It's 7:20 in the morning, the Jordan Valley, the window is open and the smell of rain is in the air. I even exaggerate and say that we are on the verge of a pleasant coolness and the fact that there is no need to turn on the air conditioner supports the arrival of the autumn buds. Maybe it's Meir Naai who remembers his blessing, who makes sure to call out to the rain that has already fallen, because he, too, up there knows that everything needs to be washed away. A new year begins. Dare and hope? yes. always.
In a personal letter that I sent this week, I wrote that the year of 2015 should be a year that forgives us for everything that the previous one took. We want those who were kidnapped from us back to the borders of the home. We want those who were exiled from the north and south to be able to return and nurture their homes with security and love. To fear that there is someone who is just waiting to slap us in the face. We want and choose to live life to the fullest, it doesn't seem like an excessive request to me, these are the basic conditions I set for the new year.
A very soft death / Simone de Beauvoir
After this is written, it will perhaps be surprising that the book with which I chose to end the year of Tashpad that pierced our souls, answers to the name: A very soft death של Simone de Beauvoir. I borrowed it from my mother's library during my last visit to Haifa, which I did not know would be the last and that I would not be able to visit there for two weeks due to the rocket barrages to the Sea of Galilee and all the way to Haifa. Hoping to break the travel fast and enjoy the holiday food at the parents' house. There are many good restaurants in Haifa but dad always says that the best restaurant is mom's. You're right.
Simone de Beauvoir documents the last days of her mother, Françoise. The book is autobiographical and written like a diary and somehow I couldn't stop reading it, at the same time asking myself over and over again: why are you reading this at all? What makes you read these uncompromising descriptions of the decay of body and soul, of separation, of this burden when someone close to us dies? And you can be sure there are no assumptions here and there are sentences that made me close my eyes in pain and cringe just reading what is happening to Françoise's body.
You can't put it down
And somehow, I couldn't put it down. It's no secret that Françoise is going to die, it's a given. There is no hope that you will get better during the reading. The hope being forged is that Simon and Ima will reach completion, a controlled and loving relationship despite the distance. I found a comforting compassion in de Beauvoir's writing and it seemed to raise the bar for me on how to write a diary and in fact it is prose writing. A Very Soft Death is a well-styled book despite its guise as a documentary diary. And a writer who manages to fascinate me in this way about a topic that I really, really don't feel like reading about, deserves praise.
When the part that refers to the term 'a very soft death' came, I realized what this book gave me and what I was looking for even without knowing what I wanted to find. In the grave world that we are experiencing in these long days and months, death is too violent and sudden and the breath is cut off in terror at every hard news, I have an ironic longing for processes of separation from loved ones that are not the result of a war or a sudden accident.
Simone de Beauvoir was given some opportunity to repair her relationship with her mother, with herself and then turn to the grieving process. Many of us, especially in the past year, did not have this opportunity, not to say goodbye and there are even those who cannot grieve yet. I never thought of death as something that could be soft and the right to mourn seemed to me to be self-evident.
Looking at what I wrote to you, I get the impression that it is a depressing book that is worth reading. Well, he's not depressing. Descriptions of the streets of Paris and French culture are charming to me, so are the characters of Simone's sister, the uncles, the doctors and nurses, the residents of the building - the book is rich in interesting characters.
I'm glad Mom chose to keep the book in her library, maybe I wouldn't have gotten to it if it hadn't left such a strong impression on her when she read it a few years ago. I also believe that the right book comes to us at the right time and it was not without reason that it caught my eye when I was talking with my parents in my childhood room in Haifa. Books are life. Read, enjoy.
In the quote below, Simone stays overnight next to her mother in the hospital and finds rest precisely there:
"I put on my sister's nightgown and stretched out on the bunk next to mother's bed; I too had anxieties. At sunset there was a gloom in the room, which was again lit only by a night lamp. Mother asked that the rolled-up curtain be taken down. I supposed that the darkness further thickened this gloomy mystery In fact, that night and the three nights that followed, I slept better than at home, being protected from the torment of the phone and the disturbances of my imagination: I was there, I didn't think at all." (p. 81)
Book details:
A very soft death On Wheels by Simone de Beauvoir, Crown Books, 2008. (The book was originally written in 1964)
May you have a year of atonement and compensation and don't forget to love, because no one can beat love.
Pleasant reading and may good words be by your side always,
Lily
Lily, my love, there's nothing wrong with your writing, I'm not biased, the book is the time to read it, may we have a good and successful year, a huge hug, I'm waiting, I've missed you
Thank you my dear mother, I have won you. Waiting for a hug to start the year.