Eugene writer explores grief in ‘Mercy Papers’

“The Mercy Papers” by Robin Romm (Scribner; $22.00; 213 pages; hardcover); “The Mother Garden” by Robin Romm (Simon & Schuster; $15.00; 224 pages; paperback)

By Katie Schneider

article created on: 2009-04-01T00:00:00

Eugene-native Robin Romm was 19 when her mother received a cancer diagnosis. Six years later, her mother called to say that her cancer had spread. Romm’s first thought, strangely enough, was that she needed a dog. Mercy, the hound she adopted, became an integral part of her mother’s final days.

“The Mercy Papers,” Romm’s memoir of that time, grapples with issues that every human being must ultimately face. It is an elegy for her mother, as well as a frank portrayal of the confusion, pain and anger that can surround a family at such a time. “The truth of loss,” writes Romm, “is large and ferocious. This book is a tribute to that truth.”

Romm’s earlier work includes the short-story collection “The Mother Garden,”recently was released in paperback.

I recently had an opportunity to speak with Romm about her book. Here is some of what I learned:

JR:“The Mother Garden” and “The Mercy Papers” were released close together, giving the illusion that the writing happened at the same time. Give us an idea of what the timeframe was like, putting together a story collection versus a book-length memoir.

RR: The roots of “The Mother Garden” go all the way back to my undergraduate years at Brown University, though the book came out nine years after I graduated. I remember working on a few stories in my early 20s that echoed the work in my late 20s.

I’d already become preoccupied with the body, its temporariness, and what questions this evoked. My mother was diagnosed with cancer during my sophomore year, when I was 19. Though I had no real way of articulating what I felt—I was too young, instinct led me to the edge of the material that became “The Mother Garden.”

I wrote the story “Lost and Found” early in my grad school career, probably in 2002. Wendy Lesser ran it in The Threepenny Review. It was one of my first publications and the first story I wrote that would make it into my final collection. The stories that made it into the book were written in four years, between 2002-2006, but I would say that I spent a decade learning how to write the stories in this book.

I began “The Mercy Papers” in 2004 because I had ceased writing fiction. My mother was dying. My world felt too real. I wrote 30 pages of the book in my childhood bedroom, in the off hours, while my mother was alive.

When I returned to California after her death, I wrote about 60 more pages in a rush to get the details down accurately. Then I put the pages in a drawer until 2007. I then worked on making it a real narrative for about another year. The memoir came together quickly, in comparison with the stories. It was a book that burst into the world through me. It had a mind of its own.

JR: Does writing a memoir leave you open to criticism from those close to you? Individual foibles can be disguised in stories, but in “The Mercy Papers” they’re just all out there. I think it is the appeal of the book—that someone can talk so honestly about the good and the bad.

RR: Of course it does, yes. But interestingly, most of the people close to me—my father, Don, Suzanne, Martha, Camas—were exceptionally gracious. They understood that this was my take on things, that I was after a truer kind of story, one that took into account the ugly, funny or confusing pieces of loss. And I wasn’t easy on myself, either, which is the crucial thing in a book like mine. If I portrayed myself as perfect, then the whole story would have been warped. And my portrayal of others would have been questionable. I think the gaze is what makes the book, the fact that it is piercing and turned inward as often as outward.

JR: In a recent volume of Jewish ethics, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin spends a chapter on caring for the bereaved. You write eloquently about the painful period immediately after your mother’s death. In retrospect, was there some aspect of ritual that helped you? Or what would you have liked people to do instead?

RR: I think one of the most painful things for me was actually the lack of ritual. We followed certain rituals with regard to the burial of my mother and shiva, but they didn’t feel deeply rooted to me. If you don’t live a life full of ritual, tacking them to the end of a life can feel awkward.

I wished that I had had a better understanding of the symbols, that they might have felt more pure. For example, the ritual of people coming to the bereaved and saying nothing, just sitting there—or covering the mirrors in black cloth. These things might have been helpful. In the end, the most helpful things were the things that felt authentic. For instance, one of my mother’s friends gave me a blanket so that I could wrap myself in it. Another friend sent me spicy hot chocolate powder with a note expressing his inability to do the right thing. I craved sincerity, and unfortunately the rituals, as I experienced them, didn’t feel as sincere as they might have felt. We had to have strangers in order to make a minyan. There’s nothing worse than strangers coming to sit shiva.

JR: It seems that’s where Mercy comes in, that you instinctively knew that having an “excessively loving” dog with you would help. RR: Yes...sometimes it’s clear.

This story was made possible by a grant from the Judith and Edwin Cohen Foundation.