I Remain in Darkness

Review

Ernaux always makes me think about people I love. Usually, in a romantic way. But in this book, as with The Years, I thought about my mom.

Growing up, I was fortunate to know several of my great-grandparents. My mom’s grandma, Bernice. My dad’s grandpa and grandma, Roscoe and Lois, as well as his other grandma, Modena. Bernice lived to be 82, Lois 92, Roscoe 92, and Modena 97. When I was born, there were pictures in the paper with some of us and however many generations were living at the time, because it was rare enough then to be newsworthy in a small town.

Bernice spent her last years in a nursing home. We visited just a few times. Truth be told, I don’t remember much about her, something that depresses my mom. We didn’t visit her much as I grew up. I remember the auction held when she moved from her little home on the corner into the nursing home. She was losing herself to Alzheimer’s. On visits, sometimes she would not know who my mom was, or who we were. I did not know her well enough to realize the pain of this.

Lois and Roscoe, in their ways, were wounded by dementia. At one point Roscoe, who I have always known as a gentle man, choked Lois in a fit of unknowing. They had spent their entire lives together, almost literally, more than 70 years at that point. He withered further and eventually died in a memory care ward. I know all of the smells that Ernaux describes in this book from visiting him. I remember Lois saying in the days after his death, “I just wish I would die so I could be with him again.” I am tearing up hearing her voice in my head, as I write. Years passed before her wish was fulfilled. One of my last memories of her, she is in a hospital bed, tubes everywhere, bile being pumped out of her.

I would rather think of her and Roscoe in front of their Christmas tree, the most beautiful I think that has ever been put together. Roscoe on the floor with me, putting together a toy train. Lois moving between the little doublewide’s kitchen and dining room with divinity, rum balls, and peanut butter fudge. I can’t think of them without crying, tears come almost instantly. I miss them so much.

Modena passed in 2020. I wasn’t able to go to her funeral, which of course did not happen. It was April 1st. She died on April Fool’s Day. I don’t think she’d have wanted it another way. I remember spending the night in her trailer, sleeping on the pullout couch. It would terrify me to sleep there (which I only did when visiting dad during required visitation), because her house was jam packed with cows and dolls and the occasional clown. For many years, she had a little dog named Mickey that was quite a menace. I used to walk him around town.

Once, I was looking at all of Modena’s little knick-knacks and I saw a tiny clown figure. It took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing. He was on a platform, hands up in the air. His hands were attached to something, no, handcuffed? Handcuffed to a bar. What is that? My god, the clown has a giant (and exposed) erection. Where did she get this thing? I think I am a lot like Modena, sometimes.

I think about them because I’m watching my mother watch her mother begin with dementia. There is a part of me that knows that my sister and I will probably have to watch our mother deteriorate, and I can’t think of this for too long before crying, either. My mom had a heart episode about ten years ago that I thought was going to kill her, and it is the one time I’ve had a full-fledged breakdown at work, in tears. I thought she might be dying within the year. I remember hearing the words, “congestive heart failure” which sound terrifying. They are. Sometime after I was driving and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” came on the radio, and this is her song in my mind, and it made me think of being little and all of everything that we went through together.

Imagining the scenes that Ernaux recounts, changing the names and the faces to those of my grandmother, my mother…

Anyway, Ernaux does this to me. She gets me thinking about the past and the present, and the totality of emotion that drowns me all the time. This is a beautiful little book, so much bigger than the mere 79 pages of printed paper.

Notes:

Notes

p31 - I must not give in to emotion as I write about her.

p33 - The nurse told me she is always talking about me, and only about me. Feelings of guilt. I have also noticed that she often thinks she is me.

p51 - She would announce cheerfully, ‘Annie, you’ve got a visitor,’ when a schoolfriend came round to see me. ‘Visits’ meant a lot to her. A token of love, proof that we exist for other people.

p58 - When I think of the woman she used to be, her red dresses, her flamboyance, it makes me cry. But usually, I think of nothing, I am here with her, that’s all that matters. At least I still have her voice. Voice is everything. The worst thing about death is the loss of voice. (TB: bolding mine, italics in original.)

p63 - The woman with glasses was in tears, sobbing, ‘I want to die.’ By her side, her husband, the one with reddish eyes, replied softly, ‘But you’re going to make me die.’ He may be right.

p74 - This is not literature that I am writing. I can see the difference with my other books. Or rather, no I can’t, for I am incapable of producing books that are not precisely that – an attempt to salvage. (TB: emphasis mine.)