What is the place of writing in a writer’s life? I’ve been recently attacked for taking it all too seriously. I gave the comment perhaps more consideration than it deserved at the time, but that is neither here nor there. This extended monologue of mine is entitled ‘Notes on a Crisis,’ and given my age and so forth, one might assume that mine is mid-life kind of crisis – the bleak recognition of youth now forever left behind, and all that.
But as readers of my fiction should know by now, I rarely come at things in a direct fashion, and while it may appear at first glance that I’m talking about this, in truth I’m talking about that.
This is actually about a journey taken and written about in its midst, qualifying in every sense as a journal. Today, I reached a place in the tenth novel where a very personal truth was revealed. And such was its shattering impact that I am forced to pull away from the story, to try and give shape here to what I am feeling.
I will warn you now, what to come is brutal, and all those fun-loving folk content to skip and dance through life, evading all that might sting, for the sake of your ease of mind, read no further.
Life As A Human has in the past few months invited contributors to write essays to commemorate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and many of these essays have been profound and moving. Both times that I received that invitation, I did my own sliding away, for reasons I was not yet ready to face square in the eye. In a more critical moment, I might call it a failing of courage.
I am told by those closest to me that I have not been the same person since my father’s death. Was this just a measure of some protracted grief, verging on the aberrant? My father was a gifted but also deeply flawed man, and long before his death I had made my own peace with who he was, and the last years of his life I was pleased and proud to share my time with him. There was nothing left unresolved about our relationship.
So what, precisely, is going on here?
As much as one engages in that dance of evasion, things sneak through, and for me it is the dark aspect of my writing that I am relentless and remorseless regarding the world of sensibilities from which I proceed to create and imagine on a daily basis. Today, not 20 minutes ago, one of my characters put into words a truth I was not ready to face. But here it is now, and what lies beyond remains unknown and unknowable.
I was in my second year at Iowa, and my second year of marriage, when my father called me from Winnipeg. My mother was in the hospital – but that had occurred a few times before, as her blood disorder slowly advanced into full-blown leukemia. But this time, when he had come into her room, he’d seen that she had removed the rings from her fingers and they waited on the bed stand. By this gesture he knew that she had realized that this time she wouldn’t be coming home.
It was a cold winter that year – we’d not come back for Christmas so my last memory of her was hugging her goodbye outside the house before driving down to start my year in Iowa – and I remember crying as I drove away, since she’d felt so frail in my arms.
Over the phone I told my father that we were on our way.
I phoned the department at the university and said I’d be gone for a week, and then my wife and I got into the car and began the drive north. We pushed as hard as we could, staying in a motel somewhere in Minnesota before continuing on the next day.
Crossing the border, we stopped at a gas station and I managed to get a call through. My brother had flown back from Vancouver. The word was she was fast fading, and from what I got from my brother, he was horrified at her deteriorated condition. Things were fraught over there.
We were driving into the outskirts of Winnipeg when she died.
My brother has since said he considered me the lucky one – to have not seen her in those last moments. I understand his conviction on this matter My last memory of her remains that goodbye hug on a warm September morning.
Let’s call that … gentle.
Without doubt, her last 10 or 12 years of life had been good ones – the years poverty were behind them, and she and my father were content together. There were grandchildren to visit, relatives to see back in Sweden. We’d all known the mortal clock was ticking, and we made of it all that we could.
She was 69 when she died.
_____
Track forward a span of years. My own family is settled in Victoria, my brother over in Chilliwack, and my father is sharing a new life with a woman in Nanaimo, a two to two-and-a-half hour drive up-island from me.
Following a tragic and infuriating misdiagnosis from his GP, the cancer in his bladder has metastasized to his bones and the oncologist informs us all he had at best three months to live. In that time, we drive north again and again to spend time with him. It is a relief that he is not alone and that he is being cared for (I won’t even get into the twist in that aspect of this tale), but those visits are nevertheless hard, and hard to bear.
Our son goes off for the summer break and my wife prepares to fly to the UK to visit family. Daily the calls go back and forth between me and my father’s partner as we track the swiftness of his fading away, as we try to find comfort in the details of the things done and the things still to do.
One evening I get a call – my father has not spoken all day, and when the phone is held close him I can hear his labored breathing. Yet, when I speak to him, he stirs to answer me. Just monosyllables. Weak ‘yes’s and no’s.’ I ask him if he wants me to come. He says ‘yes.’ From his partner I hear the shock in her voice – she’d not expected him to hear me, much less find the strength to speak.
I tell him I will come in the morning.
_____
Let’s pause there. I am pretty upset at that moment – there is the grim war of the waiting and wanting it to be over. There is a kind of exhaustion that leaves one numb. I can list these things and recognize their truths, their validity for that moment. And I was later told that he’d fallen unconscious shortly thereafter, never to reawaken, so it was likely that even had I immediately departed for Nanaimo I would have found him already in a coma – though in truth I can never know that. I can’t know that he wouldn’t have risen up from the depths again, as he’d done over the phone. I can’t know.
Today, I finally understood my unwillingness to leave for Nanaimo that night. I have had to face the failing of courage that was that moment – the fear of yet another hopeless drive, the fear of finding in my father what my brother said he wished he’d never seen in my mother. My imagination is more than sufficient for that transformation; I didn’t want my memory to suffer the same. Fears held me in place, and in some ways I am still standing there, phone in hand. I’ve yet to take a step past that moment. And I wonder now if I ever will.
_____
So, how does all of this relate to my writing? Today, a fictional character uttered the opinion that the only worthy place to die is in someone’s arms. And in the wake of that utterance, everything just sort of tumbled down inside.
I am a living with a regret. Whether he ever knew it or not, he should have died in my arms. And I had the chance to do that.
That same character, almost in the next breath, then went on to say that ‘to die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?’
If I am to take the full meaning of that odd choice of word (forgiving) – and it’s a word that in that context demands considerable thought, then … well, we will see where I stand when this last tale is behind me. Maybe I’ll be ready to set the phone down. Take that first step.
But that is my struggle, to deal with as best I can. So, what is it I have to offer you readers after this modest little confession? Just this. Should you face that time … be there if you can … and take your loved one in your arms. So often the bed the person is lying in – at home or in the hospital – is viewed as some kind of sacred place, an island to be waded around but never touched. But it’s not the bed that’s sacred, it’s the person lying on it. It’s not the bed that is forgiving, it’s your embrace.
Could I go back for another chance…
Photo Credit
“Abstract texture” ReadySetGo @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Recent Steven Erikson Articles:
- Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (8)
- Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (7)
- Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (6)
- Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (5)
- Deconstructing Fiction (For Writers and Readers): Excerpt Deconstructed (4)
So, it’s six years later – likely, few (and not Steven Erikson) will read this. But I just found it, via the Malazan Reread (also old), and … I’m moved. By the scene, by this recognition of regret, and I want to say something about it.
“Could there be anything more forgiving?” Maybe not – and the advice to be with a loved one if you can seems nothing-but-good to me – but does anything need to be More? Perhaps “just as forgiving” is enough?
And if so … well, I wish I could erase from existence a certain Rolling Stones lyric as I type this, but there is wisdom in knowing that we don’t always get what we want. Full stop. Maybe what we need (again, trying to erase that lyric) is just to be ASKED what we want, sincerely, lovingly. And to have someone hear – really hear – how we decide to respond.
Maybe Steve’s father got to have that, in the phone call – he was asked what he wanted, he got to know Steve heard him. Maybe that is also forgiving.
I hope so, because if we have to get what we want in order to find forgiveness, forgiveness will be awfully hard to find.
Thank you for being so open…And for the advice. Remember that forgiveness seldom lie in memories, and that we can all only hope to do better for our mistakes.
I think the only way to deal with my regrets is forgive myself. It is a matter of truly accepting myself, flaws and all, and live the rest of my days as my authentic self.
Hi Steven,
A person once asked me , if I was a believer in reincarnation why do babies and children die?
My (harsh) answer was “probably to give people in their immediate surroundings (parents) a lesson they need learning in this lifetime”.
Like the ripples u describe in your fantastic books, the passing away gave you the needed experience and input for your imagined scene. The same goes for your archeology and interests which can be seen in your writing. I love the way your mind works and how you can turn either black or white into gray.
Love the characters, love the action, love the dialogs but join a majority of readers in skipping on the heavy pondering (Mhybe, Snake, Udinaas stuff). Why? Because I like to read your books to bring me into that other world and not watch television with Sudanese children suffering. My world is full of things we have to do and have to care about while I dont want to. I really envy those that can , unlike myself to a certain extend, escape the current Rat race we are in.
Hopefully I can create the time and discipline in the future and join u as a writer, but until that time I will certainly enjoy myself reading your books which are my personal favorites far above Tolkien, Donaldson Martin Zelazny and many others I’ve read.
Hoping you will keep at it with the same pace (..glad Sanderson took over to finish Jordans series, and hopefully Martin will wake up again), creativity and explosiveness after this series is done. For now im rereading the series while awaiting TCG, and looking forward to theTehol and Bugg dialogues and scenes.
Cheers and Thanks for the fun ride!
Thank you for sharing this Steve. Yesterday I was thinking that when my father died of cancer, 15 years ago, we all sat around the bed watching but not touching him. I’d not thought of it before. It’s difficult to know why we held back, almost as if paralysed. I think it was fear. I wish I had never been there. I’ve always felt guilty that I didn’t do more for my father when he was ill. I had trained as a therapy radiographer so knew a lot about the disease and had seen it from a professional point of view. I could see the signs of deterioration and knew by them how far the disease had progressed but couldn’t talk to anyone about it. My mother was fussing over him and I felt she was taking what little dignity he had left. I never seemed to be able to talk to my brother about it and still haven’t. I’ve always known these are poor excuses, its good to read that its not just me who feels this way. I’ve also realised recently that I have been angry for 15 years and not realised.
Hi there.
This was…….. I really don’t know actually now that I think about it. I’m only an 18 year old kid, trying to get the marks I need to get into University, I don’t know if I want to be an amazing author like you, the next Prime Minister, or even a lawyer. And I look at the choices ahead of me, and I read what you’ve posted here, and I cant help but think of all of the regrets I already have in my life. So many things that I cant go back and change, so many friends lost that I could’ve kept, so many arguments that I should have never entered or at least conceded, and so many damn mistakes that I would gladly give up anything that I possess just to have a chance to make it right again. But I cant do anything, I simply cant. It keeps me up at night sometimes just to think about this, and I’ve had my share of tears come out over this matter. And I probably will in the future, I know myself well enough to know that I wont be able to move past my regrets any time soon. Maybe not ever.
That being said, I will thank you for sharing this. I already knew that people suffered similar cases such as what you have described. I know that I’m but one among billions of people to go through some pretty terrible moments. But, and I know this sounds bad, its nice to know that I’m not entirely alone in my suffering, even if I’ll never be brave enough to mention it to anyone face to face.
Now then, I suppose I should step away from the computer now and return back to life. So many regrets yet to live out, so little time. Lets just hope that the good things outnumber those regrets by the end of the day 🙂
Thanks again, I’ll always be a fan of your work
dear mr erikson – i’m a great admirer of your work, and went through almost exactly the same experience as you describe at almost exactly the same time you did. i should have seen my father one evening, but waited till the morning, by which time he was dead – no need for further details. and no-one was closer to me than my dad. somehow, though, today – and i’ve felt like this for a while – i can live with my failure, because i know that my father would have understood, and that, in fact, i actually did all that i ever could have done / had the emotional stamina to do in the circumstances – which is all we ever do, however easy it is to imagine otherwise in hindsight – however much our pride wants it to be otherwise.
you loved your father like no-one else in the world, and you loved him with all his weaknesses – just as he loved you with all of yours, and nothing can change that wonderful, innocent fact. i hope a character convinces you soon to love yourself in the same way.
with great respect,
andy
This kind of openness paralyzes me: I don’t have the heart or courage to open up to people like that. It makes me feel like I’ve nothing to give in return. It may sound odd to thank for a negative feeling, but all the same, thank you, sir.
Myself, I’m trying to stay in touch as much as I can with my parents – I only live a 2 hour drive away from them, and I visit almost every weekend. But I’m still a pup, much can change. I really hope I can avoid drifting away from them. I try to learn from the changes I saw in my father after his died. I hope it’s enough.
I hope I’ll be able to overcome the fear of death – of those close to me, and through it a reflection of my own impending demise. If there’s anything that creates regrets in my life so far, it’s the effects of fear.
My mother was diagnosed with a highly malignant brain tumour in 1996. Surgery removed the tumour with good margins but the oncologist recommended an immediate course of radiation therapy and we arranged for her to take the treatment in Victoria where she could stay with me. I was grateful for the chance to do something, anything, to help. She worked on her memoire while I was at work and we walked along the Dallas Road waterfront in the evenings when she had the energy. But she started obsessing about my father whom she had divorced a few years before, after 37 years of marriage. Where had she gone wrong? Why had the marriage failed? Had he ever loved her or had it all been a lie? And was he happy now with the woman he’d been having an affair with, who was now living with him in the house they had shared? Every evening I’d come home and before I’d even closed the door the questions would start, over and over and over again. I had no answers, and my frustration grew into desperation. I became surly and impatient with her, rejecting her attempts to make amends, staying cold and distant when she cried – all the things my father had done while they were married. By the end of the 9th week I couldn’t take any more, and fled to the west coast trail while she carried on by herself in my apartment, escorted to the hospital by volunteer drivers but otherwise alone with her thoughts and fears.
In the 14 years since then I have lived with the stark truth that I abandoned my mum at the time in her life when she needed me most. There are no excuses, explanations, rationalizations or justifications that touch the pain of that knowledge. There is no going back to fix it. I understand about living with regret.
A Jungian analyst once said to me that the best way to deal with the opposing forces within oneself is to develop the ability to hold the tension they create. The operative word there is “hold”, as in “contain – take no action – do not attempt to fix / ease / release / resolve”. I hold my regret in much the same way, containing it without hiding from it, with as much clarity and honesty and as little condemnation and judgement as I can manage, Through this I have found a humility and a tolerance for weakness that has enriched my life and deepened my ability to connect with others. For whatever it might be worth…
I’m unable to deal with the emotional level here, so I’ll go all impersonal and deal with the rational one, while keeping the first for myself.
Fiction as therapy, another function. I was recently commenting on my blog about an independent Korean movie that was being interpreted as therapy through cinema. In this case just an adolescent love story, and the director making a movie about it as a way to look for meaning.
I stumble on weird links. Today I read a long article written by Adam Roberts about Lost, the recently concluded TV series: http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2010/07/the_woo_of_lost-comments.shtml
His interpretation comes to “more specifically about the death of fathers; about how we live when our father has passed away. Fathers are what is Lost in Lost; and negotiating the process of bereavement is what orchestrates the various sorts of magical thinking on display in the narratives.”
And: “Lost was about magic in a general sense, but more specifically it was about bereavement as magical thinking.”
The nature and genesis of belief (and magic, obviously) is one strong theme in the Malazan series. I remember a particular passage in House of Chains, when Heboric hallucinates and sees a stream of jade giants drifting toward a huge tear in the fabric of universe. No idea if that image was explained further down the series, but at some point Heboric goes into a jade giant and overhears a discussion about the nature of belief, about gods and how modernity supplanted magical thinking. But it was done subtly and hinted that this movement toward progression may not be simply univocal. Progress leads us to see better or it just gives the illusion of sight? We come closer to truth or get banished from it? I enjoy this habit of the series of opening cracks into certainty. No safe ground, ever. There’s another passage with Trull Sengar and Onrack that even better discusses the nature of gods and their relationship with humanity.
Lost also exploited a similar conceit: it built a complicated mythology and edgy situations in order to explore some core themes and characters.
Interesting because I used “Lost” sometimes as a comparison with the Malazan series. Mostly to point out how the mystery aspects are better handled in the Malazan series since it is more generous, there are revelations on every page that open up new scenarios or overthrow what was known instead of being pushed back indefinitely or revealed as dead-ends (as in Lost). But also because “magic” in the Malazan series is never unmotivated or vainly self-referential, but it is used to say or show something deeply true about our world. It has a purpose and meaning. It’s virtuous instead of virtual.
And that’s again another wonderful quality of the series: on the superficial level it’s fun, because of the weaving of the grand, spectacular plot, mysteries and revelations, then it gets deeply, intimately personal (the dialogue is between the writer and himself, no audience allowed), in a way that requires the writer to be truly brave and honest, and a gift to us (like this piece he wrote up here, a gift). And finally it becomes universal. It says something that is meaningful and true, and that embraces everyone.
Thank you Steve for being so open.
Hello Mr.Erikson
In my life i usually hear a phrase of someone over the phone or in a different conversation, or even from my friends when im thinking about something else entirely that in a way makes me understand something about the world or myself that i have not yet understood or thought about.
Most recently i was watching tv, i dont remember now what it was, but it was about a person having a silent monolog in bed reflecting upon her day. And all of a sudden i came to think about the almost insane privateness about our own thoughts and about how impossible it is for someone to know about all those “small thoughts” we never share with anyone, that in a way makes us who we are, because none of us thinks the same way almost, on rare occasions we have the same view and thoughts about an occurence or something that happened, but almost never.
I dont know why i share this, but i came to think about it while reading about your insights into your own mind.
I really look forward to “The Crippled God” i just started rereading your series, and i decided to buy the books this time, i only bought the 2 last books of your series while i was reading it the first time the others i loaned from a library nearby where i live.
Kind Regards
Daniel
Sweden
Okay, in English: not so easy for me.
Three years ago my mother died of brain-cancer. A devastating cancer, that took slowly away words and half part of her body. The brainsurgeon convinced me not to say to my mother the truth, otherwise I’d killed her before the cancer did its dirt job. “Some months of hope”, he told me. So I decided to follow his advice. I was alone, in Milan, in a small hotel room, because my father (separate since 20 years before from her) and my sister where living in another town – as I did, in normal circumstances. At the beginning I was struggling for some help, but neither my father nor my sister gave it to me.
I still remember a telephone call with my father. “I had another life since twenty years ago, son”, he told me, refusing to help me and let me go back to work after two week of “holidays”. And he closed the call with this absurd phrase: “In any case, everything you need, call me”. I thought: “Okay, this is all for me. Let’s try to do it by myself”. But I was frightened, I mean, *really* frightened.
Ten months it took to cancer to do its dirty job. In this period, my sister tried to help me, but in some way she was refusing the hard truth, always too far by phone, always too quick in her visits to my mother. Sometimes I was upset with her, but I’d always tried not to push her to do something. I was thinking that she was more frightened than me.
But I remember another thing. When my mother was starting to fade away and all my (good and terrible) lies vanished – because the truth emerge slowly, but emerge, and none needs words to explain, because it’s all too clear to say something clever – I thought it was time to speak clear to my sister: “You need to be nearer”, I told her, leaving the truth behind those words to be thin, very thin. *You* was the important word, because I was starting to worry a lot for my sister. It takes a lot of courage to stay by one’s side, during a devastating illness, but it’s the only way in which you can save yourself from sorrow. My sister tried to improve her support, to beat her fear. But it was too late.
During the funeral, I was the only one who was smiling to everyone. And I remember my sister told me a phrase at which I thought: “Oh, my little sister. I’m sorry”. But I didn’t say anything.
With your words, Steven, you confirmed me that the grief of my sister is strong. And for this I’ve always tried to defend her from her sorrow about my mother and what she lived at the end. I’m not agree with your brother: you were not the lucky one. You were the lucky one during the illness, but now? I’m sorry for you Steven, as I’m sorry for my sister. But, really, I understand that lack of courage. *I* was lucky, because it was me or nobody else. Facts brings me to face fear and beat it.
All I want to say, at the end of this little tell of mine, is not to beat too hard on you. We’re human and sometimes circumstances make us fail in something. That time was my sister, maybe in the future I’ll be the one. So, I really want to tell you to live with joy your life, feeling good, because your mother and your father know that you did your best – now they know it. And they aren’t upset, they love you more than before.
Regret in the things left undone can definitely paralyze and change you. You are fortunate in that your writing has brought you to an illuminating place. None of us can go back and alter things. Already you have taken steps to enlighten others and find your way through.
You will find your way through.
Thank you for letting us in on your journey, Steve.
Wow Steve. Brave and honest words. I’ve been facing (or not facing) my own father’s deteriorating health for some time and, tonight especially, the serendipity in finding this post has left me slightly rattled. You’ve given me a lot to think on. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you very much for sharing such a personal matter. I have experienced something similar with my grandmother, and the regret and fear creeps up and paralyses you at random moments. There’s nothing proud about any of it, and someday I hope to make peace with it. Good luck to you, and I hope that with this book you will make peace with it. Hopefully, and I believe this, the regrets only stay with the living.
Cheers.