Linda Collins

In Loss Adjustment, Linda Collins writes of her journey into that unimaginable land of loss & grieving she enters after her daughter's death to suicide. The book is meditative, heavy, heartbreaking, but equally full of tenderness, undeniable love, & a clarity that shines even through the miasma of grief. Linda writes of her daughter's death & the difficult process of grieving alongside commentaries on Singaporean society, its cultural practices, as well as explicating certain psychological understandings of mental illness. Victoria, too, was clearly a sensitive soul who held intense clarity. She understood herself, her demons, & the way the world around her was unfolding. It is a clarity we are momentarily privy to through the entries from Victoria's journal that the book is interspersed with.

Linda Collins wrote at some point that she wanted to be a "Bad Mourner," one who is allowed to fully express her anger & hurt, instead of being the more sympathetic image of vulnerability & sadness. The anger is palpable in the book, & I shared her anger deeply. What a horrendous shame it is that the first thing a school counsellor says upon meeting grieving parents is to absolve herself of blame; that a school is so invested in their students' achievements that they reduce them to academic robots & forget the emotional intensity of those youthful years; that they fail to help assist someone with known learning difficulties. What a deep shame it is that this was an environment where classism could so proudly unfurl itself to a point where a woman feels nothing in telling Linda that as the wife of a CEO she doesn't want to mix with someone who takes the bus.

These unsavoury details make it a difficult read, but they're necessary to mention. People do not commit suicide for internal reasons alone. In Singapore, where the leading cause of death amongst millennials is suicide, where we have one of the highest rates of elderly suicides in the world, a book like Loss Adjustment is necessary reading. One of the best things we can do is to listen to those who have suffered in the most painful ways because the society they exist in is simply unlivable for them. Linda & Victoria reveals much of what makes our current society so broken, painful, & insensitive to those who are hurting.

Most touching for me was Linda's accounts of moments when she hears Victoria's voice to turn her towards a specific place or picture, & when she follows that voice she coincidentally finds something of Victoria's that gives her some form of comfort or understanding. It’s at these moments when the question of the spiritual is breached; when the land of loss & grief inducts you into another kind of world, one where another kind of communication & meaning-making is possible.

As I read through the book, it was clear that even after Victoria's death, she continues to suffuse the world of her family & friends with her love. Her death could not & did not kill the care & sensitivity she had provided to her parents & her friends, especially in the case of Mary. They carry it with them. Her entries which articulate so clearly & achingly of the difficulties she was facing are quoted in journals, books, & articles that confront the problem of suicide. In this way, she continues to live.

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