After suffering the sudden loss of his 19-year-old daughter Dixie Lewis, Michael Lewis feels like a "hole has been blown" in his life.
That's how The Big Short and Moneyball author described the aftermath of his daughter's tragic death during an interview on Andrew Sullivan's The Weekly Dish podcast. In May, Dixie's 20-year-old boyfriend Ross Schulz was driving them northbound on State Route 89 when his 2014 Ford Fusion entered the southbound lane and struck a Freightliner semi truck head on, according to a California Highway Patrol collision report obtained by E! News. The couple was pronounced dead at the scene.
"Nobody was drunk," Michael said. "No one knows why—they crossed a double yellow line and went straight into a truck."
Not yet three months later, the grief remains a constant for her family. "I'm going through the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life," Michael said, "and I can't even think of what number two is."
He described what he, his wife Tabitha Soren, daughter Quinn, 21, and son Walker, 14, have faced as "an absolutely gutting experience" and noted his life feels "permanently changed."
"None of the metaphors I've been handed off the shelf seem to really work. The idea that it's a process that you get through—I don't think that's really kind of true," he shared, noting a "journey" also does not seem right. "It does feel like a hole has been blown in our lives."
As he posed, "The question is what do you grow in that hole?...How you grow from this experience?"
While Dixie is gone, her memory is omnipresent for her grieving dad. "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," he said, "and the first thing you're gonna do when you wake up is think of her."
Since he knows his grief will continue to surface, Michael explained that he's been making lists with Quinn of things that make them feel better. "My path right now to the extent I can try to patch together hours of distracted pleasure and normalcy, I should," the writer said, "because the sheer sadness of the moment is going to surface no matter what I do, so don't go trying try to surface it."
Moving forward, he's pledged to live purposefully in honor of his cherished 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."