Jean and Holmer marry despite both having undiagnosed mental health conditions and using alcohol to self-medicate.

Jean disappears from home without explanation, leaving six-year-old Meg and sister Patty confused and frightened at a cousin's house.

Jean returns home permanently after her hospitalizations but is heavily medicated and emotionally distant from her children.

Nancy overdoses in the bathtub in a suicide attempt, and Meg watches firefighters carry her sister out on a stretcher.

Nancy wakes up in the hospital angry to have survived her suicide attempt, crying not from relief but from despair.

Nancy escapes family supervision, walks into the path of an oncoming train, and dies from her injuries hours later.

Jean overdoses on pills and alcohol in the months after Nancy's death but survives and begins drinking more heavily.

Meg moves to Watertown, New York for her first newspaper job and meets her future husband Larry.

Danny orchestrates a harassment campaign against a Jewish business owner, leading to local media coverage and jail time.

Jean is diagnosed with lymphoma and later dies as Meg, Molly, and Patty surround her in the hospital.

Danny is diagnosed with bipolar disorder but denies the illness, stops taking his medication, and insists his real problem is undiagnosed diabetes.

Danny hangs himself in the family home's basement and is discovered by his brother Jake.

Meg writes a newspaper piece about Danny's death and receives calls from readers sharing stories of lost loved ones and inadequate care.

Meg travels across the country meeting people with mental illness and their families, hearing story after story of abandoned patients and inadequate support.

Meg decides to write her memoir and secures the cooperation of all her living siblings to tell the full family story.

This pool follows the central arc of Meg Kissinger's memoir, from her parents' troubled marriage through the tragic deaths of her siblings Nancy and Danny to her decision to write the family's story. Jean and Holmer's marriage was built on a foundation of undiagnosed mental illness and alcohol, and their children bore the consequences as the family lurched from crisis to crisis. Nancy's repeated suicide attempts and ultimate death shattered the family, followed by Jean's own overdose and slow deterioration from cancer. After Jean died, Danny's unraveling—shaped by bipolar disorder he refused to acknowledge—ended in another devastating loss. Each tragedy deepened Meg's understanding of mental illness and its ripple effects, driving her investigative journalism career. The pool concludes with Meg's pivotal decision to stop telling other people's stories and finally tell her own.

The headline events of the Kissinger family's struggle with mental illness.

Holmer's brother dies while training to become a wartime pilot, a loss Holmer never openly discusses or processes.

Holmer proposes to Jean in a church confessional before a planned night of drinking, and she says yes.

Meg falls through the ice of a frozen lake as a child and Holmer saves her at the last moment.

Mary Kay leaves for university and Meg cries at her graduation, fearing the family she grew up with is breaking apart.

Jake becomes severely depressed and drops out of college while the entire family's attention is consumed by Nancy's crises.

Holmer is involved in a car accident while driving drunk and decides to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Meg's last phone call with Nancy ends with Nancy snapping 'Fuck you,' which become the last words she ever speaks to Meg.

Nancy's parents lie to outsiders about her cause of death so she can receive a Catholic funeral and burial.

Nancy's casket is discovered to have been buried in the wrong cemetery plot and must be unearthed and reinterred.

Mary Kay takes Meg and Patty on a trip to Ireland to celebrate Meg's graduation from university.

Larry proposes to Meg and both her parents are delighted as the family begins planning the wedding together.

Danny stays with Meg and Larry after serving his jail sentence and shows clear signs of severe depression and paranoia.

Meg finds Nancy's handwritten doodles in an old yearbook and writes a newspaper piece honoring who Nancy truly was.

Jean cuts her wrists while hospitalized for cancer treatment, angering Meg who is fighting to keep her mother alive.

Meg works with a therapist who helps her process her childhood and understand why her family members' lives unfolded as they did.

This pool captures the significant moments just beneath the headline events—the losses, choices, and quiet turning points that shaped the Kissinger family across generations. It begins with Holmer's unprocessed grief over his brother's wartime death, which set the tone for a family that concealed its pain, and moves through Jean and Holmer's courtship and the mounting chaos of raising eight children with little support. The pool tracks the widening fractures in the family as Nancy's crisis consumed its resources and siblings like Jake quietly fell apart in the background. Meg's path through grief, graduation, marriage, and an eventual return to her sister Nancy's memory through journalism mark the emotional middle of this arc. The pool ends with Meg entering therapy for the first time and beginning to truly confront the childhood she had long been running from.

The overlooked moments and quieter turning points that shaped the Kissinger family.

Jean asks her father to cancel her engagement to Holmer after having serious doubts, but he refuses to allow it.

Meg sneaks into her parents' bedroom seeking comfort from Jean and finds her mother's side of the bed empty.

Meg begins lashing out violently in ways that echo Nancy's behavior, and Jean calls the police on her during one severe incident.

Meg decides to focus on journalism school rather than continue down the destructive path she fears she is on.

Holmer visits Meg in Watertown and reassures her she is capable, helping rebuild her confidence during a difficult personal transition.

Meg breaks a story about a Vietnam-era dissident living under a false identity in Watertown, bolstering her journalistic confidence.

Danny confides in Meg that he has thoughts of suicide, and she does not know how to respond and deflects.

Meg receives a letter from Danny full of apologies and feels certain he is preparing to end his life.

Holmer's wife accuses Meg of inappropriate feelings for her father and donates the family's irreplaceable photo collection to a yard sale.

Jake is forced into a group home and Meg visits, discovering hazardous conditions including faulty plumbing, infestations, and neglected residents.

Meg befriends Georgia, a woman her age living in a group home who reminds her of Nancy, and later grieves her death.

Meg's investigative articles on group home conditions persuade local officials to commit to building over a thousand new supportive housing units.

Meg is found likely to have breast cancer after a routine mammogram, undergoes months of chemotherapy, and is eventually declared cancer-free.

Holmer's family gathers in his hospital room to sing to him and say their goodbyes before he dies of melanoma.

Meg discovers while writing her memoir that Jean left young Molly alone in charge of Nancy on the day Nancy died.

This pool traces the key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that reshaped Meg's understanding of herself, her family, and her purpose. It begins with early signs of the family's culture of concealment—Jean's forced marriage and Meg's lonely childhood searches for her vanishing mother—and follows Meg as she forges her own identity through journalism. The most urgent turning points come as Meg misses warning signs from Danny and later receives a letter that leaves her certain he is preparing to die. As an adult, Meg channels accumulated grief into investigative work that exposes inadequate mental health care and effects real change at the local government level, even while fighting her own breast cancer diagnosis. The pool ends with one of the memoir's most painful revelations: that Jean left a young child responsible for watching Nancy on the day Nancy died, forcing Meg to wrestle with anger before arriving at forgiveness.

The revelations and decisions that changed Meg's understanding of herself and her family.