Fifty-seven Fridays: Losing Our Daughter, Finding Our Way

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About Fifty-seven Fridays: Losing Our Daughter, Finding

“Required reading for any parent, because it is the story of the greatest love story between a parent and child: loss. The book—beautiful, propulsive, wrenching, and true—reveals the essential truth that there is no love without loss, and that we learn how to love through and within our grief.” —Emily Rapp Black, New York Times Best-selling Author of The Still Point of the Turning World Sack is a 30-year-old new mom, married to the love of her life, Matt Goldstein, who is a doctor. They live in Boston because Matt’s residency in internal medicine took them there. She has just finished her MBA. They’ve bought a house. Life is unfolding beautifully. Then one day their beautiful 1-year-old daughter Havi is diagnosed with a debilitating neurodegenerative disease called Tay-Sachs. Soon after this, Sack and her husband discover that despite their extensive pre-conception genetic testing, an error was made by their physician, making the diagnosis possible. Then they’re told: Havi has about twelve months to live. Against all advice and norms, they decide to celebrate Havi’s short life rather than intervene in order to prolong it. They vow to show her as much of the world as they can. They embark on a journey that begins on the California coast and continues back to Boston, surrounded by friends and family who relocate to be in Havi’s orbit. Along the way, they transform Friday night Shabbats into birthday parties—“Shabbirthdays”—to replace the birthdays Havi will never have. After her death, they continue to center their lives on existing right on the edge between the physical world and the unknown world beyond it.