If you cannot or do not wish to let go of your grief, you must learn to live with it.

Olga Martynova wrote this essay following the death of her husband, the poet Oleg Yuryev (1959–2018). She seeks to understand how others cope with what she herself cannot manage—something that refuses to leave her in peace. Martynova is not looking for advice or consolation; rather, she engages in a dialogue—at once sincere and contemplative, bold and wise—with seminal texts on grief and death by Roland Barthes, Joan Didion, Elias Canetti, and Emmanuel Levinas.

Olga Martynova is a poet and the author of several books of poetry and prose in both Russian and German. She lives in Germany.