Grief and remembrance can be thought of as a connected process of emotions and ideas as they relate to death. The grief one feels at loss is colored and softened by the remembrance of the loved one afterwards. Perhaps this is the mind’s way of aiding in the recovery; a coping mechanism that plays out over the days, months, and years after a scarring loss: the time one has left to mourn. How that remembrance is shaped can, perhaps, be colored by romanticism, nostalgia, pride, faith, melancholy, and many other emotions, beliefs and ideas. Grief and remembrance is a song one sings to oneself, a duet of conflicting shapes, colors, and emotional highs and lows.

In About Alice, author Calvin Trillin [2006, Random House, 96 pages] writes his own remembrance song of his late wife, who died in 2001. Adapted from an article he wrote for the New Yorker, it is less a full portrait but rather a series of snapshots and images.

It is clear that Trillin is still feeling the loss; he has mentioned that his work has suffered since her death and he still regards her as his main muse. His love for his wife was well known in his inner circle and adapting to life without her has been difficult.

He is, however, a humorist, and he seems able to see the lightness through his own darkness, and the book reflects that ability. His remembrance of Alice is informed with humor, honesty, pride, and a sense of wonder; not at her death but at the way her life had affected others.

Alice was, in her own words, lucky in many ways. She died after having lived with cancer for over 25 years or so, and her death was brought on by a heart weakened by radiation that had saved her life years earlier. In Trillin’s words, she died of the treatment, not the disease. [pg. 77]

And, in the twenty-five years they did have, they raised two daughters together, and Alice lived to see both marry, which was important to her. She also touched many lives and people deeply, both professionally and personally in the time she had.

Trillin’s aim here is personal: to write a proper remembrance of Alice, but this is not so much a eulogy, or even an elegy. It is a mix of both; thoughts both public and private, mournful but also supportive and full of pride.

About Alice is, in some ways, a meditation on the aspects of a life that are not always apparent as that life is lived. Things not readily acknowledged in the living become cognizant in the dead. Who do we touch? How do we do so? What is memory when one cares so much?

It can be said that death becomes something else in the mind’s eye of the living. Funerals and memorials are less about the deceased than they are for those left behind. The mourning process demands a fidelity to the dead, some sort of recognition of the pain and loss, so we attempt to find closure at a time when emotions are too raw to process. The true measure of someone’s life comes later. Memory abides.

In that case, then, Trillin has written a worthy remembrance here. Memories are snapshots of someone’s life. The margins fade away and the eye settles on the central truth and image. Trillin’s memory is colored by the writer’s pen and eye for observation. He provides glimpses of a life shared and loved. Alice thought of herself as lucky to have the time she had; Trillin has come to understand that feeling in her loss.

I know what Alice, the incorrigible and ridiculous optimist, would have said about a deal that allowed her to see her girls grow up: “Twenty-five years! I’m so lucky.” I try to think of it in those terms, too. Some days I can and some days I can’t [pg. 78]

Those sentiments alone made the book well worth reading for me as they capture a lot and display a realism that other writers miss. About Alice is certainly not a work for everyone, of course, but I found it well worth reading (in about an hour). Processing it took longer. Trillin’s humor aids in his recovery, but that recovery will never be enough. I think most people agree with that feeling and idea. [three stars]

Sources
http://www.randomhouse.com/gm/results.pperl?title_auth_isbn=calvin+trillin

Recommended: Yes