live in it.
[10:03]It's not easy to turn around and gaze in every decision you've made and see how it's affected
[10:07]other things or other people or where it's come from. That's hard. But when your daughter dies,
[10:12]it's a freak accident. You start to re-examine what you thought the world sort of owes you.
[10:18]Or you ask yourself, did I believe the world owed me things? And I think I really was shocked
[10:24]into a realization that I've had this very complacent relationship with the world
[10:29]and it's dangerous or lack thereof. I don't believe that the world has made a bargain with me
[10:38]to keep me safe or my children safe. And that I think that's something that others feel.
[10:44]That's something that some people have felt forever and that people who have been fortunate enough
[10:47]not to feel are struggling with more and more. Oh my God, I'm not going to be safe.
[10:52]I'm not going to be safe either. I think that's a very real thought that makes people react
[10:57]in all kinds of unexpected ways. And so I think that now that Harrison is three years old and
[11:02]he's still, we live in a city that's sort of pairing itself apart in the way right now.
[11:08]What's happening is so painful and in some ways necessary. But we're also, we are lucky people,
[11:14]even with what happened to Greta. We are lucky people in the world right now. And so
[11:19]I can't help but think about that whenever I talk about safety or raising a child in this world.
[11:26]Like yes, in many ways the world that I'm raising my son in feels different to me
[11:31]and it's dangerous feel different than the one that my parents raised me in. But that's all
[11:36]very subjective and it means more to me than it means to my son. My son believes the world is safe
[11:41]and happy and great. He's three. That's what you're supposed to believe if you're lucky. And so
[11:47]that's kind of my answer to that. That's how I feel about raising my child in an increasingly
[11:51]perilous world. I think among many, many other things, the lesson I took from the brick falling
[11:57]and killing my daughter was that I had believed the world was safe and that that was probably
[12:01]foolish. I mean, I think that moment when, and I think it happens for people at all different times.
[12:07]But when you realize that what you relied on was actually a figment of your own imagination,
[12:12]perhaps designed to stem or mitigate your own levels of anxiety. And you realize that living that
[12:20]way is really just a construct of your brain and is not actually true. That's a big wake of call.
[12:25]And one that it's hard, I think, for people to adjust to whether it's in something awful and
[12:30]traumatic, like losing your daughter as you went through or something much smaller, car accident or
[12:35]it's just anything when you realize for the first time like, oh wait a minute here.
[12:39]I don't have a seatbelt on and if I do, it might not protect me. Yeah.
[12:44]Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the state that you go into when you realize that for the first time is
[12:50]called hyperpigilance because then you suddenly your body and it's a very common after effective
[12:55]trauma. You know, I read a lot about not not an expert. I read a fair bit about trauma,
[13:01]just trying to understand my own and some of the words that are stuck with me are because they
[13:06]resonated. And this idea of hyperpigilance, which means that your whole system then suddenly
[13:10]watches everything. Whereas before you felt like you were watching nothing, now you have to watch
[13:14]everything. And that's an equally unnatural state of being and not, you know, in itself sustainable.
[13:20]And so then you have to learn to live in between easier said than done.
[13:23]Perhaps. Well, I don't know how to do it either, but you're said than done.
[13:28]How did you, there, I feel like there are so many examples of, of a loss like this really
[13:34]affecting marriages and, you know, a child dies. And then there's the divorce on top of it or you
[13:39]just can't get back from it. Or I don't know if you're watching. I know this much is true on HBO
[13:44]written by Wally Lam, but now it's a limited series. And anyway, I'm bringing that up only. And how
[13:50]do you cope with somebody when you've gone through a loss together like this? And yet you not only
[13:56]have stayed together. You've had another child and what's the, not what's the secret, but in your
[14:02]situation, what was it that kept you together as opposed to becoming one of the casuals
[14:07]who's of having your marriage as a casualty as well? If I'm not. Because I'm not crying. And you
[14:11]don't have to answer. No, I mean, I believe, I mean, it's a question I asked myself early on. I
[14:18]think that in the dawning enormity of what was happening to us, one of the first thoughts that
[14:22]played it through my head, you know, out they had kind of crazily was, oh my God, what's going to
[14:27]happen to us? What's going to happen to our marriage? You know, marriage is don't survive this. And
[14:32]I think that I just had that received wisdom in my head. And I know that it bears out, you know,
[14:36]when you look at families who've lost children, you know, many of them do and then divorce. And so
[14:41]I think without knowing any firsthand yet, experience how I was going to feel at how safe and
[14:46]they were going to feel, I was terrified at this idea. Oh my God, I'm going to lose her too.
[14:51]You know, it was sort of a response to the moment. And the answer that I discovered was that we
[14:57]really needed each other more than we ever had before even. I mean, with that, we'd already just
[15:02]lost our member of our family. It seemed inconceivable that we also not be with each other. I don't
[15:09]know. I, you know, I mean, I think that it's really, I'm really wary to not because I'm private,
[15:15]oh, you know, but to talk about how our marriage survived, only because I don't think it's
[15:21]applicable to anybody else but the two of us at all. To tell you about like how Stacy and I
[15:25]survived, that is really only to tell you a story about Stacy and me. It doesn't really tell you
[15:30]well, I mean, I don't think this advice to give to anybody about how to survive a trauma with
[15:35]their marriage impact. I just know that we didn't fall apart. And I know that we didn't fall apart
[15:39]in one because we just felt this instinctive need to be with each other and comfort each other
[15:44]through it that we didn't really, that just was. And also, I think that we discovered that we
[15:49]needed similar enough things that we didn't, I mean, some people, when they're grieving as a couple,
[15:54]if you're grieving a child or you find that the two of you don't have the same needs. And that
[16:00]is, I think, very difficult to maintain closeness and a marriage through, although I don't know
[16:06]because I didn't experience that. But we didn't, we didn't have diametrically opposed needs. I
[16:12]didn't, you know what I mean? Like some people, for instance, one of the parents has a deep, deep
[16:18]need to talk about their child all of the time. And the other parent might not be able to hear it
[16:24]because it's too painful. I was aware that that could have been a problem for one of us, I didn't
[16:29]know, but it wasn't. We both had similar enough needs that we were able to help each other.
[16:36]I don't know, other than that, I don't really have, you know what I mean?
[16:39]Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. I was just so sorry.
[16:41]No, no, but I only, because it's a mystery, you know, I mean, two people's
[16:48]relationship over time is if anything, ever deepening mystery in hours is, you know,
[16:54]hours, we've been through a lot together in a short period of time, you know.
[16:58]And have you talked to Harrison about Greta?
[17:01]Yeah, yeah, you know, he's three and a half now. And by now, he knows, you know, he knows who his
[17:07]sister is. He has known her name since he was born. But as he got older, he, you know, he slowly,
[17:14]as he probably became more conscious, he learned more about her, you know, I think he, at some
[17:18]point, and we were waiting, became more conscious the fact that this Greta person wasn't here,
[17:23]you know, and it was a while of sort of letting him, letting him just be and not telling him
[17:33]anything that he wasn't asking us about before he did sort of ask where Greta was. And that was
[17:39]recent within the past, like, six to eight months. And, you know, I told him that she died. And he
[17:44]seems sad for a second, but he's so young that it's not really a, a graspable fact anyway. But,
[17:51]you know, now that then, then he knew that. I think I thought about telling Harrison a lot
[17:56]as this defining event that would change him and me and everything forever. Because that's what
[18:02]it did to Stacy and me. But that's not how it worked in reality. And if I thought to examine it,
[18:07]I realized that, you know, that was me worrying. And it was never going to be realistic. We've
[18:12]told him a little bit at a time. And only very recently on the, with the, it would have been the
[18:17]six anniversary, what was the six anniversary of Greta's death? Did we tell, did actually, I wasn't
[18:22]even home? He asked, yeah, Stacy, my wife, wow, how, how, what, where are the lower words?
[18:29]Why Greta died? That was what he said. And she said, well, I don't know why, but even here's what
[18:34]happened. And that, you know, and so his only question apparently, where, who were the people that
[18:40]lived in the building, which is interesting and beautiful to me that that was something his mind went
[18:44]to. And actually, I don't, you know, I don't even know. And what was wild, because I wasn't there.
[18:48]But what was interesting to me about that moment, thinking about it now, is that I wasn't,
[18:53]I wasn't, it wasn't such a momentous moment. It wasn't such a revelatory, you know,
[18:58]unbelievable sort of stop everything moment of disclosure that I felt like our lives just stopped.
[19:04]I mean, I, I think that I acknowledge that in Stacy and I sort of looked at each other over
[19:07]his head. And then, and then kind of the evening went back to what it would have been normally.
[19:11]And that's been interesting to me as a parent to sort of live through what were, what were some
[19:17]of my worst fears, you know, as he was still on infants and as Stacy was pregnant.
[19:22]Is writing going to continue to serve you? Like do you continue to do it as a pastime and do you
[19:26]feel like you would want to write another book? Or I know you did this, you know, you were an editor
[19:30]pitchfork and you obviously had a whole career in this as well. So it's not just like a
[19:35]delience, but is it serving you emotionally the way it did before? Are you using it the same way?
[19:39]I mean, I'm a writer. I'm not just, you know, I'm, I'm not a person who, who got a memoir
[19:44]out of his system and is now not a writer anymore. I'm, I've been a writer for 15, 20 years.
[19:50]I mean, when I was asked what I wanted to be the age, the age of seven, I said a writer.
[19:56]And I mean, I will, I'll be the fact.
[20:00]that I wrote this memo, I think, is testament to the fact that I'm sort of compulsively
[20:05]a writer and will never not be. And yeah, I mean, writing is part of how I, it's one
[20:09]of the only ways I know how to make sense of things. And to answer the question, yeah, I mean,
[20:14]about the book, I'm writing another book. Actually, I'm shortly after the book was sold once more
[20:20]or so after. And I realized that I was going to have a book. I started thinking, okay, well,
[20:24]I know I don't want to only have one book out in the world. And I've always wanted, you know,
[20:29]I didn't, I'm always known in my life that I would write a book. I didn't ever hope it
[20:33]would, or want it to be this one. But now that it is this one, what am I going to do? And so I went
[20:38]back to school for an MFA that I've been thinking about doing for a very long time, because it
[20:43]seems like an appropriate moment in my life to do it, you know, and I'm writing a novel. So I will
[20:49]be writing and it will serve the same function. I mean, the novel has lost in it. It couldn't,
[20:54]it could not have lost in it. Probably nothing I write will not have lost in it again as long as
[20:58]you know, I'm writing. But yeah, in that way, it continues to serve me as this sort of conduit.
[21:04]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[21:07]Write all the things down that you think you should write down.
[21:11]If you think I should write that down, you probably already should have written it down.
[21:14]Keep something by. I mean, I feel like the moment that I realized that I was a writer by
[21:19]trade to use this somewhat kind of pretentious sounding was when I started carrying, you know,
[21:24]something that I could write down. And for a while, it was a notepad, but I, to be honest,
[21:28]this is, you know, maybe a sacrilegious. I've never, never liked notepad. I'd lose them,
[21:32]they could crank crinkled up. And it was when I suddenly realized I had a notepad on my phone
[21:37]right in front of me all the time that I could, I could literally mumble into
[21:40]that I started writing everything down. Yeah, I mean, that's the best advice I know how to give.
[21:44]Everything else is up to the person, you know, again, it's sort of like marriage advice.
[21:47]So personal. That's where I would start.
[21:50]Excellent. Well, Jason, thank you for sharing your family's experience, your experience,
[21:55]your writing advice and all the rest and also your, your beautiful book that I'm just so glad
[22:01]did not stay just for you as I mentioned before. And now I can't wait to, I can't wait to
[22:05]read your novels, so keep cranking. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, thanks for all your time.
[22:13]Yeah, I will. All right. Thank you. Bye bye. Thanks again for listening to my podcast.
[22:18]Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on
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