Dec
24
“The Gift” by Sam Lipsyte
Filed Under Nonfiction |
Woke up at six in the morning and found a personal essay in yesterday’s NY Times called “The Gift” by Sam Lipsyte, about the author’s experience of taking care of his cancer-ridden mother as she was dying (Thanks for the link, Jenny). The essay is a gift for me, as a reader, in a different sense, since it’s so damn good. Moving, unsentimental, funny, and lucidly written. If you know Lipsyte’s fiction, this essay will further enlighten how you read through certain autobiographical streaks in his work, especially in Venus Drive. I interviewed Sam Lipsyte two years ago for The Blue Notebooks, and not knowing about his mother, asked him a pretty specific (and perhaps insensitive) question concerning his relationship to her. I forget what the actual question was. But I do remember that he did not skirt the issue, was frank and honest; it really was the highlight of that evening. I’ll shut up so you can go read “The Gift.” It’s perhaps my favorite Christmas essay, ever.
Once, lying on her bed, talking, talking about nothing in particular, I studied her as hard as I could. Her eyes were closed, and for the first time I could actually sense the end of her, her body. And lying there beside her was so sweet. Why did we wait until the end to let go of everything that ever kept us from just lying there and talking like two people who are going to die and not be able to talk anymore
(Image: by Georges Seurat, of his mother)
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