The Lost Sister

When I finished my doctorate – finally – I started reading nothing but crime thrillers.  For a few years, I couldn’t bear to read non-fiction.  Mysteries and thrillers became an addiction.  “It’s my only vice,” I used to say (I’ve added others since then).  I need them because when I wake up during the night, if I have the pleasure of reading my novel, I don’t get upset about not being able to fall right back to sleep.  They also get me through migraines.  So I get nervous when my stash is low, and I have to make a run to the library for more.  More than once I’ve been forced to go buy a paperback at Safeway late at night, when I ran out.

I have my favorite authors, but they can’t write them as fast as I can read them, so I have to peruse the “New Fiction” shelf at the local branch to see what else might do the job.  You won’t be surprised that the title The Lost Sister caught my eye.  The writer, Russel D. McLean, was new to me.  It said right on the front “a novel,” but it felt risky, so I made good and sure it was crime fiction before I took it out. 

I was innocently reading along last night, the detective was going around detecting, and then he stopped at the cemetery to visit the grave of his fiancée.

I closed my eyes, tried to remember her face.  Little by little, she was escaping me.  Getting so I could only remember how she looked when I came across old photographs.

Some days, I thought I was betraying her by starting to heal…

I crouched in front of the headstone, traced the dates that marked Elaine’s life with my index finger.  Closed my eyes.

Tried to conjure up her face.

Wished she was here with me.  To answer my questions.  Offer reassurance.  Remind me what it was to be in love with life again.

Here was the reality: she wasn’t coming back.

I was alone.

In the end, that was the one inescapable truth of my life.

No fair.  This was supposed to be my escape!  But, while I felt an ache in my chest at this suddenly appearing in my safe zone of crime fiction, I have to say it was also satisfying to hear the experience described so simply and so well, in the middle of a book that wasn’t about grief. 

Many of my grieving clients could relate to his words.  They struggle with the conflict between their desire to heal and the sense that to move on and feel good means the person who died wasn’t that important.  Or that they didn’t really love them if they can go on without them.  So we do our best to make room for everything: all the ambivalence, all the longing, all the resentment, guilt, disappointment, anger, numbness, just plain sadness.  Grief is complex and idiosyncratic, and accepting whatever shows up seems to be the best way to move it through. 

And then we let ourselves discover that life still has joy in it, and we can still appreciate those simple pleasures that make life worth living – like good crime fiction.