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How To Die

Woke up this morning to learn that my landlady died yesterday, of cancer. On my last night in Amsterdam, I received a strange and somewhat garbled text from a friend hospitalized in what looks like the final stage of her cancer fight; it sounded like farewell. Cancer, I hate you. There was some good news […]

Woke up this morning to learn that my landlady died yesterday, of cancer. On my last night in Amsterdam, I received a strange and somewhat garbled text from a friend hospitalized in what looks like the final stage of her cancer fight; it sounded like farewell. Cancer, I hate you.

There was some good news this morning: Adam DeVille found that The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming resonated with him in a particular way. The coincidences he brings up in his review are, to me, stunning:

As an editor for more than a decade now, I have gone through a lot of texts, and it is exceedingly rare–in fact, so rare I cannot recall a recent example–that, having finished a manuscript, I think “I wouldn’t change a word.” But I thought that after finishing Rod Dreher’s new book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life (Grand Central, 2013), 288pp. 

Dreher is an Orthodox blogger whom I’ve read for years now. In fact, given the high level of nonsense on the Web, and the very few hours in the day at my disposal, I restrict my blog-reading to a tiny handful, and Dreher is one of only two blogs I permit myself to check each day. Unlike too many other Orthodox bloggers, he does not bore one into a condition of coma by sanctimoniously conjuring up proofs of the superiority of Orthodoxy or railing against the “pan-heresy of ecumenism” or other such nonsense. Rather, he writes about an interesting mix of topics in our culture today–from the politics of food and cooking to travel, community life, the challenges of raising children, and much else besides–in sum, what makes for a good life not understood individualistically but communally. I do not always agree with him, but he has the singular merit of raising interesting and important questions.

I read his 2006 book Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots. There is much in there to agree with, but much to disagree with also. His tone did not, I thought, endear him to those who would otherwise agree with him. But I’ve been accused of the same thing. As someone who worked for Greenpeace for a time, who sought single-handedly to convince his Anglican parish in southwestern Ontario to become “green” in the 1980s before it was trendy, and who retains, to some, a puzzling mix of revanchist theological views and “leftist” ideas on food, agriculture, community, and economics, I relate very strongly to Dreher’s defying of conventional political categories.

In his latest book, I relate to him even more strongly. In fact, it is uncanny how much his recent life has been similar to mine:

  • his younger sister died unexpectedly of advanced cancer in 2011 as did mine, leaving three children (as did my sister);
  • her small town rallied around her, as did my sister Becky’s community, albeit on a smaller scale;
  • his parents were married in 1964 as were mine, and his mother is named Dorothy as is mine;
  • her relationship to him was complicated as mine was to my sister, in part because of our very different backgrounds and preoccupations.

That is all by way of preface to say that I read this book with more than usual scholarly dispassion. It is, in fact, a deeply moving and very poignant book looking at what happened to his sister Ruthie upon her diagnosis with aggressive and highly advanced lung cancer–this in a non-smoker who had done all the “right” things in life (as my own sister had done)–never smoking, eating healthily, etc. Cancer is never pleasant but it seems especially cruel in a young mother with young children. But Ruthie never raged against the Fates, never dared go beyond Job to insolently demand answers of God. Again and again she encouraged others simply to accept what had happened, and to commit to not getting angry with God over this. She put her trust in God and the doctors, and never demanded to know more than was required. Her brother found this a staggering approach, as I would too.

 

Read the whole thing, especially DeVille’s citation of Evelyn Waugh. I so very much appreciate DeVille’s praise of the book for not making Ruthie out to be a treacly saint with no flaws. In fact, while I was in the Netherlands, I was talking to one friend who said he had trouble with the book because he found Ruthie too harsh and judgmental of me. That occasioned my explaining that while Ruthie’s attitude toward me continues, even after death, to be a bone in my throat, it’s more important to take a broader view, and to realize as well that there’s a difference between sanctity and niceness.

There are some things Ruthie thought and did that aren’t justifiable. But on the whole, she died so well because she had lived so well. Little Way tries to explore that mystery.

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