Half a Life?

This weekend I read “Half a Life.” 

And I’ve finally had an insight. The reason I’m not thrilled with the books about life/death is because the book I want to read on the subject has yet to be written. So I’m gonna give a shot at writing it. (Not today. But soon.)

Back to “Half a Life.” Let’s start with the good things. This book is very well written. The book is written by a novelist so it reads like a memoir about a tragic accident filtered through a novelist’s head.

Why I had problems. The guy who wrote this book was in his middle years when he decided to write it and even though he’d spent the better part of 18 years obsessing over the accident, I felt he hadn’t plunged deeply enough into his trauma. What you’re reading is the flowery prose of one man’s inability to integrate the accident into his life. It reads like a person pinned in place. Sort of held there through guilt but also lacking any mechanisms to process that guilt. Is this story an elegy and an account of survival guilt? Mr. Straus never self-identifies as one in the throes of survivor guilt and as it’s his memoir isn’t it his job to label himself?

Not for nothing but there are grief counselors and barring any willingness to publicly discuss one’s problems there are a lot of self-help books out there. (I was kind of annoyed when this dude brushed off On Death and Dying.)

I’ve never accidentally (or intentionally) killed anyone with an automobile. I imagine it’s traumatic in ways I am unable to imagine and hope that I never come to know. But I still needed more. Really. Why does this guy never seem to grow up? His big aha moment is that a woman, a friend of Celine’s, remarks to him years later; that Celine had written in her journal, “Today I realized I’m going to die.” And in a weird way, I’m glad Celine had that epiphany. But I read it as: she encountered her mortality. She did not write (that we know of), “I realized I’m going to die today.” (Big difference.)

I really like the comment on Amazon labeled: The Day My Friend Died:

By Carolyn Watson Dubisch on October 17, 2010

It was a sunny day, not to be taken for granted in a place like Long Island, New York, in May 1988. My friend Celine was biking with a friend. She was training for a bike trip our youth group was planning, when she was struck by a car and killed. The driver was a classmate of hers, and since we went to different schools, I didn't know him. Celine always wore bowling shoes, and was outgoing, friendly and very religious. When, just days before the accident at a youth group meeting I didn't attend she announced "I'm not afraid to die. It could happen tomorrow and I'd be OK with that", her words seemed foreboding, and almost as if she'd beckoned death to her door.

When the accident was described in hushed whispers in the funeral home, she was said to have been biking in heavy traffic and there was just nowhere for the car to go but into her. I developed an irrational fear of biking, and of being fully satisfied with life, but I wasn't extremely close with Celine and life moved me forward from that day.

Last week I noticed an article about an author I'd read. He had a new book out, and I quickly clicked on the link, anticipating another historical fiction (a genre I love). As I read his interview I felt a falling sensation, like the world was shifting. Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng, a book I loved, wrote a memoir about killing Celine. Darin Strauss was the driver that day, and while I moved on from my friend's death Darin (and her family I'm sure) was left with the wreckage.

His book "Half a Life" begins with the accident, in which she inexplicably swerves into him and follows him through college and young adulthood where she haunts his conscience on a near daily basis. Learning more of her story (and his story) was a profound experience for me. As I read it I realized Celine did not beckon death to her door, she ran through that door on her own, and maybe bicycling is not as dangerous as I let myself believe.

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"I'm not afraid to die. It could happen tomorrow and I'd be OK with that." —Celine

Folks, we’re not talking about a Goth teen who walked around in the middle of summer wearing black clothing, reading Alistair Crowley, listening to Christian Death, writing poetry about committing suicide, and cutting her arms. Outwardly she displayed the signs of a normal teen girl.

That she darted into traffic, crossing 2 lanes of traffic into the oncoming car piloted by young Darin Strauss, is troubling. Her act could’ve been suicide.

 

I wonder if she did the opposite if what I’m striving for: perhaps she died old while in her youth?