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Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.
Mom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility—that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn’t decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to change course if necessary. Not the road less traveled but the road with the exit ramp.
1. Ask: “Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?” 2. Don’t ask if there’s anything you can do. Suggest things, or if it’s not intrusive, just do them. 3. You don’t have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough.
“That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves.”
“The world is complicated,” she added. “You don’t have to have one emotion at a time.”
“What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?” It helped you remember that people aren’t here for you; everyone is here for one another.
I was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
Mom arranged for a driver to pick me up and bring me to Vero Beach—I would use the car she and Dad had rented there for getting around. Mom loved almost everything about Vero—the weather, the beach, the house she rented from a friend, the rituals and rhythms, the small but excellent museum, the lectures at the library, and even the supermarket, with its luxuriously wide aisles. The town also has one of America’s great independent bookstores, the Vero Beach Book Center. Immediately after I’d thrown my suitcase into what would be my bedroom, I sat down with Mom as she went over the schedule.
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This trip I wound up with Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (a Vero Beach Book Center Staff Favorite) and the second volume of W. Somerset Maugham’s Collected Short Stories, which I’d clumsily knocked off a shelf. Mom bought Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, an 1889 account of a comical boat trip that one of our friends insisted she read. (I’m pretty sure she did, but we never discussed it.) “Mom, there’s one book I brought with me from New York,” I
Usually beach reading is better in theory than in practice. The sun is too bright and my sunglasses aren’t progressives, so I need to take them off to read; people walk by and stir up mini-sandstorms; I get too hot; I need a drink; I should really swim, as the water is great.
“Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves.”
What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn’t the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn’t what you give in exchange for something; it’s what you feel when you are blessed—blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.
“We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it’s not owing like a debt to one person—it’s really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant—so each person who keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up—and each expression of friendship or love may be the one that makes all the difference.” I have no idea how that letter got there. The Reluctant Fundamentalist Many people dropped off books for Mom.
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