what's good : cathartic crying
CW - death/suicide
Interestingly in the past few weeks, I have finished a Netflix series and two novels that dealt specifically with death, then had a friend bring up in casual conversation the question of what we think happens after dying. This is not a topic I usually enjoy dwelling upon but it is one that I do find fascinating. I was lucky enough to not be much acquainted with death during my childhood - most of my grandparents lived at least until I was in in my twenties; a few classmates died when we were in high school & college but I didn’t know them well enough to attend their funerals. Then the summer after my first year of teaching, a former student was killed in a car accident and during our faculty back-to-school assembly, I suddenly experienced a heaving, sobbing episode when they mentioned her death. Obviously it was upsetting to know a 14-year old who was part of my Leadership class was no longer living, but I also recalled that she didn’t turn in the last assignment, a letter to herself in 10 years, so I had nothing tangible & personal to offer her family. I had no idea what a parent must feel in the midst of losing a child but I wildly thought that maybe this one small silly thing might have brought a molecule of solace. The lack of control and solutions broke my heart & brain.
Since then the Universe has made up for all those blissfully ignorant years by sending me ample losses to endure with beloved family members, friends, and too many students, and I have spent a lot of time in art + my own head trying to decipher my feelings & beliefs about Death. Here are a few things that have given me a little peace and food for thought lately, despite their dark themes.
In streaming: Based on a novel by David Nicholls, Netflix’s series One Day is essentially a sweet story of enduring love, following two seemingly mismatched people who meet & connect at their university graduation in the late ‘80s and decide to check in with each other at least once a year from then on. Of course we know they will fall in love but the journey is simply gorgeous in its realness, including all the hardships and general nonsense of becoming adults in the Real World + the specific absurdities of life through the 1990s/early 21st century. Even knowing the brutal turn toward the end (I haven’t read the book yet but did see the movie version1), I gladly invested my time and tear ducts every day for a week, plus am ready to revisit and make my husband watch with me this time.
In books: I rarely purchase books at full price outside of an independent shop but I needed something to read on my 5-hour flight home from Richmond last week, so grabbed the most interesting title at the airport. Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli has a tragic premise - a young woman’s husband has recently died by suicide - but the writing is immediately captivating. Her story begins at what feels like an absolute ending yet shows in breathtaking, harrowing, heartbreaking clarity how a left-behind partner continues living. Nwabineli and her narrator Eve Ezenwa-Morrow are both Nigerian British, bringing another layer of relationships to this story of deep grief, which is also ultimately a story of deep love. Not for nothing, I pictured One Day’s Leo Woodall as Eve’s husband Q, which made the whole thing even more beautifully devastating as I read. Beyond the raw circumstances of devastation & loss in the living experience, Nwabineli also gracefully illuminates the particular sorrows of suicide and its aftermath.
Immediately after finishing this book, I brought home My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga from our school library. It’s a young adult novel centered on Aysel Seran, a Turkish American teen whose father violently murdered a local boy a few years before, leaving her to live with her mother, stepfather, and younger half-siblings in their small Kentucky town. As a result of her father’s crime, Aysel is ostracized at school and uncomfortable in her new home, so she begins to plan her own death. She finds a ‘suicide partner’ in Roman, a teen from a neighboring town who blames himself for his little sister’s death. But in the course of arranging their end, Aysel discovers a renewed interest in living and decides to try convincing Roman to change his mind, too. Warga writes her teen voices with an authenticity that is appropriately naive but not silly, short-sighted yet thoughtful; every honest adult can relate to the uncertainty & despair these two adolescents carry through every day, whether or not we actually considered suicide. Woven into her narrative is Aysel’s interest in physics, specifically the question of how energy changes form - since it cannot be destroyed or lost - when people die. I appreciated how the story did not glamorize suicide but also refused to demonize its ideation; this balance can be difficult to achieve but Warga managed it well. The teens’ feelings of sadness & despairing desperation are validated and treated respectfully, even as we hold onto the hope that they will seek outside perspective. SPOILER BELOW if desired, as I will give to any student checking out this book.2
In poetry: Anne Sexton is well known as one of the ‘confessional poets’ of the 1950s & ‘60s due to her frequent themes of mental illness, sex, addiction, and many other topics considered taboo at the time, for women in particular. She ultimately died by suicide in 1974 after a number of attempts throughout her life, during which she suffered from bipolar disorder. These things make her poem “Welcome Morning” stand out as particularly poignant to me, though upon my first reading - after experiencing many of her other more popular published works - I wondered if she was being sarcastic. It feels so light and open, noticing & praising the ordinary in her life; the tone is startlingly different from most of what we know from her. She was raised Protestant, intrigued by Catholicism, and had previously developed a pen pal-like relationship with a monk who sent a fan letter, so religion was part of her life, but often not addressed in such a loving, reflective manner. But I found that she edited her last poems, including this one, after spending two days in a mental hospital and also speaking with a priest. I like to believe that this poem was a love letter (and apology?) for those she left behind. And maybe to herself, at last.
Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.Also good but 115 minutes is not nearly enough time for us to feel all the feels Nicholls brings us; 14 episodes is better - with the stellar performances of main & side characters alike to the gloriously nostalgic soundtrack.
The kids survive.