Evening
I've only imagined myself on my deathbed a handful of times. I see myself - a shriveled old Italian woman - lying on a rickety bed surrounded by my large, loving Italian family. Not sure why the Italian thing, maybe it's some reference to The Godfather, maybe I was Italian in a past life, who knows.
Anyway, I see myself from the outside of my body looking at it. I never considered looking up through my own eyes or inward to my own thoughts until now: I just finished Evening by Susan Minot.
It's a story about the last thoughts of Ann, an old woman dying of cancer. She remembers her past in between bouts of present time. Her four grown children have conversations in the house, but mostly the reader is living in Ann's memories, some of which are happy, most of which are not.
At first I was annoyed by the way the book is written. It jumps around and I was having trouble figuring out who was being remembered or when it was happening or if it was actually the present. About a quarter way through I settled down and accepted that this was the best way it could have been written. How else was I to internalize the fragmented thought process of a dying mind?
After all, there are millions of thoughts to sort through. With only days to live, where does one begin? Do you try to re-live the best moments as much as possible? And how can you do that with those nagging tragedies and years of habitual drudgery taking up space in your deteriorating mind? The author does an interesting and commendable job of showing us how.
I know, where can you sign up to read this delightfully uplifting tale. Yes, there's the part about the certainty and sadness of death. But I think it's more about the bittersweetness of memories and what could have been. For me the story was another reminder to live my happy moments as though they were already long lost memories that I wished I could live again. Maybe if I live each happy memory instantaneously twice, they'll end up taking all the space in my old muddled mind.
Anyway, I see myself from the outside of my body looking at it. I never considered looking up through my own eyes or inward to my own thoughts until now: I just finished Evening by Susan Minot.
It's a story about the last thoughts of Ann, an old woman dying of cancer. She remembers her past in between bouts of present time. Her four grown children have conversations in the house, but mostly the reader is living in Ann's memories, some of which are happy, most of which are not.
At first I was annoyed by the way the book is written. It jumps around and I was having trouble figuring out who was being remembered or when it was happening or if it was actually the present. About a quarter way through I settled down and accepted that this was the best way it could have been written. How else was I to internalize the fragmented thought process of a dying mind?
After all, there are millions of thoughts to sort through. With only days to live, where does one begin? Do you try to re-live the best moments as much as possible? And how can you do that with those nagging tragedies and years of habitual drudgery taking up space in your deteriorating mind? The author does an interesting and commendable job of showing us how.
I know, where can you sign up to read this delightfully uplifting tale. Yes, there's the part about the certainty and sadness of death. But I think it's more about the bittersweetness of memories and what could have been. For me the story was another reminder to live my happy moments as though they were already long lost memories that I wished I could live again. Maybe if I live each happy memory instantaneously twice, they'll end up taking all the space in my old muddled mind.
posted by Anne at 9:43 PM
1 Comments:
Philip Roth's _Everyman_ is another example of this type of tale. Roth's character looks back from the grave, but with Roth's normal cynical take on life, love, regret, etc. His story, however, is essentially about the fear of dying alone. I think he'd prefer your view of an old Italian woman surrounded by her entire family (you do notice how waspy your kids are, right?!). ;)
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