Consolatio

Gore Vidal: Envying tears

[Howard Auster, Vidal's partner of 53 years, was dying.  Leto, a male nurse, was helping to care for him.]

...Leto shouted, "Mr Auster has stopped breathing!" I ran upstairs. He was still in the armchair, facing the window....I sat in the chair opposite....Nothing stirred....The eyes were open and very clear. I'd forgotten what a beautiful gray they were-- illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over;  now they were bright and attentive and he was watching me, consciously, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So we stared at each other at the end...."Can you hear me?" I asked him. "I know you can see me." Although there was no breath for speech, he now had a sort of wry wiseguy from the Bronx expression on his face which said clearly to me who knew all his expressions, "So this is the big fucking deal everyone goes on about." In my general state of confusion I was oddly comforted that in death he was in perfect easy character much as he would have been that evening if he had lived....

Jim Carney who works for us at times kept me company....Then Jim and I were left with Howard on the floor between us covered by a sheet, black socks on his feet. Leto wept. I envied him-- the WASP glacier had closed over my head.

       --Gore Vidal (1925-) in his memoir Point to Point Navigation (2006)

Christine McFadden: choosing not to step into hell

  [Christine McFadden's four children were murdered by her ex-husband in 2002. Christine recently remarried and this year she gave birth to twin girls. She talked to Oprah Winfrey about her surviving to love again.]

Melanie, Stanley, Stuart, and Michelle were the best things that ever happened to me. Even in their short lives, they exceeded any hopes I could have had for them. Yes, I know I have to go forward now. By marrying and bringing these two girls into the world, that's what I'm choosing to do....

And even now I still feel like hell is only a step away. But I choose not to step into it.

    --from interview in Oprah magazine, April 2007

Negro spiritual: Nobody knows the trouble I see

Nobody knows the trouble I see,
nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
glory hallelujah

Sometimes I’m up,
sometimes I’m down,
oh yes Lord,
sometimes I’m almost to the ground,
oh yes Lord.

Nobody knows the trouble I see,
nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
glory hallelujah.

Sometimes I'm up,
sometimes I'm down,
oh yes Lord,
but all the time I'm heavenly bound,
oh yes Lord.

If you get there before I do,
oh yes Lord,
tell all my friends I'm coming too,
oh yes Lord.

  --This is a beautiful old spiritual whose slow, sad music conveys the tragedy of slavery. It was sung in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. You can hear Paul Robeson singing it here.
 

Joan Didion: Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We might expect to be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy.

                 --Vanessa Redgrave (1937- ) as Joan Didion (1934- ) in the play from Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion: It will happen to you

This happened on December 30th, 2003. That may seem a while ago, but it won't when it happens to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you. That's what I'm here to tell you.

        --Vanessa Redgrave (1937-) playing Joan Didion (1934- ) in the play version of Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking