Writing Loss in Bits and Pieces: An Interview with Eileen Vorbach Collins about Love in the Archives: a patchwork of true stories about suicide loss
Interview by Diane Gottlieb
To live is to experience loss. Whether it be the loss of a job, a dream, a marriage, a loved one, we will all find ourselves, at one point or another, in the throes of grief. But some losses loom larger than others. Losing a child is one such loss, one that Eileen Vorbach Collins was faced with when her 15- year-old daughter Lydia died by suicide a little over twenty years ago. Love in the Archives: a patchwork of true stories about suicide loss is Collins’ stunning book about that terrible tragedy and about the challenges of living a life when your child is no longer alive. In this moving collection of short, lyrical essays, Collins invites us to bear witness to her experience, as she writes through her grief with great grace and courage.
Diane Gottlieb
Congratulations on Love in the Archive: a patchwork of true stories about suicide loss, a wonderful collection but not an easy read. Readers may need to put Archives down here and there, but they won’t put it down for long because it beckons. Can you share what the book’s about?
Eileen Vorbach Collins
I appreciate that you say it’s not an easy book to read. It was certainly not an easy book to write. I made it into a collection of essays because I needed it to be put-downable. I needed each one of those essays to stand on its own because who could read a book like that from cover to cover?
The book is primarily about my daughter Lydia who died by suicide when she was 15.
I had written and published a few essays, thinking I would one day put them in a book. When I started querying, I was told a book of essays would never sell, that I needed to make it a traditional memoir with an arc. One publisher told me, “I will help you do that. We can work on this together.” I actually gave that a try but decided it was not what I wanted to do.
My book needed to be bits and pieces. There is a narrative arc, but you might have to trip over it to notice. It’s not a chronological story. It moves around a bit, not unlike grief. I did what everybody does, taking the parts and putting them out on the floor, rearranging them to make little visual things of where each chapter should go. I did that repeatedly and finally just said, “Okay, I’m done. It either gets published or it doesn’t, but I’ve got to be done with it.” And I’m happy it found a home.
Diane Gottlieb
You include many different types of essays in the collection, which is very interesting.
Eileen Vorbach Collins
A lot are epistolary pieces. That’s just the way I think when I’m writing, because I talk to my daughter all the time in my head and sometimes out loud. I’m really writing a lot of it to her and to my son, and because it’s been more than 20 years since Lydia died, many of the people I know now, and many of my closest friends, never met her.
So, it was a way to introduce her to them. When you lose a child, we tend to canonize them. They were just the smartest, the most wonderful, the most beautiful. And yeah, they were, but then they had their other side as well. I wanted to show all sides of my quirky brilliant daughter because that’s who she was. And so I never really sat down and said, “Okay, I’m going to write a braided essay or I’m going to write an epistolary essay.” It just happened.
Diane Gottlieb
There’s so much in this book that the reader feels viscerally. I felt my own body gasp, my own heart break. But there are also places where I laughed and others where I just appreciated the beauty. Your language is lyrical and lovely. You write about the natural world and about marital struggles and religion. And we learn about Lydia. We learn who she is.
That all would’ve been enough. Suicide is the second cause of death for adolescents in this country, so a book that tackles the subject so honestly is a necessary addition to that literature. But what also feels important is how you explore the psychiatric field and its backwardness when it comes to dealing with grief. Especially maddening was your experience with a therapist.
Eileen Vorbach Collins
She was highly recommended by a friend, who pretty much said, “You’ve got to go to this person. You need this.” And so I thought, “I need this. I’ll go to this person.” And I just was so disappointed. She did not really engage with me at all. And I understand because my graduate degree is in pastoral care. I know that reasoning behind it. I suppose she thought she was being a listening presence. But she was really absent. I wanted someone that would listen and respond. I didn’t know, does she have earbuds and she’s really listening to some podcasts, or is she listening to me? When I talked to her about Lydia, I wanted to see some emotion from her. I didn’t need her to tear her clothing and roll around on the floor and wail, but I needed her to look sad, to mirror my sadness.
Diane Gottlieb
You wrote in the preface that while you thought writing might help you release some grief, there was always a fresh supply waiting. Has anything shifted for you in your grief process after completing the collection?
Eileen: I think it has. I think it’s given me this sense of, “Okay, this part I can put away.” I’ve written essays since the book, and I probably will continue to because it’s what I do, but now, “Okay, this part I can be done with.” Because writing a book is hard work. I’m satisfied, quite satisfied with the feedback I’ve gotten from people who’ve read it. And I feel good about it.
Love in the Archives: a patchwork of true stories about suicide loss
by Eileen Vorbach Collins Apprentice House Press, 2023