Review by Lara Lillibridge
The Presence of Absence: Kitchen table talks about parenting, leaving fundamentalism, and the very messy business of living with loss
by Desiree Richter
Desiree Richter is a musician, research instructor and dissertation consultant who believes that writing about loss honestly can help us heal. Her love for her children shines in The Presence of Absence, and her frankness about the eternal nature of loss is as refreshing as it is devastating. In the introduction, entitled, “Welcome to this Book!” Richter explains how this book came into existence.
These kitchen table conversations began as a series of private journal entries that I wrote as I navigated that messy business I like to call ‘Whatever the fuck living with long-term loss actually is.’
She goes on to explain that
This book covers a lot of terrain including leaving my fundamentalist belief system in middle age, maintaining a relationship with my son, Elijah, who passed away when he was two, and learning how to parent my four remaining children…
One thing that Richter does well is navigate an emotionally devastating topic without overwhelming the reader. She adds moments of lightness, such as the line, ““Why does the neighbor’s dog holler daily like a donkey being ritually sacrificed?” or “We will just keep calling him Mr. Salt-and-Pepper because someone once told me that I am supposed to have boundaries.” These tiny breaths make the narrator likeable and the book readable.
I loved how she pushes back against the US understanding of grief being something that we overcome, or that subsides with time. I think some losses cut your life into before and after, and our society doesn’t allow space for people to “flourish even in their heartbreak.”
Richter writes about this heartbreak with a searing pen, “[The tears] are aching arms reaching around to hold your baby and finding only a crater of emptiness inside your heart.” But she also delves into the self-loathing unique to “…people like me, who live with the harm we have caused: CADI, or causers of accidental death or injury.”
But Richter also explores her time as a fundamentalist, or “fundy” parent, who practices discipline focused parenting. “In trying to train up our children, we miss out on the absolute wonder of their existence.” Each essay is both a retelling of her experiences combined with a thoughtful rumination on what she is learning. We can almost see her think on the page.
One of my favorite chapters was, “Parenting and the Dreams of the Children: Or, How to try to(mostly) not let your PTSD Fuck up your Kids (too much).” I have to admit, she had me at the title! She starts with humor about the trauma of childbirth, but also the absolute wonder of meeting your baby for the first time. Richter writes eloquently about the dreams we have for our children, who are our own dreams come to life, and about how after losing her son,
In place of dreaming, an insidious companion took up residence in the dream nook of my brain: hypervigilance. It’s not that hard to trace the origins of my overprotectiveness.
The essay deconstructs her hypervigilance, anxiety, and trauma around the loss of her son, and her desire to allow her children to learn their own lessons and not to over-parent them.
This is the struggle we all have as parents—how much is too much? How free is too free? And I could see myself inside her words.
In spite of the major theme of grief, this is an uplifting book. Watching Richter grow and reckon with her own inner turmoil, I was able to give myself permission to be an imperfect mother. We are all trying our best, and sometimes our best isn’t good enough and results in trauma or tragedy. And yet, we are still worth something, and our stories matter.
The Presence of Absence
by Desiree Richter
ISBN: 9781608013005
University of New Orleans Press, 2024
294 pages
Lara Lillibridge (she/they) is the author of The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning; Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent; and Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home. Lara is a Creative Nonfiction Co-editor for HeartWood Literary Magazine and holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from West Virginia Wesleyan College.