Memory can be such a double-edged sword.
I have been thinking about content warnings, about the power of words to harm at times, heal at others.
The powerful and supportive content warning Charlene Carr wrote for her most recent novel,
We Rip The World Apart
I expect fiction to reflect real life, and I expect real life to be full of sorrows and horrors as well as joys. If I choose to read a novel set during a war, I am prepared for savagery and inhumanity, though I also hope for moments of grace. If I choose to read a novel exploring a marriage, I expect miscommunications, hurts, the possibility of infertility and/or infidelity, along with the many forms of love that can hold a marriage together.
My childhood was perfect; I grew up in a beautiful location, in a safe country, with loving parents. I was beyond spoiled as a child: in the summer I played on the beach and in the river in the front yard, went camping, visited my grandparents in Nova Scotia and England. In the winter I cross country skied through the woods, skated on the river, downhill skied in Quebec every March break. Thanksgiving and Christmas were magical holidays. My younger sister was - and is - my best friend. When I was older I was lucky enough to travel (across all seven continents), live in many other countries, earn three university degrees, meet Doug, a wonderful man, and make an extraordinarily happy life.
As a child, I only knew what I knew. As an adult, I can look back and see cracks and imperfections. My eldest sister died when I was three, my older sister lived with undiagnosed mental illnesses, my mother suffered from serious and persistent depression for years. I struggled through high school, only barely graduating. Later, I survived an unhealthy, unhappy marriage. A category five hurricane. Three months in a psychiatric hospital. A vicious divorce. Whilst still newlyweds, we discovered Doug was living with early onset dementia. And my biggest regret - I am not a mother.
When Doug and I were living in Cambridge we wrote restaurant reviews for several publications. After one review in the local newspaper, a reader commented that “Gloin and Ells must have been wearing rose-colored glasses . . .” because that reader’s experience of the same restaurant had not been as pleasant as ours. We laughed at the criticism but knew it was true. We both saw a glass as half-full, always. Irritatingly cherry? Overly optimistic? Perhaps.
But the good, the positive, the beauty in our lives - in our opinion - far outweighed the shadows. We could have focused on the negative, considered ourselves victims, and defined our lives by the hardships we’d endured. Neither of us chose that option. My sister and her family nicknamed Doug “Mr. Cheerful” soon after their first meeting, and he was - and still is, as much as I can discern. His childhood stories were like mine–full of sunshine and love and happy memories–and although I'm sure there must have been sorrows too, I have no idea what they might have been.
Life is difficult, and navigating it is difficult. I believe in triggers, though I can’t always predict what might affect me. Despite the hurricane, I’m not scared of wind storms. The other day, however, a cookbook fell open at one of Doug’s favourite recipes and I blinked away tears. His handwriting. A shoe store window displaying the red running shoes he yearned for (he asked for so little) that we couldn’t find when we were shopping for sneakers. And this weekend, a tent full of butterflies.
Because I am supposed to be “establishing my brand as an author on social media” and I’ve been reading murder mysteries & romance novels (i.e. not literary or bookclub fiction) last Thursday I thought I might post a #throwbackthursday photo on Insta (if that’s still a thing, rather than a trend that's been and long gone) - so I looked though photographs I taken on that same day in previous years. Close to that date in 2015 Doug and I visited a butterfly garden outside the National History Museum in London. That was such a good day - I remember so many details I didn’t capture in the photographs I took. But it held bittersweet echoes for Doug; he’d taken his dad for a day out from his long term care home to a butterfly conservatory in Niagara, just a few months before his dad died.
On Saturday, completely unplanned, I visited a butterfly exhibit for the first time since 2015 and experienced such a surge of emotion I could barely see the gorgeous creatures through my tears. Coupled with the sharp pain of missing Doug was the guilt of knowing that I am continuing to live my life without him.
Again and again I’m thankful that in our last few good years Doug and I made memories. At the same time I regret all we didn’t do; I wish I’d done so much more.
Were I to include a content warning for my novel, I could mention infertility, infidelity, 9/11, stillbirth, death, dementia, alcoholism . . . but how can I guess what else might stir up a painful memory for one of my readers at that very moment? Raspberry pie, a fire tower, the hard plastic chairs in a hospital’s waiting room, the sound of a child’s laughter, a three-way mirror, silence, loneliness, loss. And what about a butterfly?
