on mourning music

Sometimes, when I walk down Jasper Avenue or along the aisles of the grocery store, I find myself humming. Or whistling.

I don't really do this on purpose; in fact, sometimes I'm kind of embarrassed to hear myself. But in a way, I think of it as a moment with my grandfather.

I know that sounds silly. My grampa passed away 15 years ago.

He was a military man who loved music. He made mixed tapes for everyone in his life -- his family, his neighbours, friends at the local Legion, even waitresses who mentioned in passing a fondness for Edith Piaf. Growing up, we always knew when he was coming home because we could hear him whistle as he made his way down the hill.

I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking, which I technically did not enjoy. I found it depressing, found myself thinking about my grandfather, about loss, about death. I found myself crying randomly, over tiny things.

But today, when we discussed the book in book club, I found myself defending Joan Didion.

At worst, reading her memoir of grief feels voyeuristic, like reading a diary after the writer has given in, completely, to sadness and self-pity.

At its best, however, the book is like a love song with a chorus of questions running through it.

In a way, nothing particularly tragic happened to Didion. Her husband, in his 70s, passed away at the kitchen table. She, at about 70, struggled with grief and loss and a dreadful kind of sadness that made it nearly impossible to truly believe her husband was gone.

That is life.

But it's an interesting idea that a full-blown, all-of-a-sudden tragedy, when a young person gets shot to death for example, draws out our greatest sympathies. We might think of a person wallowing in the day-to-day tragedy of life as self-pitying, or self-indulgent.

As much as I did not enjoy the book, that seems a little unfair.

all my embarrassing secrets

Friends: "Your British accent is really, really terrible."
Me: "Hey! Just this morning I was reading Sense and Sensibility out loud to myself and I sounded great!"
Friend: "NO! That can't be true!"
Other friend: "It's her secret single behaviour...."

I'm not midway through Sense and Sensibility, but I must admit I've seriously come around on Elinor.

Yes, she's boring (not Fanny Price boring, but still). Yes, she's not as romantic as Marianne. But she's also not as silly, frankly. The way I think of Wuthering Heights as a teenage girl's fantasy, I think of Marianne as a heroine to the Crushing on Zac Efron crowd. (That's who the kids like these days, right? Zac Efron? Is it bad, by the way, that I too walked out of 17 Again with a wee crush on him?)

Elinor's a heroine to the been-there, done-that, keep your chin up for the love of dignity, set. I think Jane Austen may have liked her better.

And the girl can take a slap in the face like no one's business.

Also, just started reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking for book club -- a very strange juxtaposition. [Oh my God. Wikipedia says this book is a classic in "mourning literature." Is there such a thing? Mourning literature? How is that helpful? Of course, it's not supposed to be "helpful," I suppose. For that, one moves on to the self-help section? Ok, stopping my not-based-on-any-facts-at-all rant.]

I've been warned about this one: Writing's gorgeous but the chances of getting seriously depressed are good.

The book starts on this note -- words I imagine typed, zombie-like, soon after the author's husband's death:

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

quiet

My great mistake was in being born the younger. No. Where I went wrong was in coming back here, once I'd got away. A person has to be ruthless. One has to say I'm going, and not be prevailed upon to return.

But how could I? (p. 13)

I'm wading through Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God.

I say wading, because I can't bear to sink into it and the loneliness of heroine Rachel Cameron.

Really, "heroine" -- so far -- is an overstatement. Rachel is so sad! Possibly depressed. She is a school teacher in her early 30s, living alone with her widowed mother in her hometown. She sleeps in her childhood bedroom, teaches in her childhood classroom, gets her hair done by the same dresser she's known all her life....

But here's what I like: It's bloody honest.

This is my second Laurence novel, first released in 1966. And yes, on the surface Rachel is a lovely martyr. But in her head, she's railing against her mother's bridge parties. She shakes her fist -- in her head, again -- at her smug married sister. She purposely turns a blind eye to children being bullied in the school yard, not because she doesn't care, but because she can't let them know she cares.

And she's evaluating the whole time. There's a bitterness to her character, but I match it to hope for a turnaround. There's a plot to come, yes? Laurence could not have written a Governor General's Award for ability to depress? And surely Margaret Atwood would not have written the afterword if Rachel turns out to be little more than the put-upon Anne Elliott of Manitoba?

I'll keep you posted. And then, I will start reading new book club selection The Year of Magical Thinking.