There is no way to ‘come to terms’ with parental grief: it is like being killed while still standing, being born in mid-life and having to learn to exist again, becoming a hybrid creature, partly buried.

For Soren Tae Smith, the dead have always been mentors. Their deeds have ended but their influence continues. But what does it mean when your child, who had just begun to talk with you about Kafka and Camus, is suddenly closer to them than to you? What does it mean to be able to write or work when a young person didn’t get the chance?

Written as a means of survival, Honey from the Ground upends genre and resists explanation. It follows the rhythms of lived time and memory, accepting illness and limitation. Through glimpses of a personal past, it rummages for what can be saved and known even in the absence of answers.

Those who die before us are not left behind but are a step ahead. It is for us to navigate the path toward them.