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Comfort: A Journey Through Grief by Ann Hood Published by W.W. Norton 488 pages, 2008 
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A Template for Life Reviewed by Diane Leach In a world overrun with memoirs, parsing the good from the overwrought, the treacly, or even the completely faked can be nearly impossible. One need only look at the Frey hoopla (surely I wasn’t the only person, way back when, who questioned his claims of Novocain-free dental work?) to know that a genre capable of giving readers so much has taken some dents lately. The garbage, replete with talk show spots and new age affirmations, rises right to the top, while the finer works -- raw, honest, refusing ersatz comforts -- fall from sight, read by only a sleuthing few. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking transcended all that, but then again, she’s Didion. Enough soapbox. Ann Hood’s Comfort is about the death of her five-year-old daughter, Grace, who contracted a full-body strep infection that killed her in three days. Comfort was excerpted in a book I reviewed a few months ago, Nell Casey’s An Uncertain Inheritance. At the time I wrote:
Indeed, do read this at home -- at 188 pages, it is an evening or two’s reading -- have that drink nearby (Hood drank single malt whiskey, a fine choice), and keep the tissues handy. Hood begins Comfort with an essay that appeared in Tin House magazine. The theme was “Lies.” In it, Hood skewers everything people said to her in the weeks and months following Grace’s death. She is in a better place, with God, not suffering, time heals. Here is some Prozac, take up exercise, write this down, smoke a joint, keep a journal, join a group of fellow sufferers. Instead, Hood cries. She screams. She cries some more. She points out that nobody -- not C.S. Lewis, who lost his wife, not Rabbi Harold Kushner, who lost his son, not any of the mothers who have also written books about lost children -- have lost Grace. Grace, who loved the Beatles, who was shocked that girls had crushes on pretty Paul instead of intellectual John, Grace, who loved sparkly shoes and leopard print, Grace, who was a talented artist, Grace, whose favorite foods were buttered noodles and cucumbers. Grace, who was her little girl. Lorne’s daughter. Sam’s little sister. Specificity is everything. In my review of Nell Casey’s book I discussed my husband’s worsening neurological condition. John has Becker Muscular Dystrophy. Becker is a lesser version of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, known to many people as the Jerry Lewis Telethon Disease. Duchenne and Becker MD affect only boys. In each case, the body fails to make the necessary proteins that build muscle. Boys with Duchenne live around 20 years. Becker is less predictable. Some Becker patients experience only minimal muscle weakness. Others, like my husband, are wheelchair bound early (John was 29). The prognosis is uncertain; most Becker patients die either from pulmonary insufficiency or heart failure. As the cardiologist said to us last year, “When the hearts fails in MD, it happens very, very quickly.” I share this by way of explanation: I am drawn to memoirs ruthlessly describing shattering loss. I am looking for instructions, a schematic, a template for how to live. I do not seek explanations. There aren’t any. There is only grief, and the brute necessity of negotiating it. So when I read: “But none of them lost Grace. None of them know what it is to lose Grace.” I nodded in recognition. This does not for one moment detract from the catastrophic losses in China’s earthquake or Myanmar’s storms. But the mind can only focus on the specific: Grace’s glasses, her stuffed dog, Biff, her blanket, Cow. The way she said, “You can’t rush an artist, Mama,” when her mother and brother tried to hustle her off to school. I am in this for the specifics, and how to live with -- or without -- them. Hood’s narrative is not linear, but elliptical, returning repeatedly to the hospital where she stood with husband Lorne, watching through plexiglass as doctors tried and failed to save Grace. In the months following, Hood ceases functioning. She cries. Time becomes impossible, unfolding into events Hood must endure: Grace’s sixth birthday. The beginning of the school year. Thanksgiving, which finds her screaming in the street, literally pulling her hair out, running down the block, chased by her poor mother. Bless Gloria Hood. No grandmother should lose a grandchild and then have to comfort her middle-aged daughter, near insanity with grief. Hood is fortunate in having a large circle of family and friends who rush to her aid. Food appears on the doorstep. One friend, Sharon, comes every day. It is Sharon who goes downstairs to the creepy, low-ceilinged basement and finishes the load of laundry Hood began on April 18th, 2002. Sharon transfers the wet clothing to the dryer, then neatly folds the clean clothing: Ann’s, Lorne’s, Sam’s, Grace’s. Imagine it: folding small socks and undies and leggings and tops for a little girl who will never need them again. Brave, wonderful Sharon did this, then carried Grace’s clothing upstairs and laid it on her bed, where it sat untouched for three years, until Ann could bear to go through Grace’s things. Religion plays an interesting role in the family’s recovery. Husband Lorne, always more religious than his wife, seeks the church for solace. Hood finds worship unbearable; after a lifetime of broadminded spirituality, she is enraged at God. Her belief in Him wavers. The couple seek out numerous religious leaders for help. While all are kind, they can only mutter, ineffectively, that time will heal. When Hood refuses to attend church, religious differences threaten to open a rift in the couple’s otherwise solid union. A shaky truce is arranged, then shattered when the Church thoughtlessly sings “Amazing Grace” in September, Grace’s birthday month. Confronted by the sobbing family, the religious community, suitably mortified, agrees “Amazing Grace” will not be sung in September or April. Hood’s rage spills out elsewhere, mixed up with fear and grief. To avoid watching Grace’s classmates pour out of school, racing to their respective mothers’ cars, she is permitted to pick up Sam in a no-loading zone, far from the schoolhouse door. Spotting another mother at the market, a woman whose child was in Grace’s class, Hood ducks behind a tower of toilet paper. At a family wedding, she spots another little girl named Grace running to her mother. She quietly withdraws to her room. At the sight of a girl on the beach, wearing the exact bathing suit Grace chose but never got to wear:
Eventually Hood returns to life. She is able to notice the beauty of fall leaves, the crunch of snow underfoot. She writes:
Diane Leach lives in northern California with her husband and cat. She blogs at http://barkingkitten.blogspot.com. When not reading or writing, she regularly burns herself in the kitchen. |
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