A Grief Observed

If God were a substitute for love we ought to have lost all interest in Him. Who'd bother about substitutes when he has the thing itself?

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Then what if love were a substitute for God? God is love, but love is not a god. 

"...death is like that (I can see); it happens every day, but when you see the mourners, they behave as if it were so new, this event, dying--someone you love dies--it has never happened before; it is so unexpected, so unfair, unique to you. ... Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they can't just go on and on, and if they can't go on and on, then they must go, but it is hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you can survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go." 

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother

Chapter Eighteen.

     After I hung up the phone, it rang a minute later.
     "You think I'm talented, don't you?" Lucy said.
     "Of course I think you're talented."
     "Okay. I was just checking. Good-bye again."
     And then she was gone.

From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

The last chapter. The last words Ann exchanges with Lucy. I can't remember what my last words were to Chris. It was a Thursday evening the last time I saw him. I wish I had been a better friend. 

Is it okay to write letters to a dead person? One reason a letter can be mailed back to you is the recipient's death. I don't know if that's right or fair. But I guess you can't do anything about it. 

Written in my journal a week ago. Because I don't want to fail my memory. 

Chapter Seventeen

     "Don't stop loving me."

     "I'm always going to love you."

     "Don't stop taking my calls."

     "Lucy," I said. "Check your answering machine sometime. I call you every day."

From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Chapter Sixteen 2

"I have the most extraordinary friends. I've never really understood why everyone has been so good to me, and now I can interview them, talk to them and see." Then she added as a gift, "I'll write a whole chapter about you."
     "I could write an entire book about you," I said, and laughed.

From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

She did. Beautifully. 

Chapter Sixteen

     When we were walking home, she softened and maybe felt a little sorry for making a scene, if only because she knew I hated scenes. She twisted her arm around mine. "Don't listen to me," she said. "I just get going sometimes. You know that."
     "I do."
     She pushed her head into my shoulder. "And you still love me?"
     I was still mad at her, furious with her, but that wasn't the question. The question was did I love her. And I always loved her.

--From Ann Pathcett's Truth and Beauty 

Such friendships are rare. The kind you always love and understand and forgive. The kind you see each other in years at a restaurant and slip into a conversation so easily. A first and singular and irreplaceable kind of friendship.

I pride myself in having one. And one is enough because Lizzy is brilliant and funny and of course, the only person I know who has read almost every Russian author's thick and impossibly long books. The letters and phone calls cover our fourteen-hour distance and although I have not seen her in--I lost count--six years, I know she's always there for me. 

Chapter Fifteen

Dearest Anngora, my cynical pirate of the elusive heart, my self winding watch, my showpiece, my shoelace, how are you?

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Lucy's letter to Ann. One beautiful way to ask Ann about the depth of her life. 

Chapter Fourteen

"What happened?" was the first question. ...
     "Hives," I said. I was getting used to them.

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

I completely understand Ann. I imagine her million red blotches, constantly imploring to be scratched.  I remember when I had hives all over me--I was utterly shocked by the fact that I was, in fact, allergic to something in this world, for the first time in my life. I stopped using shampoo, body wash, lotion once at a time but even after three immensely long months, could not determine what I was allergic to. I rubbed all kinds of skin ointment, scrupulously medicated myself Benadryl, and tried very hard to resist the urge to give a little scratch. So after five months, I was on the verge of giving up. 

In the end, it turned out to be my laundry detergent. I therefore immediately banned my use of All and bought Tide--the one that's fragrance-free, colorless, and most importantly, dermatologist-tested. My hives began to disappear. You don't know how liberating that felt--to not have any more red blotches that became bumps that eventually bled and finally left scars. To not be sleepy and tempted all the time. To not be asked questions. 

Chapter Thirteen

Then she got a note from George Staphanopoulos. 
...
Of course that must have been the thing that everyone was thinking, everyone she told the story to. Did you tell him about your face?
     After that she asked me constantly, "Why didn't he call me again?" 
     "You said that he wouldn't. You said mutually no sparks."
     "It's because I'm ugly," she said. "I know why."

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Poor Lucy. Mr. Staphanopoulos should have known better. Lucy was a brilliant writer--successful, famous, adventurous. Perfect, except she thought of her small defect called a face too much. She needn't.

Chapter Twelve

     "You're a poet," I said when she read me everything she had.
     "I want to be a novelist."
     "You're a novelist, too. Don't worry about that." I believed at that moment there was nothing to worry about. Her writing was gorgeous. She could write a novel as long as she could find a way to stay in her chair.

From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

I wish I could be a poet and a novelist at the same time like Lucy. 

I read a very worthwhile passage in the SAT yesterday. It said that one needs 10,000 hours of practice to become an eclat professional in whatever skill one wanted to perfect. 20 hours a week for 10 years. I think Lucy became one in less than 10,000 hours. 

Chapter Eleven

      Lucy knew which cat wanted to be held and which one wanted to be smacked. The weight she put on things so often struck me as backwards, but in some ways she had a deep understanding of the logic of the world. I would have thought that the prospect of getting teeth after twenty years spent without them would have been thrilling or daunting, but she shrugged it off. She had no interest in obsessing over possible outcomes. She would simply go and see what they had to say and that was all there was to do. And she was right.

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Getting teeth. Most of her teeth was gone because of radioactivity since she was ten. So chewing and swallowing was a very strenuous undertaking for Lucy. She was humiliated lest anyone see her drooling, unclosed mouth. She was embarrassed to eat in front of people. So getting teeth was supposed to be exciting for her. After talking with good doctors who suggested her nearly impossible options, she cried. But Lucy didn't lose hope. Perhaps she was so hopeful that she chased after even the most impossible.

Chapter Ten 2

     "I didn't remember it," Lucy said pointedly. "I wrote it. I'm a writer."
     This shocked the audience more than her dismissal of illness, but she made her point: she was making art, not documenting an event. That she chose to tell her own extraordinary story was of secondary importance. Her cancer and subsequent suffering had not made this book. She had made it. Her intellect and ability were in every sense larger than the disease.

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Because it is so good I write another post on chapter ten. 

 There are those gaps you have to fill in. There are those names and faces and places and things you do not remember precisely. So nonfiction cannot be completely true. But what Lucy wrote was true nonfiction. She was a cancer survivor, yes, but a better writer first.

Chapter Ten

Lucy's favorite rhetorical question was, "Will I ever have sex again?"

     Lucy had plenty of other questions as well: "Do you love me?" "You think I'm pretty, don't you?" "Do you think I'm a good writer?" But the odd part was they were all so interchangeable. What all of the questions really meant was, "Everything is going to be okay, right?" 

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beuaty

Lucy wanted to make sure she was going to be all right in the end. Lucy had her question answered in complete affirmation by Ann, almost all the time without any objection to why she was asked so many times a day and why so many variations? I can only imagine how hard it must be to have a face that is constantly changing. How confounding you would find yourself before a mirror and see how the face you remember from last week is replaced by a new one. So you don't know who you are, really. There is no connection between your face and your name. But you would be special--to be on TV and have friends all around you and be a bestselling writer. To be Lucy Grealy. 

Chapter Nine

     "I'm ugly," she said.
     "You aren't ugly."
     "I'm ugly and I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life."
     "Listen to me, pet. What you're going through is awful, it's really awful, but it isn't a judgment on your future. You aren't ugly and you aren't going to be alone forever just because things didn't work out with this guy."

     --From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Lucy always wanted to be loved. And for that, she thought being beautiful was what it required. Lucy kept thinking she would never be picked up by anyone and thought that it was because she was ugly. I don't think she is ugly. She has eyes that draws you in and I can almost see her long lashes make shadows as she reads or writes a famous book. She is like a child. I think she is quite beautiful. 

Chapter Six

     As much as Lucy liked my friends, it was important for her to know at every moment that she was my uncontested favorite. There was nothing subtle in her methodology. When we had lunch with Elizabeth, Lucy would inevitably leave her chair at some point during the meal and come and sit in my lap.
     ..."Do you love me?" she said.
     "Of course I love you."
     "Best?"
     "Yes best, but you are crushing my thigh."

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Lucy has been frozen in her ten-year-old self; she is like a child even in her mid-twenties. She wants to be loved and she wants that love to be expressed to her directly. She asks for it, too, like a child. 

I used to be like Lucy. Did not want to feel less important. Asked the same question Lucy did to Ann, except I asked mom and hoped and hoped I was far more important and lovable than--well, of course--my younger brother. 

Chapter Five

There on Scottish TV in the dead of night was Allan Gurganus, talking about the publication of his first novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Allan had been my most important teacher in college. He was the person who had taught me to write. Now he was there in the living room in Aberdeen, handsome in his bow tie, calmly discussing his life as a writer. ... I decided then and there that I would be like Lucy. I would be like Allan. I vowed that I would write my way into another life. I, too, would try for everything.

--Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Ann says she decided to try for everything by becoming a writer. She doesn't say she would try everything; there is a distinction, I think, that Ann adds the preposition "for." 

I know Ann is not happy on page 71. She has gone through so much with Lucy and without her. She is twenty-five and divorced. She is broke. She is a waitress in Tennessee. She does not write much, save her letters to Lucy. And here Ann decides to become a writer, to "try for everything." For Lucy. 

Chapter Four

     One night after work I was sitting on the edge of my mother's bed, reading her Lucy's letter.
     "Save all of those," she told me when I was finished.
     "I save some of them," I said, but she and I both knew I never was much on saving anything.
     My mother said it again. I was to save them all. "Someday you'll both be famous writers," she said. "And these letters will be very important to you."

--Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

I save those long letters from friends faraway. I tuck them inside my journal. They are the extra pages of my book, and the book has become quite thick and ajar since I've tucked them all in. 

I love letters. I love photographs. Anything that contains the essence of a person. I even keep the article about open source with daddy's picture in it, even though I have no technological understanding of what great work he does. I keep your emails too, Mrs. Bell! (I know--this is beginning to sound like some fan letter...) 

I'm glad Ann read Lucy's letter to Mrs. Patchett. I'm glad Mrs. Patchett told her daughter to save them. I wonder how she knew Ann and Lucy were both going to be famous. She was more right than the fortune teller who told Ann she was forever going to be with Dennis (whom she divorced a year after their marriage) and told Lucy nobody's ever going to find her (Ann did!). I should listen to my mom more. 

Chapter Three

Grief isn't something to 'be gotten through.' It has no life of its own like that, it's just plain and simply there. It's one of the things which tells us we're human. It's funny, but I'm always forgetting I had cancer. It seems like a different person that happened to. ...
     It's much the same with my father. Like the chemo he comes back to haunt me all the time, but it's often a detached sort of haunting. Or it is very emotional, very joyous. That might sound odd, but often I feel better able to live and love life through remembering my father. James Tate has a wonderful poem about his father called "The Lost Pilot" (also the name of the book); have you ever read it? It's about the advantages (I don't mean to be crude, using that word) of his father's early death, how now as an adult he realizes his father would already be dead, or very old and decrepit. I have a very pure image of my own father, one that is almost a myth. It has more to do with me than with him. 

--from Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

One of the letters from Lucy that Patchett kept. Or I should call her Ann. Reading her memoir brings me very close to her. Like I've known her at Sarah Lawrence or in Iowa or Nashville or the TGI Friday's she waited tables at. So I shall call her Ann. 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177311 

Probably Ann has already read this poem. I just finished reading it. It's lovely. I'm listening to him now. I think in every person who was once a child there is an image of whoever was dear to him or her kept frozen in time. I'm reminded of this frozen image. 

Chapter Two

     "You girls pick up hitchhikers?"
     "I do," Lucy said, meaning that if she had a car she certainly would.
     He nodded and we watched the back of his head, his long ponytail caught up in a greasy knot. "I tried to hitch from Chicago to Cedar Rapids one time," he told us. "Didn't have enough money for a bus ticket. I started walking on the interstate and not one person stopped for me. Nobody. Ended up having to walk the whole way. It took me three days and I'll tell you, it was cold. Not one person cared if I needed help."
     We were all silent. I didn't know whether or not I should apologize, since I was sure I wouldn't have picked him up either.
     "You got to stop for people," he said, punctuating every word. "That's what you owe me for this ride. You have to pick up somebody else up. Do you understand me? Pick them up no matter what they look like."

--from Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

I wonder if I ever picked anyone up. I remember my first time skiing. I was too scared to go down the hill. But then somebody held my hand. He was not like my kidnapper when I was six in any way. (By then I knew how to distinguish a kind stranger from a kidnapper.) He held my hand and went down the hill with me and told me, "this is what it is to ski." That this kind stranger who came to my rescue was a middle-aged African American man contains something anthropologically important. He picked me up.

Listening to Ann Patchett

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1892114  

I am listening to Ann Patchett talk about her memoir, about Lucy Grealy.
"I don't think this is a sad book. I think this book is about loving someone who lived to be thirty-nine years old and really, really accomplished a lot."

I should have bought Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face.