An Enduring Lesson From the Unendurable [CORRECTED]

What I Learned From My Daughter After She Died

March 2024

* The first version of this post incorrectly stated the date of Miranda’s funeral, which was February 21. But correcting this allows me to add a link at the bottom to a Femsplainers podcast Miranda appeared on, in which she spoke about modern dating apps. Listening to her (she is at the top of the podcast) will give you a sense of just how wise and witty this young woman was.

EXACTLY ONE MONTH ago today, our beloved daughter Miranda died at the age of 32. Miranda was about to celebrate five years of survival after a devastating and rare tumor was successfully removed from her brain. Miranda lived in Brooklyn Heights with her little Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Ringo. She’d been looking into caterers for a party to celebrate this milestone in April, which she’d planned to host in her apartment. Miranda loved entertaining — she was always whipping up small cocktail and dinner parties for friends. We’d been pinging each other back and forth about funny names for theme cocktails (hers was the best: TumorTinis).

The tumor, which had devoured her pituitary gland before it was taken out, left Miranda permanently dependent on an assortment of medications . These medications could replicate most of the functions of her lost pituitary gland, but there were of course side effects. Miranda’s health had to be monitored regularly. One of the casualties of the surgery left her with a depleted immune system, which made her extremely vulnerable to infections, viruses, flus — and even something as simple as exhaustion. Miranda was more depleted than she realized last month (unfortunately there is no way to measure at any given moment what exactly are your cortisol levels — one of her most critical medications). She told me she thought she was suffering from a cold. But on the morning of Friday, February 16, we received the call that no parent ever wishes to receive. Miranda had been found without a pulse in her apartment, according to the Brooklyn-accented policeman who delivered the news, his radio crackling in the background. Miranda had died suddenly at approximately at 3 a.m., so far as the medical examiner could tell. The only mercy was that Miranda would have fallen unconscious before her heart stopped, and therefore she passed away painlessly. Ringo, ever devoted, was by her side.

My husband David and I together said a eulogy at Miranda’s funeral on February 21. It was held in Toronto, so she could be buried near our family summer home on Lake Ontario. David and I expressed as much as we felt we could express in that grief stricken moment about our darling, extraordinary daughter. So, eloquently, did her brother, Nathaniel, sister Beatrice, and many of her closest friends. For those who wish to view the service, it can be watched in its entirety online.

David has also written a beautiful and wrenching article about Miranda and her dog Ringo for The Atlantic, which will be published sometime in the coming week of March 18.

So, as our family struggles through our crushing grief, I’m going to suspend this newsletter for awhile. At the time of Miranda’s death, I was in the midst of writing a novel and also at work on a large essay — one in which I hoped to address particular aspects of love and sex that Miranda and her sister Bea’s generations are encountering today. I’ll return to that as soon as I’m able (as Bea has urged me to do). Eventually, I’ll resume my novel. And I assume I’ll come back to Substack in due course.

Before I leave off for now, however, what I wanted to share with my Femsplainers subscribers was a tribute to Miranda that I made at a memorial reception we held in our Washington home shortly after her funeral. It was about friendship. A slightly edited version appears below. It was important to me to convey my thanks to everyone who has kept us going through this wretched time. This includes Femsplainers subscribers who somehow heard the news and reached out.

Years ago, when I was going through a phase of being terrified of flying, a friend of mine who was an amateur pilot ,explained to me how wind currents worked.

“Imagine a stick floating down a stream,” he said. “Sometimes it bobs up and down, sometimes quite roughly, even at moments seeming to submerge, but then it pops up again.”

I nodded, not sure where this was going.

“The air beneath the plane’s wings is like that. Even though it’s invisible to the eye, it’s like the water, it’s keeping the plane aloft. When the plane hits turbulence, it’s like the stick bobbing in the stream. It’s not going to sink. The air is strong.” And then he added, “The plane wants to fly.”

To me, that’s what friendship has felt like over these past four weeks. I can feel the love and support holding me up, even though it is invisible. I hope to fly again, too, someday. ~DC

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I HAVE ALWAYS tried to be a good friend to everyone I know. I pride myself on being a “first responder.” I want to be that person who is there for you at any hour of the day, whom you can trust and rely upon, with whom you can weep and laugh.

And – I’m a little ashamed to say – that maybe part of my (unconscious?!) motive was I thought I might be gaining offsets from God. Perhaps even loyalty points: If I was good enough to other people, such a tragedy such as losing a child would never befall me. 

Well, it turns out God is not like United Airlines. Or even American Express. There are no redeemable points.

Then I realized, okay, so there are no offsets – but oh my goodness, there are rewards. I don’t know how David, Bea, Nathaniel, his wife Isabel, and my mother Yvonne, could have stayed standing without the support of our friends and Miranda’s friends. I honestly don’t know how we could continue breathing.

But every friend who is here tonight and not here has enabled us to get through the most horrific weeks of our lives and I thank you all for that. If you ask — as so many do in these situations — What can I do for you? You have done it simply with your friendship.

But going back to Miranda. That girl was never in it for offsets or loyalty rewards. I cannot tell you how many people in how many countries have reached out to tell us stories of how Miranda touched them in some way, helped them in some way, connected them in some way. This is remarkable for a 32-year-old let alone someone much older.

I used to think Miranda was like a Google pin: You could drop her anywhere in the world and within 24 hours she would know where to stay and not to stay, where to eat, and not to eat. She’d always have some funny quirky thing to do. And of course, almost immediately, she would make new friends.

This is a text one of Miranda’s friends recently shared with me. The two young women were planning to meet in Rome in the summer of 2012. Miranda had arrived in advance. Miranda’s texts are in gray:

ON WHAT TURNED out to be Miranda’s and my last trip together, which I’m so grateful for, was a mom-daughter weekend in Maine last October. David was away giving a speech in Germany, so we said, why the hell not. And we’d visit our friend Meghan there, too. Within a few minutes after deciding this, Miranda had arranged all the restaurants we needed to try in Portland. She determined we were to visit Winslow Homer’s house, and also the headquarters of L.L. Bean, where there is a gigantic boot outside. Why I don’t know. She just thought it was hilarious. So we did. I have a photograph of Miranda and Ringo in front of this improbable monument. Then we went inside and bought our dogs sou’westers.

Now I don’t think of Miranda so much as a Google pin but as a package of wildflower seeds: You basically toss them at your garden and a menagerie of beautiful native flowers will grow.

Miranda’s flower seeds spread the world over. She had an astonishing range of relationships — even more than we knew since her death. Miranda was a glamorous and loved aunt to her friends who are just beginning to have children; a companion to elderly friends in Israel and New York. She befriended accidentally on a street corner in Soho someone who turned out to be a famous artist, now in his 70s. She would stop by his loft after disastrous dates or for a Sunday dinner – he would make her schnitzel – and they would talk and gossip and talk. When October 7 happened, this man Jacob had many relatives in Israel. So Miranda’s visits and check-ins with him became more frequent. And for the record, this man only has a landline and no computer. So it took real effort on her Millennial part. 

But that was Miranda. The best friend you could have as a friend, and also as a sister, and as a daughter. A dear friend of mine recently reminded me of the saying, “You can’t make old friends.”

That’s so true. But Miranda had a unique ability to make old friends of new friends. In a condolence letter I received after Miranda’s death, the correspondent used a Jewish term to describe her: Miranda, he said, numbered among the “Tzadikim Nistrarim,” referring to the Talmudic idea of the “hidden righteous ones.” He continued:

Their virtue keeps the world spinning. They pour compassion and love on those around them with no desire for recognition.

That describes Miranda exactly, even if she’d bridle at the term “righteous.” Another friend wrote to me reminding me of a quote from the late Christopher Hitchens, a beloved old family friend. (Indeed, Miranda liked to boast that Christopher introduced her to scotch.

In any case, Christopher’s quote was this:

"I can't hope to convey the full effect of embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you calculated."

Miranda never postponed anything of this kind — and the flowers that you see everywhere in this house tonight are a testament to it. Miranda had a vast garden of friends. Her soul was a garden. And where Miranda rests now, I have promised her, will be a beautiful garden, too.

LINK TO PODCAST WITH MIRANDA ON DATING: