Adjusting for the Loss

Review of Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019)
by Pooja Shah

Loss Adjustment is a work of creative non-fiction written by copyeditor, wife, and mother, Linda Collins. It recounts the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter. The reader first gets a glimpse of Collins’s normal morning routine in tropical Singapore, where she, like other mothers, rises to prepare for her daughter’s first day of a new school term. The normalcy of their daily ritual is disturbed when Victoria (loving called Vic) is nowhere to be found. Panicked, Collins and her husband search for her, only to learn from the building security guard that Vic is dead. To their horror, they find out that she has taken her own life by jumping off an apartment block at their condo.

The memoir is loosely divided into four sections: Loss I, Loss II, Adjustment I, and Adjustment II. The first section describes the devastating loss that Collins and her husband face, and the pressing and necessary logistics that follow their daughter's passing. Overcome with grief, they accept the help of their colleagues, mostly Chinese, in organizing the funeral. Although Collins is an expatriate from New Zealand living in Singapore, she agrees to place their daughter in an open coffin, surrounded with photographs and memorabilia, per local Chinese tradition. Neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family bring trays of food and offer their company during this trying time. On the third day of her wake, also per the Chinese approach to mourning, Vic is “carried over” to the other world with flowers, food, jewelry, family photos, and sweets, a practice informed by the Chinese belief that the deceased should be accompanied by items that they may need in their afterlife. Her coffin is then physically carried through the streets of Singapore, in the rain, to the selected crematorium. Ultimately, Vic’s remains are collected in an urn that is kept, and cherished, at home.

Loss I explores the unbearable, unanswerable questions that a mourning mother must ask herself. Collins recalls memories of the last exchange between her and Vic, the last cup of coffee Vic drank, the toasted cheese sandwich Vic made for her, and Vic’s final jokes. Collins questions, “How do you play the role of a mother with no child?” a rhetorical question with no ready answer, as she struggles to figure out how to fill the void in her life. She also wonders if there was something she and her husband Malcolm could have done to prevent Vic from dying. Her aching words dwell on signs of distress that she wishes she had recognized earlier in order to protect her daughter.

Besides the natural feelings of guilt, Loss Adjustment skillfully explores a less-discussed consequence of death—community and healing. Collins observes how death is sometimes a unifying experience that brings together people to search for mutual solace. Her parents did not attend the funeral service, nor did her estranged brother, sister-in-law, and nephews, but this absence was filled by new friends from Singapore. At Vic’s wake, Collins was especially touched by the generosity of her Singaporean neighbors. After the wake, she searches for meaning and consolation in the different religious traditions in Singapore: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism, visiting a Catholic church, St. Ignatius, in search of spiritual understanding. This search deepens her integration into Singaporean society beyond the often-segregated, and comfortable, lives of expatriates living in the country.

The next part of the memoir Loss II gives a deeper insight into Vic’s character and person. Through anecdotes of Vic and through Vic’s own journals and diaries kept over years, the reader learns that Vic was a compassionate, thoughtful, yet troubled teenager. Like her mother, Vic was a talented writer who admitted that writing was, for her, an outlet that both calmed and fueled her thoughts. Writing helped to compensate for her inability to solve her problems. Collins combs through her daughter’s journals in an effort to understand what made her take her life. Vic’s journaling showed how she suffered from social anxiety, loneliness, bullying, and self-harm. Finding these journal entries on Vic’s laptop was, as Collins puts it, a “discovery.” To read them is to hear “[Vic’s] own voice reaching out to us in what amounts to an extended suicide note of the last four months leading up to her death.” Not unreasonably, Collins here suggests that a part of Vic, the part that did not erase these self-revealing writings, wanted her parents to know what she was feeling. There is a bittersweet quality in how the author uses the record of her late-daughter’s most intimate thoughts to write her own narrative. In a way, it is ironic, and tragic, that Vic, who had felt unheard and unseen, is finally able to voice, through her mother, who she was.

In order to further understand Vic, Collins speaks to her daughter’s school counselor, Mrs. C. and the school administration. To her shock, Collins discovers that the school lacks the necessary safeguards and resources to offer her daughter the psychological support she needed or a safety plan for students who are at risk of suicide. This is likewise confirmed by an entry in Vic's diary, where she wrote, “Stuff to tell Mrs C… wanted to be by myself again, incessant suicidal ideation, just fix me. Please fix me or I can’t be here.” It is disturbing that the school did not assess Vic’s risky behavior, and even more disturbing that, following Vic’s death, no one reached out to the parents to offer their condolences. Collins recounts how conversations with the school to reform the counseling program are stymied by an administration that is more anxious to protect the school’s reputation than to offer genuine assistance to their struggling students. A helpless Collins reaches out to her friend, a counselor in private practice, who explains the correct way to help someone in Vic’s circumstances. Collins learns that a counselor has the responsibility of assessing the risk of someone who is contemplating suicide. They must ask their client to sign a “contract” in which the client promises not to do anything to harm themselves or other people, as well as to identify two people whom they will contact before making any rash decisions. Most importantly, a counselor must intervene if their client gives them a reason to do so. None of the meetings with the school provide a satisfactory expression of empathy or a sense of closure to Collins and her husband. Eventually, Collins learns of the school’s less-than-satisfactory reform attempts through the school newsletter. She closes the chapter with some bitterness about having to learn about the reforms from a secondary source: "The school does not inform me."

Loss II invites the reader into Collins’s world where she yearns to be re-connected to her daughter and relies heavily on Vic’s journals to keep her memory alive. However, despite, or perhaps because of, the effort that she expended to comprehend the dissociation that Vic once felt, it is Collins who then feels disconnected from who she once was. It is a bitter irony that Vic's death causes Collins to empathize deeply with her daughter’s feelings of helplessness. In the ironically named Adjustment I, Collins blames herself for Vic's suicide, questioning whether her pregnancy, her lack of family support, her move to Singapore, or even her decision to pursue a career in journalism contributed to Vic’s fatal choice. This crushing sense of guilt is difficult to bear, even for readers. The section ends with the terse declarative, “I will never be saved," the heartbreaking final sentence of a short story Vic wrote. At this point, the memoir raises the possibility that Collins will suffer a similar fate.

The last section of Loss Adjustment is arguably the most melancholic as Collins continues her emotional investigation into her daughter’s life and descends into a cycle of guilt, blame, and suffering. Collins joins child bereavement groups, reprograms her routine, throws herself into work, and even indulges in retail therapy and vacations. Nothing, however, dulls her pain and she continues to feel that her life is in suspension.

Earlier, the reader learns that Collins lost a beloved rental home to a Christchurch earthquake. She spent years “adjusting for the loss,'' an accounting term for what an insurance adjuster does: he investigates the property loss, interprets the policy wording, and applies the insurance policy terms to provide the correct compensation. After receiving her compensation, Collins built a replacement home that she later rented out to a family. In trying to come to terms with the loss of Vic and to honor her daughter’s memory, Collins thinks of herself as a kind of loss adjuster. She knows the analogy is not perfect. In the loss of property, one can be compensated adequately; there is no adequate compensation for the loss of one’s heart. She expresses envy for property loss adjustment, because the process culminates in a financial or monetary outcome. Such is not the case when you lose your daughter.

Throughout her memoir, Collins navigates the different stages of grief. Adjustment is a tricky concept, and a trickier condition; the more one tries to normalize life, the tougher it is to hold on to fragments of the past. Collins’s conversational writing style and unfiltered tone provide the reader with an intimate perspective into a survivor’s state of mind after suffering loss. The writing is eloquent with both illuminating metaphors and timely statistics. If the writing gets repetitive at times, perhaps repetition is inherent in the process of mourning: grief is redundant and never-ending, and yet there is no certain way to lessen it.

As a former Samaritans volunteer, I have witnessed first-hand the pain and burdens that many who contemplate suicide experience. Loss Adjustment beautifully captures the way in which suicide may end the suffering of the deceased, but not of loved ones in its aftermath. Not only is the volume a loving tribute to a daughter’s intelligence and personality, but it is also a sensitive invitation to have conversations about this difficult topic. Although time does not heal an incomprehensible loss, it certainly gives one the ability to reflect on that loss and to help others who are also struggling. In the conclusion of her memoir Collins writes, “Grief can be a prison.” It is this isolation from which she attempts to break free by writing her moving book.


Loss Adjustment by Linda Colllins retails for S$21. To order a copy for S$18.90, go to Ethos Books’ website and enter "LA-SP" on check out before 25 November 2019.

Pooja Shah is a lawyer and freelance writer born in India, but living and working in New York City. Her website is www.pooja-shah.com.