Our Alex by David Birnie (Book Review #2406)

Grief changes the meaning of ordinary things. A football match, a family photograph, a familiar joke, or a favorite motorbike can suddenly become connected to someone who is no longer there. In Our Alex, David Birnie writes about the devastating loss of his twenty-one-year-old son, but more importantly, he writes about the young man who existed before that loss and the family determined to remember him as more than the circumstances of his death.

Alex emerges from these pages as a vividly human young man: funny, stubborn, ambitious, occasionally infuriating, and deeply loved. He loved football, motorbikes, his family, and his friends. At twenty-one, he was at the beginning of adulthood, with friendships, work, business ideas, passions, and possibilities still ahead of him.

That makes his sudden absence all the more difficult to comprehend. There is an enormous difference between knowing intellectually that someone is gone and learning how to exist in a world that continues without them. Birnie’s memoir explores that painful contradiction through the experiences of a father and family trying to understand what happened while also figuring out how to live afterward.

What gives the book its emotional power is its refusal to reduce Alex to the event that ended his life. The memoir looks backward at childhood, football, family holidays, friendships, work, and the developing passions that made him who he was. Those memories matter because grief can sometimes threaten to make the final moment larger than the entire life that preceded it.

Birnie instead insists on remembering the whole person.

The aftermath is equally important. Shock, anger, grief, questions, counselling, friendship, family, and even laughter become part of the family’s experience. None of these things provide a simple solution, and the book wisely avoids suggesting that grief follows a predictable path. There is no formula for losing a child, and there is no tidy point at which everything suddenly becomes manageable.

The idea of “moving forward” rather than “moving on” is particularly meaningful. Moving on can imply leaving someone behind, while moving forward allows their memory to remain part of the journey. For the Birnie family, remembering Alex is not about refusing to live; it is about finding a way to continue living while carrying his presence with them.

That perspective makes Our Alex more than a memoir of bereavement. It is an act of remembrance. It gives Alex a place beyond the date of his death and preserves the personality, relationships, passions, and ordinary moments that made his life his own.

David Birnie writes with the vulnerability of a father who has experienced something no parent should have to endure. Yet the book’s focus remains remarkably clear: this is not simply a story about losing Alex. It is a story about knowing him, loving him, remembering him, and refusing to let the end of his life become the only story told about it.

Our Alex is a deeply personal account of grief, but ultimately it is a tribute to a son whose life mattered—and continues to matter to the people who loved him.

Written by Jayran Main