The cross-country trip in We Burned So Bright is built around an unfinished act of mourning. Don and Rodney have already spread the ashes of their son, Jeremy, in six meaningful locations across the country, but can’t bring themselves to part with the final vial of ashes or to revisit the place where Jeremy died. The approaching black hole and the inevitable destruction of the earth act as the inciting incident that forces them to confront their unfinished business. Structurally, Klune progressively reveals tiny fragments of Jeremy’s story across the road trip mirroring the couple’s gradual journey toward facing their loss and guilt. The novel ultimately suggests that Don and Rodney can only release their son when they stop protecting each other from their individual guilt over his death.

Each person they meet on their road trip compels them to grapple with an aspect of their grief. Their interaction with John and Megan who fear having to euthanize their kids, so they won’t suffer when the black hole consumes the earth, pushes Don and Rodney to confront the deep pain of being unable to protect or save one’s children. The wedding Rodney officiates for Pantomime and Juniper helps them recapture the moments of joy they had as a family. Rodney’s impromptu history of LGBTQIA+ suffering and resilience for Becca and Amy, situates their own pain within the broader legacy of their community. 

The closer they get to Copper Mountain, a beloved childhood vacation spot that Jeremy chose for his death by suicide, the more their suppressed guilt, grief, and anger rise to the surface. Rodney finally admits to Don that alongside his love for Jeremy, he came to hate him “for what he did” (125) and hated himself more for the feeling. Don responds in anger, asking why they couldn’t have endured this shared guilt together rather than in isolation: “As if I wasn’t feeling the same way. As if I wasn’t capable of handling whatever you had to throw at me. You weren’t alone, Rodney. You weren’t then, you aren’t now […] you act like you’re the only person in the world capable of dealing with pain” (126). Klune positions this painful confrontation as necessary for their final act of laying Jeremy to rest and facing their own deaths at the end of the world united. 

Jerri, Don and Rodney’s final companion on their journey, gives voice to their need for absolution, providing a framework for the final act of their journey. She tells them: 

You have to want [absolution]. Above all else. Because it’s so easy to stay stuck down in the muck. Even as it tears at you, it feels safe because it’s familiar. But that safety is a lie. The muck is filled with apathy that can spread like poison […] you can’t hold on to everything all the time (117). 

This counsel redefines Don and Rodney’s journey: They’re not traveling toward a place where Jeremy can be returned to them, but toward a moment when they can let go of their own sense of failure, and in doing so let Jeremy rest. When Jerri asks them what waits at Copper Mountain, Don answers with a single word: absolution.

Klune withholds almost all of the specifics about Don and Rodney’s life with Jeremy until this final leg of their journey, suggesting that the depth and consuming nature of their grief kept them from confronting it until the end of the world was upon them. Once they’ve finally given voice to their grief, Klune provides the exposition that contextualizes it—Jeremy’s difficult adoption, their cherished family road trips with Jeremy across the country, the slap Rodney once delivered when Jeremy hurled antigay slurs at them, the changed locks after Jeremy descended into his addiction and mental illness, began stealing from them, and choked Don against a wall. Klune delivers both the good moments and the deeply painful moments in one block, emphasizing the ways all of it has lived inside them until now. Speaking it aloud, mid-drive, is the first concession either of them has made that absolution will have to be granted between the two of them, not received from anyone else.

In the novel’s final moments, Don and Rodney acknowledge both their failure and their love aloud, and that acknowledgment allows them to finally let go of their guilt. By binding this private grief to the planet’s destruction, Klune removes any deferrals that keep grief ongoing. There is no later in which to revisit the question, no future self who might have done more. Standing in the swaying tower as the moon fractures, Rodney says, “We were good parents […] We did our best. It wasn’t good enough, but we tried” (158). The peace Don and Rodney reach belongs to two people who have stopped lying to each other about what their love did and did not accomplish, and who choose, in Rodney’s words, to do it all over again anyway. When the ash briefly takes the shape of a face, both men whisper Jeremy’s name, emphasizing their final moment of long-awaited absolution before death.