Um, yeah.

I was driving home from work the other day, and I heard this great NPR feature on the Dixie Chicks.  Now, I am by no means a fan of country music, and that's how they described their sound.  However, I try to be open minded.  Anyway, they have a new album out, and one of the songs was written for one of their grandmothers who is suffering from Alzheimer's. 

The song is called "Silent House," and they played part of it on NPR.  The chorus is as follows:

And I will try to connect
All the pieces you left
I will carry it on
And let you forget
And I'll remember the years
When your mind was clear
How the laughter and life
Filled up this silent house

I cannot imagine stating it more perfectly.  I thought about writing a poem, but really, they've already done that.  It's not my idea, anyway; it's theirs. 

I will carry it on/ and let you forget.  That is exactly how I feel.  In a lot of ways, people are their memories and perceptions.  For as long as I can remember, I asked my grandparents about our family history.  I memorized the names of the people in the oldest family photographs.  This family history is wonderful, but it is also a burden that someone needs to carry.  It must be preserved because it tells us who we are.  It applies to now.  It applies to us.

My grandma keeps starting stories and getting stuck in the middle.  The other day, on the phone, she talked about how nervous she was on her wedding day, how she sat down on the steps in my grandpa's family home and cried that she "didn't want to get married."  She got confused then, so I finished for her:  "And then Eva (Papa's mother) came, and she told you that Papa was a good man and everything would be okay."  I have heard that story at least a dozen times.  I was happy to pick up the burden.

But what about those things I'm missing?  What about the stories I never heard or the ones I've somehow forgotten?  I try to think how I can organize it all, write it down somehow.  I'm so grateful I had the forethought to make a video interview with her.  At least those memories are preserved.  But the things I don't know will just be…gone.  Dead. 

The Dixie Chicks song says the same thing, more or less:  I will try to connect.  All I can do is try.  But, the thing is, with something as huge as two people's entire lifetimes, how could I possibly suceed?  On some level, to some extent, I will fail.  Part of what makes this whole process so hard is that I know that, and I can't help mourning the loss.

Just finished Anne Tyler's new novel, "Digging to America."  It was wonderful.  I love Anne Tyler; I have loved her for years.  She's my favorite living author, and I have read everything she's written.  In recent years, her novels have been missing something.  I'm not sure what it is.  I still buy them in hardcover (because I can't wait for paperback); don't get me wrong.  But this one, this novel, is as good as her very best work, namely, "Breathing Lessons," "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant," and "The Accidental Tourist."  The characters are fabulous and real, and you get to know them so intimately.

I looked Anne Tyler up on the internet after finishing her latest novel.  There isn't much out there, actually.  She prefers to live a very quiet life and do only very rare email interviews.  This makes it all the easier to relate to her, actually, but that's beside the point.  The point is, this is some of what the greatest living (imo) novelist says about the writing process:

I spend about a year between novels. My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations. I'll say, "It's time I stopped lolling about. I'd better think something up." Then for a month or so I'll jot down desperate possibilities. "Maybe I could write about a man who does such-and-such. Or wait: I think I already did that. Well, then maybe about that woman I saw in the grocery the other day. What was she up to, exactly? What might her story have been?"

Eventually, one of these possibilities will start flowering in my mind, and I'll manufacture what's initially a very trumped-up, artificial plot. I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.

My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages. At most I'll spend three or four hours daily, sometimes less. The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning. If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

I do write long, long character notes—family background, history, details of appearance—much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage. One day, around chapter 2 or 3, I'll be slogging through some dialogue and all of a sudden a character says something that makes me laugh. Where did that come from? I'm not funny! Then another will flatly refuse the plot contrivance I've designed for him. I'll write a scene this way, write a scene that way; it slows to a crawl and stops. Finally, I say, "Oh, all right," and I drop the contrivance and the scene falls into place and I see a motive I'd never guessed and I understand where we're going. It's as if someone else is telling me the story. I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.

It's interesting that Anne Tyler is so human.  From what she's said in this and other interviews, it's as if she sees herself as a medium through which her characters can speak and interact.  She listens to the characters, feels their presence in her writing room.  She has said that she tries to write so that she puts nothing of herself into the novel.  The characters aren't her, aren't anyone she knows.  She says she wants to be invisible so the characters can shine through. 

I cannot imagine the kind of modesty that must take.  I show off when I write.  I write for an audiance.  Anne Tyler said she first writes as if no one will ever read it.  It's so simultaneously confident and humble.  If I could be like any writer, I would choose to be like her.  Yet, this interview and others give me pause.  Could I ever be like that?  I don't think I could.

Most people reading this know that my grandma is moving to a nursing home.  She's been falling a lot lately, has had lots of mini-strokes, and seems to be just generally failing.  Also, she's been talking to my grandfather.  He's been dead for five and half years.

On her dresser, my grandma keeps the green marble box with his ashes.  When she dies, their ashes will be mixed and buried together.  But right now, what's left of him (his physical self at least) waits patiently on her dresser.  Next to his ashes, she keeps his personal artifacts.  His hairbrush rests on the green marble box, a few white hairs still lodged in the black bristles.  His old glasses wait in their case.  His wallet is there too, the leather worn and cracked.  I've looked in his wallet when no one was home.  His old driver's license is in it, along with a few other normal wallet-type things.  And folded up in the bill compartment, there's one of my very early poems about the day he bought me a pair of white cowboy boots.  It makes my throat ache to see that, how it's been folded and unfolded.

The thing about my grandpa was, he was the warmth to my grandma's strength.  He had issues, like anyone, but he was a truly good and honorable man.  Even when the Alzheimer's had him forgetting our names and shuffling as he walked, he still gave wonderful hugs and recognized us as important to his life.  Once, a couple of years before he died, he took me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, "Sure is a pretty love."  That could have meant anything; Alzheimer's makes it hard for people to really express themselves.  To me, though, it meant, "I love you, and I'm proud of you."

So when I heard about my grandma yelling at him in the hall, I joked that the poor guy was getting yelled at even after he's dead.  I can hear her now:  "Dammit, Paul!"  But here's the thing:  a little illogical part of me would rather believe he was there.  Maybe he was there waiting for her, the way his ashes wait on her dresser.  Maybe he is there to give her strength, as she so often gave it to him.  She faces this last great trial without complaint, and maybe, just maybe, he is there to hold her hand.  It brings me peace to think that maybe she isn't alone.