Over three weeks, COVID-19 delivered “cheap shots.” It took hostages. And it left the Malinowski family with with pain, loss and grief.

Humans have always sensed the ghosts of loved ones. It’s only in the last century that we convinced ourselves this was a problem.

How do you tell the world you are grieving? In my case, it was a year-long Twitter thread about finding the things that made me feel better.

My mother’s eyes traced what was happening with happiness of a child. When she asked my father how it was possible, he thought she was asking about the flowers, but she wasn’t. She was asking how it was possible to see this much beauty at once.

On long-distance grief.

Mountain athletes face death and grief more often than most of us. One therapist thinks he can help.

The view of a life from cruising altitude.

The writer investigates her brother’s death, their complicated relationship, and the disturbing mysteries he left behind.

In the normal universe, "to be" is annihilated by "not to be." But for reasons that are still a mystery to even the deepest math of physics, a bit of matter in a billion or so is not obliterated, it has no antimatter partner. It becomes a drop of experience.

A man named Tristan Beaudette was killed while camping in Malibu Creek State Park with his two young daughters. For residents, it became a true crime sensation. But for his family, it was something very different.

For years, the clients of a Colorado funeral home kept their loved ones’ cremated remains. Then the FBI called.

You learn to believe in your child’s existence. What happens when she’s killed by a piece of your daily environment?

On the 1998 crash of Swissair Fight 111 into the sea off a small Nova Scotia fishing village.

Victims of Mexico’s drug violence often end up in unmarked graves. This man set out to find them.

When loved ones die, what do we do with the digital reminders they’ve left behind?

Scot Peterson was a beloved school resource officer in Parkland, Fla. Then a gunman opened fire and he stayed outside.

A profile of the grieving musician, who lost his teenage son 18 months ago.

What former NBA coach Monty Williams learned in the wake of losing his wife.

A day in the life of Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum, in the wake of the sudden death of his wife when their daughter was four months old.

When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence.

An essay on the silent, secret grief of miscarriage.

Scenes of grief, from the sister of comedian Harris Wittels.

A couple’s only son is killed in Iraq.

An aging man, a dead wife, a peculiar dog.

Once more at five o'clock, just before five o'clock, the dog engaged in its unaccountable behavior. And then, the next day, again. And the day after that, again. And still he had gotten not an inch closer to understanding why. Would he ever? Perhaps a sound so high-pitched he couldn't hear it. Something shifting in the clock maybe as it prepared to chime the hour. Or the dog was somehow seeing something that wasn't actually there. Or maybe he was simply watching the dog go mad.

Eleven months after Sandy Hook, Newtown’s mourning remains incalculable, especially that of the parents who lost their children. And the influx of sympathy—and money—has sometimes made the grieving more difficult rather than less.