Orli’s Gift, in Her Life and Death

This letter-to-the-editor was authored by Julie Kaplow, PhD, the executive director of the Trauma and Grief Center at the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute. It was in response to Sarah Wildman’s opinion guest essay If My Dying Daughter Could Face Her Mortality, Why Couldn’t the Rest of Us? and published in The New York Times on December 7, 2024. 

To the editor:

Sarah Wildman eloquently describes America’s aversion to the topic of bereavement and grief, particularly when it comes to children. In our society, Ms. Wildman writes, death is “a whisper, a shame, an error.” But as she so aptly observes, death is not a “problem to solve,” but a natural part of life, and grief is a reflection of the love we feel for those we have lost.

Rather than hide our eyes from the inevitability of death, let us absorb the lesson of Ms. Wildman’s powerful piece: We must be willing to face the reality of our own mortality, and begin to have open, honest conversations about death.

Read the full letter in The New York Times.