David Sedaris On Family and Loss

by Eloise Giegerich

The always incredible David Sedaris recently wrote an essay for The New Yorker that recalls a family trip to the beach following the suicide of his sister, Tiffany. Though the piece reflects on loss, and its subsequent effect on the Sedaris family, it is also filled with childhood nostalgia, and, ultimately, a sense of hopefulness.  

Sedaris’s signature humor is omnipresent as he recollects the oft-laughable, but sometimes somber family dynamics both prior to and after Tiffany’s death. As foreign as Tiffany is to readers, it seems that Sedaris himself is also an outsider looking in on her life, attempting to understand more about the mystery that was his sister. He writes, “…We didn’t really know our sister very well. Each of us had pulled away from the family at some point in our lives—we’d had to in order to forge our own identities, to go from being a Sedaris to being our own specific Sedaris. Tiffany, though, stayed away.”

Throughout the essay, Sedaris observes the recovery process that he and his family experienced during their Emerald Isle vacation. The story provides not simply a peek into Tiffany’s life, but the Sedaris family as a whole.  

Read the full article here

 

Thanks to The New Yorker

Images via The New Yorker and NPR

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