He used to teach at my school. I never took his classes, but I remember a friend of mine who studied Cultural Studies told me that he was a great professor. Most of us knew him because of his work; the many books and poems he wrote, the intellect he shared with readers of the main national newspaper I used to work for back in the days when I aspired to become a journalist... His death shook us all.

In her daring and heart-breaking memoir, his wife Erika Johnson Debeljak discusses the difficulties of coping with a sudden death a beloved person as the whole world is watching. She delves into what it means to lose parts of your identity when your entire life was built in tandem with that person, and why grieving in public makes things so much harder.

Her book, Devica, kraljica, vdova, prasica, is not solely a memoir. It's a provocative analysis of widowhood—a topic that we usually don’t like to talk about. Partially, she observes, because we think we understand and know it all. Partially, because we don’t like to believe that it could happen to us. It a great taboo, too, I would say.

She calls out on the ways we treat people who are grieving, especially in those delicate situations, and why it is important that we start sharing our own stories of loss more:

"When you write, when you talk, you have the power over your destiny. If you are silent, you are alone in your suffering. It is important that you talk, also because pain is being stigmatized in our society. But people who are suffering are not sick. They do not need to be cut out from the society. They are part of it, too." — Erika Johnson Debeljak

("Kadar pišeš, kadar govoriš, imaš moč nad svojo usodo. Če si tiho, si sam v svojem trpljenju. Pomembno je, da govoriš, tudi ker je bolečina stigmatizirana v naši družbi. A ljudje, ki trpijo, niso bolni. Ni jih treba ločiti od družbe. Tudi oni so njen del." — Erika Johnson Debeljak)

Beautifully said.

Kindly,

Neva.