Grief Observed

I thought I had grasped the profound pain caused by the current opioid crisis, but that was before I read Tara McGuire’s Holden After & Before. With unflinching honesty, McGuire tells the story of her twenty-one-year-old child, who died in 2015 of an accidental opioid overdose. Although the memoir is subtitled a “love letter” for a lost son, this book is not for the faint of heart.

Mother and son may have been bound by love, but they were torn apart by trauma. McGuire describes Holden’s emotional turmoil and his devastating descent into drug addiction, which “seems to be the only disease where you have to wait until someone falls through the ice and nearly drowns before you can throw them a rope.” She is just as open about her own failings as a mother, along with feelings of shame, guilt, and sorrow. Her late realization that Holden — who likely had borderline personality disorder — might have survived had his mental health challenges been recognized and...