For more than two years, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt tried to understand and accept the unthinkable: the sudden death of the woman who gave birth to him. These pages tell of his “debt of happiness”: a long, bitter struggle with sadness. To remain inconsolable would be a betrayal of his mother, because this gentle, radiant woman endowed him with a taste for life, a passion for art, a sense of humor, and a worship of joy. The writer analyzes both the pain of losing a loved one and the restructuring that occurs in us when we cease to be children of our parents. In “The Diary of Lost Love,” as in the confessional essay “Night of Fire,” Schmitt, through personal experience, through the “mourning of love,” comprehends universal truths. He manages to turn the experience of death into a great life lesson.