March 8, 2006: Death and Dying in Children's Fiction,

continued

I thought I would only write about After the Rain by Norma Fox

Mazer, but today I picked up Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse and

discovered it, too, treated the subject of death, but in an entirely different

way. in After the Rain we see a lingering death from cancer. In Out of

the Dust the death is accidental. tragic and a bit quicker.  But, of

course, both deaths profoundly affect the characters in the books.

After the

Rain is the sort of book that you are still thinking about long after you

have finished reading it. It hit me especially hard, because I was reading it in

the anniversary week of my own mother's death last year, and I had been with her

in the days and hours leading up to her death. Hospice and 24-hour caregivers

had the bulk meeting Mom's physical needs, but I wanted to be there to support

her emotionally as she made her transition from this life to the next. I knew

she did not fear death itself, but in a cancer death one loses much before one

loses life. First the appetite goes. Then strength begins to ebb. And then one

has to face the fact that one will not get better no matter how strong the will

to live. And then one loses independence and dignity -- the worst losses.

At the beginning of After the Rain we meet

fifteen-year-old Rachel, a normal teenage Jewish girl who loves her family but

does not always appreciate their interactions with her (such as having her

parents continue to call her by their pet name for her --Mouse). She uses her

prodigal brother Jeremy, who lives far away as a sort of diary. She pours her

feelings out to him often in letters which she never really expects answers to

because, as Jeremy says, he never writes letters. Jeremy feels alienated from

his family somewhat because he's been married and divorced a few times and has

never held a steady job.  On one visit he made just to spend time with his

grandfather, he came out of the meeting shaking. Grandfather had chided him

about his lifestyle and ended by laying almost a curse on Jeremy: "You're too

old now, The time is gone. You've lost your chance for a decent life. "

Grandfather is pretty hard for the rest of the family to get

along with, too. Rachel and her parents visit him every Sunday and Rachel also

calls him about once a week, but there are few safe subjects to talk about. To

quote from the book: "Driving nails into cement is probably an easier chore than

carrying on a conversation with Izzy."  The weather is usually safe. The

same questions get asked in almost every conversation, and the always repeated

answers are predictable. Izzy has not spoken to his brother in years. So, I'm

sure you get the picture. He's not easy to talk to or visit. He assumes his

family calls and comes over because it's the right thing to do, but nobody takes

much joy in the visits, because grandfather takes them for granted but doesn't

open up and talk to them. They usually wind up playing Scrabble.

Izzy tries to stay in shape by walking four miles a day. (He's

in his 80s, as was my mother when she died.) He's had a bit of trouble with his

stomach and the doctors have done some tests, but the results aren't in yet.

Rachel's mother, Shirley takes Izzy to the hospital for some more tests. When

the doctor comes to release him, he tells the family he has a virus and Izzy

should go home and do whatever he feels like doing, even if the virus seems to

hang on a bit. Then the doctor calls and wants Shirley to come see him, and

Rachel goes along. That's when they find out Izzy has lung cancer. But the

doctor didn't tell them the truth in front of Izzy because he wants Izzy to

remain optimistic. There is no treatment that will help since the disease has

progressed too much and Izzy is too old for surgery (as it was with my own

mother.) The doctor sees no reason to tell  Izzy, for it might take away

his will to live. Although the doctor admits he's not God and cannot be

absolutely sure, his medical opinion is that Izzy has but two or three more

months to live. This hits the family like a ton of bricks.

Was this a wise decision? When mmy own mom got the bad news, she was

given only four weeks, and she couldn't believe it. It was good she had the

chance to adjust and to talk it out with family. It was good for us because we

could concentrate on spending more time with her and helping her do anything she

still wanted to do. It meant that my brother who lives five hours away and

usually only comes on holidays made the effort to spend his one day off coming

every Saturday to visit until she died. And it meant we could get help from

hospice and Mom could be at home with her family until the end. For that to

happen, the patient has to know what's ahead and choose hospice care. Izzy did

not have that chance. Reading this book showed me what it might have been like

the other way, and assures me we made the right choice.

Since Izzy doesn't know how sick he is, he continues to walk.

And one day when Rachel is home alone after school she gets a call from an Alice

Farnum, who tells her Izzy has fallen in front of her house and wants someone to

come get him. He won't hear of an ambulance, so Rachel calls her father and gets

only an answering machine. She doesn't want to panic her mother, so she walks

over to Alice's, but has no way to get Izzy back to his apartment. He won't let

them call a taxi and Alice doesn't have her car at home. So Izzy, as might be

expected insists on walking back. He doesn't want to let Rachel come with him,

but she insists on "wasting her time" as Izzy puts it. Shirley is upset when she

hears of the days events and calls Izzy to invite him to live with them, but he

sees no need for it. Rachel takes matters into her own hands and calls Izzy to

say she wants to walk with him the next day. He protests but she insists and

tells him to wait for her.

The walk the next day is pretty quiet. But the walks continue,

day after day, and gradually the two learn to talk to each other and Rachel

learns to love her grandfather. When her friends invite Rachel to a birthday

party for her best friend after school one day, she insists she can't come

because  she must be with her grandfather. But when they get back to the

apartment after the walk, the friends are there with balloons and cake and

inform her they've brought the party to her. They come in and decorate the

apartment and eat cake and then put on records to dance. Rachel is not sure all

this is good for Grandpa, but he seems to join in the spirit of the thing and

tries to become the life of the party. Then Rachel's friend asks Izzie to dance

with her. Izzie tells everyone how he used to dance with his wife when she was

alive. He raises his hands and wiggles his hips. He's acting 60 years younger

and having a wonderful time. Then he says 'I used to pick my wife up with one

hand...put my hand on the floor...' He bends over, demonstrating. 'Like this.

She'd stand on it and ...I'd raise her. Pick her up... straight up in the

air....'  and then Izzy tries to lift the somewhat heavy Helena off the

floor. Rachel can't bear to look. Izzy is puffing and straining to lift Helena.

Everyone has gone quiet. Izzy begins to sweat and his breath starts coming like

a bellows. Rachel yells for him to stop. he continues to lift until Helena is

off the ground, but his face is gray, sweating. He finally sets her down with a

thump. And he says "you...see,' and he smiles a strange smile which remains

frozen on his face after he finally sits down on the couch. The young people,

except for Rachel, make their exit, knowing that the party is over. Rachel

cleans up and wipes Izzy's face with a wet washcloth and covers him with a

blanket. She continues to sit there with him until after dark, until he wakes up

again and says, 'Still here? Go home darling.'

The next day is a beautiful day and Izzy wants to walk. They eat

some lunch at a small restaurant where Grandpa has a dish of his favorite walnut

maple ice cream, but he only has a couple of bites. They go back out on the

sidewalk and he suddenly stops and says he can't go any further and his face is

covered with sweat. Rachel gets him into a hardware store across the street and

the woman behind the counter gets a chair for him while Rachel calls her father.

By the time Rachel's' father Manny gets there, Izzy has recovered a bit and he

tells Manny, 'My granddaughter gave... me a beautiful...day.' This time Izzy

goes to the hospital for good, though the doctor assures him he'll be home soon.

Grandpa knows better, since he's already made Rachel tell him his diagnosis.

As Grandpa gets worse, Rachel is the only one who feels

comfortable with him because they have learned to communicate and she is not

afraid to be honest with him.  She insists on staying away from school

while he's in the hospital so she can be with him -- over the objections of her

parents. She goes to school one day to explain everything to her teachers and to

get her work to do at the hospital. And she is adamant about staying with

Grandpa on his last night, after her parents leave and over their protests. 

She senses he won't last until morning, and he doesn't. She experienced the

death watch as I did, only there were interruptions by doctors and nurses with

their procedures when they shooed Rachel out. It was evident how much Rachel's

presence there meant to Izzy -- and to Rachel herself. Grandpa knew she was no

longer caring for him out of duty but out of love, and that was a gift he

accepted. The people at hospice say a person chooses his time of death, so all

of us caring for mom while she was in her final coma were told to always tell

her when we were leaving or entering the room so she could die alone or with

someone. I'm convinced that Grandpa gave Rachel the gift of sharing his

departure. I won't go through the final arrangements or the family interactions

after Jeremy and brother Phil come home. For me it was the growth in both Rachel

and Izzy that were important. Rachel's watch  brought back my own last

hours with Mom, reading to her from her Book of Common Prayer, knowing that

though she was in a coma, her sense of hearing was still there. And when it

became evident the end was very near, I called my brother and held the phone to

Mom's ear so he could say his final goodbye and give her permission to go

instead of trying to hold out until his next visit, which was still a few days

away.

This is the sort of book that leaves a lingering impact on the

reader. The death and dying are very realistic. And they take time. Rachel slows

her life down to fit Grandpa's needs just as she slowed her steps as she walked

with him. As they gave of themselves, they both grew more whole.

Buy After the Rain at http://www.barbsteachinghelp.com/bookdetails.asp?bkid=13394620

In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo, a 13-year-old who lives in Oklahoma's dust bowl in poverty with her parents, loses her mother in an accident. Her father left a can of kerosene by the stove, and her ma thought it was water and poured it, to make coffee. It made instead "a rope of fire." Billie Jo and her ma ran out of the kitchen, but then Billie Jo ran back to get the burning pail to save the kitchen and threw it out the door, not knowing her mother was on her way back in. Her pregnant mother caught fire and Billie Jo threw herself on her to try to smother the flames to save her and the baby. Ma slowly dies and is in pain all the time until she does. Billie Jo's hands also get burned in the fire, and she can no longer play her mother's much loved piano, which is how she has always worked out her emotions. As Biilie Jo

tells her tragic story of her mother's death, she explains it like this: "Daddy found the money Ma kept squirreled in the kitchen under the threshold. It wasn't very much. But it was enough for him to get good and drunk. He went out last night. While Ma moaned and begged for her water. he drank up the emergency money until it was gone....I tried to help her. I couldn't aim the dripping cloth into her mouth. I couldn't squeeze. It hurt the blisters on my hands to try. I only

made it worse for Ma. She cried for the pain of the water running into her

sores, she cried for the water that would not soothe her throat and quench her

thirst, and the whole time my father was in Guymon drinking. "

The next day the grasshoppers come and eat everything green that

is left, including all the leaves and fruit on Ma's favorite apple trees. Billie

Jo writes "I couldn't tell her, couldn't bring myself to say her apples were

gone. I never had a chance....Ma died that day giving birth to my brother." The brother also died. The neighbors came to help prepare the bodies for burial. The Reverend led the service. The women came back to scrub and clean the house and

Billie Jo listened as they talked about her throwing the pail. And this is

Billie Jo's take on it: "'Billie Jo threw the pail,' they said. 'An accident,'

they said. Under their words a finger pointed....They didn't talk about my

father leaving kerosene by the stove. They didn't say a word about my father

drinking himself into a stupor while Ma writhed, begging for water. They only

said Billie Jo threw the pail of kerosene. "

The dust gets  worse. Billie Jo misses her mother's touch

and the few words she used to speak. Billie Jo can't play her piano anymore

because of her burnt hands -- it's too painful. Billie Jo and her father can't

seem to talk to each other in their grief, so Billie Jo decides to go to

California to get out of the dust. By the time she gets to Arizona, after seeing

the poor everywhere along the way, she decides to go back home because she

realizes things won't really be better anywhere else. When she returns,

communication opens up with her father again, spring and rain come to settle the

dust and water the crops, and both father and daughter (after some initial

resistance on Billie Jo's part) open their hearts to the coming of a new woman

in the house.  Billie Jo sums up her feelings near the end: "The way I see

it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. Hard times are

about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up" On the very

last page we see Billie Jo in the kitchen, waiting for Daddy to bring his new

friend over for dinner and she says: "I wipe the dust out of the roasting pan, I

wipe the dust off Ma's dishes, and wait for Daddy to drive in with Louise,

hoping she'll stay a little later, a little longer, waiting for the day when she

stays for good. "

As I ponder these two books, I know I'd rather be Rachel than

Billie Jo, who's life was hard even before her mother died. I've been where

Rachel was, except my mother and I did not need impending death to open our

hearts to each other. I cannot imagine watching a death such as Billie Jo had to

watch and being without the family support that both I and Rachel had.

Out of the Dust is written in blank verse, which makes it

a fast read. The form suits the content, for poetry is the perfect vehicle to

describe the dust that is everywhere, covering and killing everything, providing

the backdrop for the town's life. And it is also the ideal form for Billie Jo to

use to express the depth of her emotions without getting emotional. Both Rachel

and Billie Jo are people worth knowing -- people who have dealt with  death

close up and and the grief that followed it and been able to work it through and

go on with their lives.

©2006, Barbara Radisavljevic

 

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