Author Michael Lewis said it feels like a “hole has been blown” into his family’s life following the loss of his teenage daughter in a head-on collision.
Lewis, whose work includes “Moneyball” and “The Big Short,” opened up last week about how he is still grieving the death of his daughter, Dixie Lewis, 19, in Truckee, Calif., in May.
“A hole has been blown in our lives. The question is what do you grow in that hole and how do you grow from this experience,” Lewis said on Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dishcast” podcast on Friday.
Lewis said that he is “going through the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through,” and that the grieving process has been “exhausting.”
“I’ve been asking myself why do I feel so depleted and I think it’s because I think your mind maps a kind of reality at any given time and you kind of have an imagined future, and that child is in that future,” he said.
Dixie was being driven by her boyfriend Ross Schultz, 20, on state Highway 89 heading north when he crossed into the southbound lanes and hit a Freightliner semi-truck head-on, killing them both, authorities said.
Lewis said he still doesn’t have any answers about what caused the car accident.
“Nobody was drunk,” Lewis said. “No one knows why—they crossed a double yellow line and went straight into a truck.”
Lewis said that he tries to “patch together hours of distracted pleasure and normalcy,” but he still finds his thoughts turning to his daughter.
“It’s very hard day to day when you know the last thing you’re going to do before you go to bed is think of her, and the first thing you’re gonna do when you wake up is think of her,” he said.
Lewis — who also shares children, Quinn, 21, and Walker, 14, with his wife, Tabitha Soren — vowed to live his life in memory of his youngest daughter.
“I loved her so much and it’s a loss that is just very hard to describe,” he said.
“She was brave, she worked her ass off, she tried hard. I was so proud of her. The best thing I can do is live really well in her honor. It’s the best thing I can do, so that’s what I intend to do and find some way to make beautiful things that might not have been made otherwise because of it.”