The following edition of the text was used in the creation of this study guide: Crosley, Sloane. Grief Is For People. Serpent’s Tail, 2024. Kindle AZW file.

On June 27, 2019, Sloane Crosley’s New York City apartment was burglarized. A thief entered through her bedroom window and stole all her jewelry, including family heirlooms. Only a broken gold chain remained. One month later, on July 27, her close friend and former boss, Russell Perreault, died by suicide.

Crosley met Russell when she applied for a job at Vintage Books, where he hired her and became a close friend. He had encouraged her to buy the antique spice cabinet she used to store her jewelry. After the burglary, Russell focused on the damage to the cabinet: something Crosley later saw as his way of avoiding the deeper loss. Police found no fingerprints and surveillance footage showed a gloved, targeted intruder. Crosley wondered whether a past magazine article, which featured images of her jewelry, might have made her a target. After the burglary, neighbors offered sympathy but often shared their own theft stories, which Crosley found unhelpful. Russell sympathized but didn’t believe the stolen items would be recovered. Crosley became obsessed with tracking them down, contacting pawnbrokers and searching online. Finding no support groups for theft victims, she concluded, “Grief is for people, not things” (32). At a dinner with friends, Crosley heard a story about a stolen brooch and the victim’s effort to get closure. It helped her accept that she would never see her tiger’s-eye ring again or understand why the burglary happened.

Three days before Russell’s death, they had dinner. They spoke about the missing ring, which he had always admired. His final words to her were, “You can’t take it with you when you go” (36). The next day, he carried out his usual routine before hanging himself in his barn. Crosley traveled to Connecticut to see his partner after learning the news. Russell’s suicide compounded Crosley’s trauma from the burglary. She became angry and withdrawn, avoiding people who knew about either event. She concluded it was remarkable how many people don’t die by suicide and recognized her own symptoms of PTSD. While on a book tour in Australia, she avoided discussing Russell. Among strangers, her grief felt suspended. On the flight home, she ordered new rings.

Living across from the restaurant where she last saw Russell, Crosley was constantly reminded of their final meeting. She experienced heart palpitations and visited a cardiologist, who asked if she was under stress: she forgot to mention the suicide because it had become so internalized. One day, a fan emailed her after finding listings for her stolen tiger’s-eye ring and an amber necklace on eBay. Crosley bought the ring to obtain the seller’s return address. The police and eBay declined to help without proof of ownership. She also began following online forums for people grieving after suicide but felt like an outsider, since she was not Russell’s family or romantic partner. She recalled Russell’s account of a fight with his partner during their last dinner, in which his partner had said, “Whatever happens… don’t kill yourself” (76). Crosley blamed herself for not recognizing it as a warning and sometimes also blamed Russell’s partner.

Getting the ring back gave her hope, but when the amber necklace disappeared from eBay before she could come up with a plan to retrieve it, she was devastated. Crosley reflected on burial rituals involving possessions and realized she subconsciously believed that recovering the necklace could bring Russell back, or at least connect her to him. Months later, she saw the necklace relisted. Ignoring her mother’s reminder that they disliked her grandmother, the necklace’s original owner, she asked a former boyfriend, a Rolex collector, to help. The ex-boyfriend met the seller at a shady Manhattan address but found no trace of the necklace. Crosley decided to go herself. She got into a back room where she explained her story to a group of men and showed them the eBay listing. One told her to return the next day and ask for Dimitri. When she did, Dimitri gave her the necklace in a plastic bag and said, “Take it. That shouldn’t have happened” (100). Crosley brought it home, realizing its return didn’t undo the past.

Crosley describes how her personal and professional lives with Russell were intertwined. For years, she visited his Connecticut home, where she had her own guest room. That ended in 2005 after Russell’s partner had an affair. She later dedicated a book to Russell; although he reacted modestly, she heard he proudly shared it around. She recounts their involvement in the A Million Little Pieces scandal. The fallout from the book’s exposed fabrications hurt Russell, and Crosley says he became “spikier” (129) afterward. Russell was later accused of sexual harassment by a younger colleague. Crosley admits the comments in the complaint were real but downplays the situation, citing generational differences and Russell’s sexuality. Still, she acknowledges there were multiple complaints, though she notes no professional consequences.

Soon after Russell died, several other major publishing figures also passed away. Unlike them, he didn’t receive a public obituary, which upset Crosley. At his funeral, she hugged his partner and accepted there were parts of Russell’s life and death she would never understand.

In 2020, Crosley wondered how Russell would have fared during the pandemic. The pandemic’s chaos made her internal grief feel more aligned with the world around her. In old text messages, she found one from Russell after another publicist’s suicide, in which he had made her promise to ask his permission before doing anything similar. He had promised to do the same. Crosley imagined a vision of Russell on an empty train. She showed him a locket with his picture and asked if she was dreaming, but he didn’t reply. When the conductor asked if she was staying or going, she chose to stay.

In August 2019, a month after Russell’s death, Crosley traveled to Australia for a book event. She reconnected with an old friend, Bec, with whom she’d once planned a cliff jump in their youth. Back then, they were too afraid to go through with it. This time, Crosley visited Bec and her children, and they returned to the cliff. Although Bec supported her, Crosley couldn’t jump. While alone, she took out the broken half of a necklace, the only piece left after the burglary, and threw it into the sea. Months later, she found the other half of the necklace in her apartment inside a copy of Russell’s favorite book. The memoir ends with Crosley addressing Russell directly, saying her grief “will always remain unruly,” (190) but she knows her own time has not yet come.