A story about loss. But also about learning to live again.

What happens to a mother when her son decides he no longer wants to live? And how do you rebuild your own life afterwards?

In Spicy, Marjolein Voorberg tells the story of her son Elon, who takes his own life at the age of twenty-two. She writes about the time before his death, the devastation that follows, and the question that keeps returning: how could this have happened?

But Spicy is not only about Elon’s death. It is also about everything that comes afterwards. About grief that does not end when the rest of the world moves on. About searching for words for what cannot be understood. And about the question of how to go on living when a loss has changed your life forever.

In her search, Voorberg looks beyond her own memories and experiences. She engages with philosophers, poets and thinkers from the past and present, exploring the ways in which people have thought about life, death, freedom, despair and the meaning of existence. Her personal story gradually opens into a wider search for what it means to go on living after such a loss.

Slowly, the question begins to change. From how could this have happened? to how can I go on from here?

In the Japanese art of kintsugi, broken objects are not discarded or hidden. Their cracks are repaired with gold. The damage remains visible and becomes part of a new whole. Marjolein, too, discovers that moving forward does not mean that the loss disappears. It means trying to build a new life with everything that has happened.

Spicy is an intimate and deeply moving book about a mother and her son, about love and grief, but also about resilience, meaning and the possibility of slowly finding a way forward after an unimaginable loss.

A moving story about the death of a son — but also about the life that must go on afterwards.

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