Cheryl Walsh

A review of The Californians by Brian Castleberry.

 

The Californians is a multigenerational saga that chronicles the rise and decline of a family of 20th-century creatives. Spanning a century and four generations, the story technically follows two families, but they are spliced together in the second generation by irresponsibility and betrayal. Those two themes shape the characters and drive the plot, along with the creative passion of protagonists Klaus and Diane, and a strong if unearned sense of entitlement on the part of several other characters.

 

The structure of the novel is more complex than the typical family saga, and so requires a bit more effort on the reader's part to follow it. Tobey, the fourth generation of this hybrid family, opens and closes the book in 2024. The other two point-of-view characters are Klaus, a silent film director in the 1920s and a television producer/director in the 1950s and '60s, and his granddaughter Diane, a photorealist painter in the 1980s and a conceptual/performance artist in the 2000s. Each POV character's story unfolds basically chronologically, but they are braided together so that the story jumps back and forth between and among time periods, with "interstitial" material between chapters in the form of a website, news clippings, letters, emails, text messages, ads, articles, a student essay, a blog post, book excerpts, reviews, and interviews. This material jumps all over the place chronologically, but with clear time markers.

 

As a big fan of braided narratives, I enjoyed the juxtapositions that resulted from this structure, though in the first third of the book, I did wish for a kind of genealogical chart to keep track of how the characters were related. Klaus's son and Diane's father, Percy, had a brief affair with Mrs. Harlan, who had been married to the star of Klaus's best-known TV show. Percy left adolescent Diane with Mrs. Harlan and her son, Track (who became Tobey's father). Diane and Track developed a close bond and looked upon themselves as "almost" siblings (though they drifted apart as adults), and Mrs. Harlan became Diane's only reliable parental figure.

 

The most tragic aspect of this story results from absent or inadequate parenting in each generation—Klaus was an orphan, and in each generation lapses in parenting produce painful and sometimes disastrous results. All the characters are deeply flawed, and many readers may find them unlikable, but I also sympathized with each of the protagonists. Klaus is terribly self-centered, and single-minded in his creative life—which by its very nature is collaborative—to the detriment of many around him. But he can be very generous and is helplessly in love with his wife. Diane spends much of her life in avoidance and denial, but she is also kind-hearted and capable of real focus when she finds her direction. Tobey has terrible judgment and is prone to escapism, but he yearns to be a good person and is trying to find a purchase for his moral compass.

 

The tragedy of the story is bolstered by the terrible effects of the AIDS pandemic, climate change, and tech-enabled corruption. However, it is also balanced by the artistic accomplishments and creative fire of both Klaus and Diane. What I really liked about this tale of creative people wrestling with their demons is that the greatness of their art is not dependent on the demons. Rather, they achieved a measure of greatness in spite of the demons. What might they have achieved in nurturing rather than undermining circumstances? Inside that tragedy is also a scrap of hope.

 

With thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for providing access to an advance copy.

A review of the novel A House for Miss Pauline, by Diana McCaulay.

 

I loved Diana McCaulay's wonderful protagonist, Miss Pauline Sinclair, a 99-year-old woman who has lived her whole life in the Jamaican country village of Mason Hall. In the weeks before her 100th birthday, the stones of her house begin to move at night and speak to her, not only disturbing her sleep but roiling her conscience. She has lived her whole life by her own rules, not an easy thing for a Black woman in the 20th century and a Jamaican elder in the 21st century. And her conscience is clear with respect to the laws she has broken and the taboos she has violated. But there are also compromises she has made that go against the grain of her moral fiber, and the stones are demanding a reckoning. She dreads that reckoning, and she avoids and courts it by turns. She knows that she will never be at peace until she atones for the harm she has caused others, but she is pragmatic enough to know that the atonement may destroy her and everything she has built in her life.

 

Legacy is a bright thread woven into the fabric of McCaulay's story. Not only Miss Pauline's legacy, but the legacy of slavery in Jamaica and worldwide—and not only the physical legacy embodied in land, property, and wealth, but the spiritual legacy that inhabits the souls of all descendants of slavery—descendants of the enslavers and well as of the enslaved. The competing claims of ancestry grow in breadth and depth for Miss Pauline, and the clear-eyed wisdom and regret she brings to her life's reckoning offer a fragile hope for healing.

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for providing access to an advance copy.

A review of To Save the Man by John Sayles.

 

This deeply researched novel juxtaposes life at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School in the late 19th century with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. In this juxtaposition lies the book's great work of imagination, allowing the reader to experience what Wounded Knee meant to some of the students at the school as well as to the reformers who ran the school. At the same time, it illuminates the motivations and effects of the school's program of forced assimilation, the unabashed goal of which was "to save the man" by killing the Indian within him.

 

I greatly appreciated the depth and breadth of Sayles's research. For the first time, I began to understand the good intentions that so successfully masked the cruelty and arrogance of the various reformers who founded and promoted the Indian boarding schools of the 19th and 20th century. I also appreciated Sayles's respect for Native cultures and his refusal to make his Native characters archetypes or stock characters. As a reader, I understood them as individuals with different levels of Native experience and White exposure and education, and never did I feel compelled to see them as composites or representatives of their tribes.

 

Because there are so many characters in this novel from so many backgrounds—a feature of the Carlisle School in that it had students from all across the continent—the narrative momentum was diluted. Many interesting things happened, but not everything was of interest to me, and without the less-than-interesting events forming a forward-moving narrative thrust, the pacing seemed to lag. The description of life at the school often felt ethnographic—recording the culture of the Carlisle School in its enforced uniformity that overlaid the great diversity of its students. I appreciate that in many ways, but I also got impatient with it when I wanted the story to move forward.

 

Sayles wanted to make this story into a movie, and I wanted to read the book in part because I admire his movies so much—he is one of my favorite film directors. I could see much of the ethnographic nature of the book made into the kind of slice-of-life scenes that Sayles does so very well. He uses cinematic techniques in much of the book, most noticeably quick cuts between scenes and characters that sometimes even interrupt dialogue—something that is highly effective in movies but a bit jarring in a book, at least until you get used to it. It did help to propel the book forward through a great deal of character development without complicating the plot further, which ultimately enhanced my reading of the book.

 

I also wanted to read To Save the Man because I'm very interested in the history of Native America, wherein the boarding schools and the Wounded Knee massacre both loom large. Despite my impatience with the novel's slow narrative development, I enjoyed reading it and greatly appreciate the insight I gained into the origins of the Indian boarding schools and the additional perspective on Wounded Knee. I was trained as a historian before I became a fiction writer, and I'm always aware that even the most deeply researched novels are not works of history. However, good historical fiction can give you the feeling of being in a distant time and place in ways that are otherwise inaccessible. John Sayles does that very well in To Save the Man, which gave me greater empathy for and understanding of the people who were caught up in that history.

 

Thank you to NetGalley and Melville House for providing access to an advance copy.

Annual celebrations are difficult for me these days. It's too easy to compare how Bru is now with how he was last year on our wedding anniversary, on my birthday, on his birthday, on Thanksgiving, on Christmas. In other words, events we celebrate every year mark his decline with a peculiar clarity.

 

One of the mercies of dementia is that you usually can't remember clearly what it was like to be able to do something you can no longer do. It's hard to connect the past with the present in that way. You might have some notion of your former capabilities, but you can't remember exactly how you did something and compare it with your current incapacity to do the same thing. The good feeling of accomplishing something can survive without being canceled by the disappointment or grief that you can no longer do what made you feel so good.

 

Usually that's how it works, anyway. This past Christmastime, while I could clearly measure differences in Bru's ability to take part in the traditional activities of the season—baking, decorating, shopping for gifts and wrapping them—Bru was happily ignorant of what we'd done in the past. Everything was a surprise.

 

There was one thing he was anticipating, however—hosting friends for Christmas dinner.

 

That the dinner was a holiday celebration made no difference to him. He was just over the moon that we were having someone over for dinner. It had been over a year since this had happened, dinner parties being beyond my bandwidth these days. When I told him our friends were coming for dinner, he said, "Really? We're going to sit at the table and eat and talk and laugh? Oh, that's wonderful!"

 

It surprised me how clear his expectations were, and I was happy that he was excited about something. (I also felt guilty that I hadn't made more of an effort to have people over.)

 

And at Christmas, we did sit at the table with two dear friends and we did eat and talk and laugh. At least, three of us did. Bru was very quiet, and I was so wrapped up in the demands of hospitality that I didn't notice right away. He got up at one point and brought a photographic book to the table. We all looked at it and were very appreciative of it, but Bru didn't say much about it. I gave some background information about the book and told the story of when Bru bought it. One of our guests was very taken with it and will probably buy a copy for herself. Bru ate quietly for a while, and then he wandered off again.

 

I followed him a few minutes later and asked if he was OK. He said no. "I wanted to talk about that book."

 

I said I was sorry and invited him to come back. "We're all interested in what you want to say. I'll be sure to give you time to talk all you want."

 

"No," he said with a slow shake of his head. "I don't think I can."

 

He wasn't frustrated like he gets when he can't find the words to say what he means. He was mostly bemused and, underneath that, deeply disappointed.

 

He didn't know what he wanted to say. He knew there was something, once upon a time, that was important to him about that book. But he couldn't think of it now.

 

It broke my heart, not only that his joyful anticipation was disappointed, but that he was aware of the disappointment.

 

He has always been accepting of his limitations, and he accepted this with admirable grace. We came back to the table with another book, one that was handy because he had just found it under the Christmas tree that morning. It was one I knew our friends would appreciate as well. He also brought a funny greeting card that he had been giggling about all day.

 

With the help of the good company of our friends, I moved through the rest of dinner and dessert with good humor and gratitude. Bru did not exactly enjoy himself, but I think he felt some satisfaction in the good conversation and the laughter of others.

 

I didn't cry until later, until the dishes were washed and Bru had gone to sleep. I'm grateful Bru was spared my grief.

Musings on Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple's Journey Through Alzheimer's, by Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle.

 

Finding meaning in the loss of the capacity to find meaning: that is the challenge for anyone whose life has been spent in the pursuit of meaning and who now faces dementia. Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle and her husband, Harrison "Hob" Hoblitzelle, both put the study and practice of meditation at the center of their personal and professional lives. Olivia's memoir of their life after Hob had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's refers to many of the difficulties they encountered, but she spends much more time describing and explaining the rewards of sharing, insight, and patience.

 

Hob and Olivia decided soon after his diagnosis to accept his condition and be open to the lessons it offered, and he spent much of his final years observing with curiosity the progress of the disease. It was meaningful to him, and he could share that with Olivia, and that sharing multiplied the joys of their journey together.

 

As I read it, I was a bit envious.

 

I have often wondered whether being more open with Bru about his dementia might be good for him, and for me. But his reaction to being told he had dementia was very different from Hob's. The diagnosis was deeply traumatic. For months, he refused to leave the house without me. He did not want to be alone at home, either. He was terribly anxious and grief-stricken for weeks and weeks. Only gradually did we claw our way back to a place where he could exercise a significant level of independence.

 

He has since lost most of that independence, but the intense anxiety has faded away. Thank God.

 

Though I was distressed by Bru's diagnosis—I knew he had some cognitive problems, but I hadn't realized he had already crossed over the line that defines dementia—I was traumatized by his anxiety. Now I rarely mention his dementia to him or in his presence. Really, only at the doctor's office. If we talk about his condition, we refer to his "memory problems." He knows he has lost many of his memories—he can't remember how we met, or some of the places where he taught, or colleagues he worked with every day. He knows he has trouble solving problems and can't find the words for what he wants to say. He knows his capacities are diminished, but he thinks of it as normal aging. Which it isn't, however common it might be among people in their late 80s.

 

Would it be better for him to find meaning in his diminishment? Would greater awareness in the moment be a blessing or a curse, a joy or a sorrow? Would it be both, and could I stand the curse for the sake of the blessing?

 

Though Bru didn't have as strong a commitment or understanding of meditation and spiritual journeying as the Hoblitzelles, he has long been a consciously spiritual person and did keep up a meditation practice for many years until very recently. However, he no longer understands the point of meditation.

 

He has found other, narrower, outlets. He still finds comfort in sharing contemplative spaces with me, for example, and he loves to study black and white photographs that he has made, as well as those of some of the great photographers he has known. He is often moved to the point of tears when he is fully immersed in an image or a moment. There is a deep joy in that, but the concepts behind such experiences are beyond his interest.

 

Bru's narrower outlets get narrower all the time. The narrowing seems to be the corresponding sorrow to my continuing joy in the beauty of our everyday. It is a mercy that Bru isn't aware of the narrowing as such. And I'm grateful for such mercies, though I still weep over them.

For all the time I've known Bru, he hasn't been religious. (He joined the Mormons as a teenager but left them after a few years.) I've been a Roman Catholic all my life, and for most of our marriage, he was quite happy to be left behind when I went to Mass. However, as his cognitive decline became more noticeable, his desire to come along grew.

 

I believe this began because he simply didn't want to be alone, but he often seems to enjoy Mass now. Always a people watcher, he observes how our fellow parishioners pray (or don't), how children behave (or don't), and how people dress up (or don't). He likes the music when it's well done, which is most of the time, and he really likes how one of the priests preaches.

 

Two Sundays ago, he seemed confused and a little upset before we left for church. This isn't unusual when we are leaving the house, but he seemed to have something on his mind that he couldn't articulate. He said he didn't feel well. This also isn't unusual, but I told him we could stay home, that if he felt sick we didn't need to go to church.

 

"No, I want to go to church. I've been looking forward to it."

 

As we walked to the church, he was close to tears and said several times, "I'm sorry," as if he had done something that had hurt me. I tried to reassure him that all was well, and the wave of emotion receded, though it swelled again when we sat down, and then receded once more.

 

The priest announced at the beginning of Mass that there would be an anointing of the sick after the homily. I wondered whether I should be anointed, to help ease the psychological strain I've been feeling, and I also thought how wonderful it would be if Bru were anointed. But I immediately dismissed both ideas because I didn't want to create any additional confusion for Bru. He's not familiar with the rite, and I didn't know if he would understand my instructions in the moment. So when the time came, we didn't stand for the blessing.

 

But as the actual anointing began, I could tell Bru was agitated and close to tears. I put my hand on his knee and leaned close to ask him if he was OK. He shook his head. Then something prompted me to ask if he wanted to be anointed. He took a beat to answer, but when he did, it was a very firm "Yes."

 

I whispered, "OK! Stand up, now."

 

I guided him to the end of the pew. Then I showed him how to hold his hands, palms upward. When the priest anointed his forehead, I said "Amen" for him, and when his palms were anointed, he said "Amen" for himself.

 

He became calm as we sat down, and I wondered briefly if a miracle would take place, if his dementia would disappear or his cognitive decline would recede like the wave of emotion after his anointing.

 

It didn't. There was no miracle cure. But something seemed different.

 

When we got home, he sobbed for a long time, regretting the difficulties his family endured when he was young. Afterwards, he seemed lighter, and he was more talkative and engaged than usual for the rest of the day.

 

We didn't talk about the anointing.

 

The next morning, he was positively chirpy. He was watching the squirrels in the backyard, and hoping some deer would come by so he could go out and shoo them away. He laughed at jokes and made very bad puns. And he was singing, a phrase here and there from old standards, usually triggered by a word or phrase from our conversation.

 

There's no miracle here. He doesn't remember his anointing at all. But since then, he has been lighter and happier. Not a lot, but enough to notice. I hope (and pray, with gratitude) that this new ease, whatever the source, will continue to give him more good days in whatever time he has left.

A review of Our Nazi: An American Suburb's Encounter with Evil, by Michael Soffer.

 

Michael Soffer's Our Nazi is a clear and accessible history of one case of a former Nazi SS officer and concentration camp guard who immigrated to the United States. Like a fair number of others, he assumed a quiet suburban life while hiding his past from his neighbors and the authorities. Our Nazi does a very good job of describing the wider context of Nazi hunting in the 1970s and '80s on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations as well as other organizations. Our Nazi is also a courtroom drama conveyed with skillful storytelling.

 

The historical research is thorough, and it is also very personal. It includes the words and perspectives of many ordinary people, which for me makes it compelling reading. It depicts the conflict in the middle-class community of Oak Park, Illinois that results from the revelation that a well-known and well-liked neighbor and friend, Reinhold Kulle, has a dark Nazi past. The shock reverberates throughout the community and splits it into two factions. It illustrates very well how such community tensions can bring latent antisemitism to the surface and notes how this case followed a typical pattern in its public reaction: initial denial, then minimizing or normalizing the past behavior, followed by a call to let bygones be bygones that contrasts Christian forgiveness with Jewish vengeance.

 

Soffer rightly points out the intentional and unintentional distortions of record, and sometimes outright lies, of Kulle's defenders, without painting them all with a broad brush of bad intentions. However, he does a disservice to the anti-Kulle contingent by not taking a more critical view of their position and contentions, because their side—which is where Soffer's sympathies lie—is just not as comprehensible in his telling. I kept wanting more of an analytical framework through which to compare and contrast the ideas on both sides, rather than simply the documentation of righteous outrage that supposedly speaks for itself.

 

If understanding is the purpose, it would have been helpful to point out and discuss the pros and cons of both sides' arguments in a systematic way. For example, the question of whether Kulle was a Nazi or a former Nazi is fundamental to understanding the schism. Kulle's defenders, if they referred to his past, consistently called him a former Nazi. Kulle's adversaries called him a Nazi just as consistently. It is a basic difference in point of view that causes, or at least is a symptom of, a deep rift in the community. But Soffer doesn't point out this difference or analyze it in any way. The contrast remains implicit, when an explicit examination could have been illuminating.

 

Kulle's friends, neighbors, and colleagues did not see him as a Nazi; there was nothing in his behavior in the community that coincided with Nazi ideology. His adversaries seemed to believe once a Nazi, always a Nazi, and that anyone who had participated in the Holocaust was a current moral danger. A case might be made for that point of view, but Soffer doesn't make it and neither do his sources. To the Kulle adversaries, it was self-evident. It's not self-evident to me, however, and so I'm left sympathetic but unenlightened.

 

The bias of the book is evident in its subtitle: an American suburb's encounter with evil. Most people in Oak Park did not encounter evil in this case—Kulle was kind and supportive, a caring colleague, friend, and neighbor. He did a lot of good in his decades in Oak Park, which Soffer shows very clearly and fairly. There was no evidence that Kulle engaged in any persecution or other evil while he lived in Oak Park. To his adversaries, however, his presence in the community was experienced as the presence of evil. I don't understand this point of view, however much I would like to, and Soffer doesn't explain it. I'd like to know the logic behind their argument that the legal issues should be separated from the moral issues. What exactly do they mean by "moral" in this situation? And more specifically, why should past wrongs be weighed more heavily than right living in the present? At one point a Kulle adversary maintains that it is an issue of justice rather than vengeance. I want to know what the difference is in their eyes, so that I can understand the distinction and their ardor in pursuing justice. But neither term is defined, so again, I'm left sympathetic but unenlightened. For those who aren't sympathetic, antisemitic tropes often rush to fill in the explanation.

 

I have a deep interest in the Holocaust, though no personal connection to it. Although I think Our Nazi missed an opportunity to help explain the lasting impact of the past on Holocaust survivors and their descendants and relations, it did a good job of documenting that impact in Oak Park. I learned a lot from it, particularly regarding American perspectives on the Holocaust.

 

Thank you to NetGalley and the University of Chicago Press for providing access to an advance copy.

When you live with someone who has dementia, truth often becomes irrelevant. Lying is not only a practical necessity but sometimes the only humane option.

 

For example, more and more Bru asks me, "Where's Cheryl?" Until recently, I've always smiled, raised my hand, and said, "I'm Cheryl!" That used to be all it took for him to be assured that I was indeed present and accounted for. Now, however, he doesn't believe me. Not always, at any rate. If I insist that I'm Cheryl, it just frustrates him and makes him increasingly fearful that something has happened to me. The only way to give him the assurance he needs is to lie.

 

You would think that it would come easily to me, fiction writers already having an ambiguous relationship with the truth. But it turns out I'm not a very good liar. (Exactly what a good liar would tell you. I would imagine.) Lying well requires spontaneity—improvisation—and that's never been my strong suit.

 

With writing, you can take time to plot and shape your lies so that they are believable. You can control your tells. In fact, you can control the whole world as long as you're willing to create it! My instinct makes me want every lie to fit into a whole. The lie needs a backstory, and it has to lead to the next scene and eventually to the end game.

 

Lying in real time is dynamic and interactive, and I would just hate to be caught in a lie (probably why I have a lifetime's experience telling the truth). Whether suspicious or curious, there are bound to be questions. I keep wanting my lies to have a good backstory in case I need to improvise, so that I have something to work with. But I have to fight that instinct.

 

Making the lie as simple as possible is the key to keeping the questions to a minimum. I have to make it an uninteresting bit of banality that leads nowhere—the exact opposite of what you want in fiction.

 

The thing is, whether the lie is plain or fascinating, Bru won't remember it. And he won't remember any lies I've told before. There's no way I can build a world he would recognize, however much I might want to.

 

I have to enter his world and respond to his questions and demands as if his perception defined reality. When he tells me I'm not Cheryl, I have to agree.

 

So if I'm not Cheryl, where is she?

 

Taking care of some business in town—depositing a check, or doing research at the library. Or else I can say, "I'm not sure. She didn't say. But she'll be back." And I've learned to add: "She asked me to stay with you until she gets back. She knows you don't like to be alone."

 

That makes him smile a little and relax.  He says, "That's true."

 

He seems to interpret that little tag on the lie as meaning that Cheryl cares, that she is thinking about him, that he is loved, that he is not alone. And even if all that weren't the truth, I'd still say it, because that's what he needs to hear.

Musings inspired by Philip Kennicott's Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning

 

I knew I had to read Philip Kennicott's book Counterpoint when I read the subtitle: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning. The subtitle of my book Unequal Temperament could be "a novel of Bach and mourning." Of course, it's about more than Bach and mourning, just as Kennicott's memoir touches on much more, but the overlap struck a chord that has many lingering sympathetic vibrations.

 

Kennicott's memoir is a book to learn from. And I did learn a lot about Bach, and specifically the Goldberg Variations, but what was most thought-provoking to me was a pattern woven into the fabric of the book: practice, meaning not only a way of perfecting performance, but also a discipline, or even a vocation.

 

I have always been good at practice in the former sense—finding efficient ways to learn skills. In music, it came naturally to me—I didn't need to be taught how to practice in the way that Kennicott did. I suspect that his lack of skills in the art of practicing piano resulted from his natural talent for music. As a child, if I wanted to learn any piece of music on the piano, even the easiest, I had to practice hard. Whereas Kennicott could play piano passably and enjoyably without all that hard work, at least when he was starting out. For me, the work of practice made play possible, and indeed, work transformed seamlessly into play as I practiced, so that, phrase by phrase, I was rewarded immediately with play once I'd done the work. For Kennicott, it seems, play stopped when practice started. Practice didn't have the immediate payoff of allowing him to play—he could already play, so he just played and didn't put in the work to achieve a deep knowledge of the music. Real practice was a distraction from play.

 

This is how I make sense of Kennicott's astounding statement, "I'm … not sure I love music at all." It's more complicated. "Music is not a pleasure in any simple sense of the word. It is an obligation, a duty, an obsession, an ineradicable part of my life." I would use the word vocation for this kind of dedication, which implies to me a more profound understanding of one's object of devotion.

 

Kennicott's sense of obligation is more like what I feel for writing than what I feel for music. When I came to the point of deciding how much of my life I could devote to music, I turned away from it, knowing I could never practice enough to play at a level that would satisfy me or do justice to the music. I turned away from making music seriously about the time I turned to writing. In my life, with my level of talent, there is not enough time for music and for writing.

 

Reading Counterpoint got me thinking about Unequal Temperament's protagonist, Morgan, and her relationship to practice. She is more accomplished—and I daresay more talented—than Kennicott and far more than I am. There is no doubt in my mind that she could learn the Goldberg Variations at a deep and meaningful level. And she would probably play them on her harpsichord rather than her piano, though she might choose to learn on the piano a few variations that could benefit from the dynamic qualities of that instrument.

 

But when her father dies, Morgan turns away from playing the music she loves and leans into music that requires practice, discipline, work. In that way she has some similarities with Kennicott, who in mourning his mother turns to the work and practice of learning the Goldberg Variations. Morgan's grief is complicated by regrets that she doesn't want to look at, that in the first throes of grief she doesn't have the strength to look at.

 

Morgan and her father were close, and in her grief she turns away from what reminds her of him: the Baroque music they both loved, his paintings, and even memories of growing up. Kennicott and his mother had a much more fraught relationship, which I imagine contributed to the fraught aspects of his relationship with music. In learning the Goldberg Variations while mourning his mother, he deepens his understanding of his mother's influence on his life and his personality.

 

I'm talking about Kennicott as if he were a character, and Morgan as if she were a real person. I'm not convinced that's fair, but for a reader who values literature as a practice in empathy, such comparisons become second nature. I can't help but feel the better for it.

An appreciation of Victoria Chang's poetry collection Obit.

 

"My father's brain has died before him. It was surrounded by his beloved skull. What if the hinges on his skull break and his brain falls out? Do I give it back or toss it? What if we call the waiter over and God comes instead? Do we offer him a seat and a brandy or do we cover our eyes and hope He doesn't see us?"

~ Victoria Chang

 

I was starstruck by Victoria Chang's brilliant line, "What if we call the waiter over and God comes instead?" from the prose poem "The Obituary Writer" in her superb book Obit. Here are some of my musings on why.

 

It has been the basis of my most moving religious experiences that God is with us here and now in one another—one of us, and all of us. But there's something else going on in this line.

 

God comes not as an inherent part of the waiter's humanity, but instead. There's a sense of panic in coming face to face with God, and a sense of shame that we would rather avoid something that should be a great honor. Is it because I'm not ready for it? Because I'm embarrassed that I don't know what the protocol is? Because what I've ordered, or wanted to order, is something God would not or should not give? Or am I afraid He will bring exactly what I ordered?

 

Maybe God will tell me he has opened up my husband's head, pulled out his shrinking brain, and tossed it.

 

No, God wouldn't tell me that. Would He? (Would She?) Please don't tell me that was a "secret supplication of the heart" tracked by the Recording Angel.

 

Caring for, and grieving for, someone who is suffering from increasing dementia is not only heart-wrenching, it's exhausting. Sometimes I just want it to be over.

 

But of course I don't want it to be over. Though we've lost a great deal, there's so much left to experience and discover.

 

If only I had the time, energy, patience, and love to do this right, to appreciate everything Bru can still do and treasure every aspect of life we still have together. If only I could be, if not the perfect partner, at least a competent caregiver.

 

This is how I feel: conflicted, ashamed, disloyal, confused, beaten down, and embarrassed by it all. A failure at love and at care. And of course I know that my feelings do not define reality, real though they are. I know that I'm managing, that I'm doing much that is right, and that failing in the moment at a particular task does not make me a failure.

 

But still, do I really want to know what God might think of me? Will He give me what I ordered (which order?), or give me what I deserve?

 

Victoria Chang's poetry collection Obit largely comprises prose poems in the format of obituaries. It examines the extended and fractured grief that comes with the slow death of a loved one, as well the ambiguous loss created by dementia. In this book, many things die before anyone breathes their last: the father's frontal lobe, the mother's lungs, the poet (many times), language (many times), voice mail, the future, civility, privacy, and on and on.

 

I have my own list of things that merit a private obituary. The surreality in many of Chang's obituaries dovetails my experience of the way grief can distort and disorient as I deal with Bru's disorientation and declining abilities. In Chang's hands, the clarity of grief's distortion can be redemptive, and I'm grateful for her showing me that sometimes moments of beauty can be made of heartache, frustration, and anger. Obit is an important book, and I'm glad to have it on my shelf.