Last night, my brother-in-law called to say that my mother-in law is dying. So tomorrow the 2 of us, accompanied by our faithful labrador retriever, will get in the car and drive 5 or so hours to spend some time with her and the family.
There are lots of issues here with family, but I'm mostly leaving those out. Everybody has issues. If you're interested in issues, watch Oprah or go buy a memoir at the bookstore. Let me explain with one of my favorite writers, Tolstoy. And in advance, I ask you with more accurate memories to forgive the paraphrase that's coming:
I think that Tolstoy had it wrong when he said that all happy families are alike, and the unhappy ones are all different. I reverse that: I think that unhappy families have more in common, hurt, alienation, triangulation and so forth than do the happy ones, because the happy ones are free to make more choices because of not being bound up by history.
Our family is average, in the sense of being a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. So, how to cope now, and be a support to my beloved spouse as we walk into a sad and complicated journey? I'm considering what books to pack. For me, that is a first line of coping.
Do I want to take Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which is a memoir of her grief? Or will that his too close to home, and be the last thing that I want to read?
Maybe more Tolkien, finish The Children of Hurin, and take some of the Lost Tales? Although those are fantasy, which might be a good escape, they also deal with death, fate and relationships. A combination of escapism and the relevant might be perfect. Or I might not give a shit about Middle Earth, the Valar and poor Hurin who seems determined to bend to no one's good counsel. I think his doom is not the curse, but thinking that he's always right. Okay, I put Tolkien on the Maybe List.
Maybe Suite Francaise, about which I have heard nothing but good? I dunno. I want to read it, but stories set in the Holocaust sometimes are too much for me, having grown up with stories about relatives who did and (mostly) didn't survive another genocide. Maybe it's too much to expect to cope with relatives, dying and a stunning memoir. I don't know, I haven't opened it. Note to self: read 5 pages, and decide.
Maybe I should take Douglas Adam's The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide. I could use humor. Will anything seem funny, though? Still, his irreverent British humor could be a real helping tool for the trip.
The only book which I have definitely decided upon is The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. I'd like to be as mindful as Hanh is when the seconds tick on laboriously.
Oh yeah, and I'd better figure out clothes to pack in case our stay stretches into something longer than a couple of days. Time to snap back to reality.
3 comments:
Good thoughts to you and your in-laws.
And Do read Suite Française at some point - it's a beautiful book...
This post reminded me of an emergency trip made back to Cork from San Francisco on one of the two occasions we believed our Dad might not make it through his current medical crisis. One of the books I had brought with me was Barbara Kingsolver's collection of essays "High Tide in Tucson". I still remember how the calm sanity of those essays comforted me and kept me going through some difficult periods of waiting.
I am a firm believer in the power of good books to help us through difficult times.
David
Everyone has issues and everyone has a story. My advice is pretty much what you have decided to do: Listening is the beginning, Listen to the story, don't offer advice, tell her how much you love her. That is what love is about, forgetting yourself to be in the momoment with them is the basis of understanding and compassion.
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