Vincent Cutino was twenty-three years old, smart, funny, fiercely loyal, just finding his footing, when he collapsed at the gym and never came home. What followed for his father, Chris, was the kind of grief that turns the world upside down and makes everything that came before feel like a different life entirely.

Chris Cutino is a husband, a father, and the author of Vincent's Bookends, a memoir he never intended to write. It began as notes rattling around in his head, a way to make space for whatever healing might eventually mean. It became something much more.

In this conversation, Chris talks about the fog of those first hours, the unexpected loneliness of being surrounded by people, the guilt, jealousy, and comparative grief he didn't expect to feel, and what it means to rebuild when the fairytale you promised your fam ...