Quote for the day
Aleksandar Hemon is a Chicago-based novelist. I've read and liked some of his stuff in the past, so when I saw he had a piece in the New Yorker's annual fiction issue, I was eager to read it. It turned out to not be fiction, and I should not have read it at my desk--it's an account of how his 9-month-old daughter was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor and died a few months later. It is absolutely devastating to read, probably in part because I have a baby the same age, but I don't think anyone could help but be affected by the raw anguish. The whole essay has haunted me for days, but the honesty of this passage in particular stuck with me. Whenever I hear someone on a talk show talking about how their cancer experience or loss of a loved one strengthened them or that something good came out of it, I always wonder if they really mean it or if it's just something they need to say to get them through the ordeal. This seems more real to me...
One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling—that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel’s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabel most certainly not earn ascension to a better place, as there was no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabel, Teri and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense; we found ourselves with an excess of time that we used to devote to her; we had to live in a void that could be filled only be Isabel. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.
From The Aquarium by Aleksandar Hemon
***
After I posted this, because I am a masochist, I re-read this essay, again at my desk. And I realized that Isabel died at Children's on the night of 10/31/10, very likely while I was walking the floor of our room in the Infectious Diseases ward while my baby cried with an unexplained fever. I don't even know how to process this, except to say that I am so thankful, and even more heartbroken for Hemon.
One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling—that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel’s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabel most certainly not earn ascension to a better place, as there was no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabel, Teri and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense; we found ourselves with an excess of time that we used to devote to her; we had to live in a void that could be filled only be Isabel. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.
From The Aquarium by Aleksandar Hemon
***
After I posted this, because I am a masochist, I re-read this essay, again at my desk. And I realized that Isabel died at Children's on the night of 10/31/10, very likely while I was walking the floor of our room in the Infectious Diseases ward while my baby cried with an unexplained fever. I don't even know how to process this, except to say that I am so thankful, and even more heartbroken for Hemon.
posted by Madame Defarge at 8:07 AM
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