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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Swimming
in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir by David Rieff |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Tribute Anyone
who has been a caregiver of a dying loved one will be brought back to that
time and place when reading David Rieff’s book, Swimming
in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir. Rieff’s mother, the writer Susan
Sontag, was diagnosed with a deadly form of leukemia in 2004. After a decade
of not being particularly close, Rieff and Sontag united in hope to fight the
disease. Swimming
in a Sea of Death tells the story of that fight, which ended in Sontag’s
death. The title is explained by a poignant comment Rieff made in the book, “During
the months I watched my mother die, I was increasingly at a loss as to how I
could behave toward her in ways that actually would be helpful. Mostly, I
felt at sea (p. 103).” Against long odds, Rieff helped her investigate every
aspect of myelodysplastic syndrome, and find every treatment that might
provide help, however remote. He told her what she wanted to hear: she could
survive despite the odds against her. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning
of Chapter 4, pp. 65-68: In the immediate aftermath of
her diagnosis, my mother at times seemed to oscillate
between a hollowed-out somnolence and a sharp, manic busyness that occasionally
edged into hysteria, and at other times seemed almost incongruously rational
and calm. It helped enormously
that her apartment was always filled with people. As she had gotten older,
my mother had found it increasingly difficult to be alone (only when she was
deep in a piece of writing was solitude even remotely bearable). Now that she
was once more ill, even the briefest interregnum of solitude was intolerable
to her, and those who were close to her soon organized a kind of rota to make
sure that there was always at least one other person in her apartment and
preferably more than one. The English writer John Berger once wrote that the
opposite of to love is not to hate but "to separate." Certainly,
that is what my mother thought—and what could have been a more understandable
reaction in a woman who barely knew her own father who died when she was
four? Long before she became ill
again, this anxiety was becoming more and more crippling. She would grow
anxious whenever a visitor would get up to leave, and she would often ask
Anne Jump to prepare lists not only of her own complicated travel plans but
the plans of those close to her—me, Paolo Dilonardo, Annie Leibovitz, her
on-again, off-again companion of many years, and a few others. After a meal,
she would often propose an errand or two—a trip to a bookstore or a record
shop, or at least a final cup of coffee (she was a social drinker, but no
more). Now, of course, there was no question of her being left on her own.
Even surrounded by people, her anxieties often overwhelmed her despite the
Ativan that her doctors insisted she begin taking. And yet,
characteristically, my mother was surprised by how anxious she felt, and once
insisted to me that, without denying how terrified she was, she couldn't
really believe she was having anxiety attacks. When I responded that I
thought she had been an anxious person for quite a long time, she neither
agreed nor disagreed. Instead, she said the idea surprised her and she
needed to think about it. In reality, her mood cratered,
then lightened, then cratered again—an increasingly vicious cycle. But for
all that it was an emotional roller-coaster ride, what I remember most
vividly from that time is how eerily normal it soon came to seem. There was
even an incongruous, almost communelike atmosphere, a giddiness that while
obviously only a half step from hysteria and grief was also strangely
exhilarating. My mother's own behavior probably explains most of this: the
rest of us soon grew accustomed to taking our emotional cues from her (or
trying to, anyway). And while she obviously was not as interested as she had
been before her diagnosis in what was going on around her, and at first made
no effort to try to write (though, like most writers when they are not
writing, she talked about writing all the time), she was still more connected
than I ever would have predicted given what must have been going on in her
head. Swimming
in a Sea of Death is a beautifully written memoir, and a tribute by a son
to his mother’s life. Steve
Hopkins, March 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the April 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Swimming in a Sea of Death.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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