The Vine: October 29, 2010
Someone on another site recommended I bring my question to you.
I’m trying to remember the title and author of a sci-fi short story. National superpowers use only robots to fight their wars. The Rapture happens and angels come down to the battlefield and take up all the machines, leaving the humans behind.
Ring any bells? Thanks.
Dave
*****
Dear Sars,
One for the impressive book-lovin’ hivemind:
Unfortunately my mama’s group has sustained a number of losses recently, and several people were reading Elizabeth McCracken’s An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination at once.One of the people reading it, who for various reasons is not looking at the prospect of being able to try for another baby anytime soon, complained that having the story end with McCracken’s second baby was not comforting to her, that what she needed were stories of people who lost children, were not able to or chose not to have more children subsequently, and ended up okay.
My first thought was that, if you do any reading about women born before, say, 1950 (or women born after 1950 in much of the world, sadly), then you will find a goodly number of stories of surviving the loss of a child.But I am not coming up with ideas, and I read a fair bit and like biographies of women especially.
Example: the dancer Isadora Duncan lost her two older children in a drowning accident, and the third died the day he was born.But the biography of her I have (Peter Kurth’s Isadora: A Sensational Life) implies pretty strongly that, although she did some of her best work after her children’s deaths, she never recovered emotionally.So that’s not helpful.Ann Hood’s Comfort also doesn’t work, as (thank God) the family was able to adopt a baby a couple years after their daughter’s death.
So I’m hoping for stories, real or fictional, about surviving the loss of a child and coming to terms with the loss of possibility of future children, preferably from the mother’s point of view.(I thought about the novel Zod Wallop, where a children’s book author is coming to terms with his daughter’s accidental death, but I suspect between the style and the male POV it would just get on my acquaintance’s nerves.)
I know it’s something of a presumptuous request on my part, but my acquaintance just seems to be in so much pain right now and if anything the TN readers came up with would be helpful to her, it would be a mitzvah.
Helpless Onlooker
Tags: Ask The Readers drinkin' the Jesus-Aid popcult
@Helpless: It’s chick-lit but Jennifer Weiner’s “Good In Bed” has a subplot about a baby and inability to have more. I think her “Little Earthquakes” deals with a crib death or similar. They’re not the deepest of reads, but sometimes light and fluffy can be a balm to the spirit. I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but there are probably thousands of blogs out there dealing with this as well. I know lots of them can get into the treacle with “our little angel” and stuff like that, but with a bit of digging, I’m sure you or your friend can find some actual, real, non-smurfy people who have dealt and are dealing with that issue.
My heart goes out to her and you are a lovely friend for wanting to help her out. :)
The first one sounds remarkably like the Neon Genesis Evangelion, but that’s anime, not a short story . . . though maybe it’s BASED on a short story?
Helpless: The blog found here: http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman who in those circumstances (stillbirth, unsuccessful fertility treatments, decision to cease treatments). I know a blog is not the same as a book, but you may be able to find some resources by looking through her archives.
Helpless: “The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler has a male protagonist, but is about parents who lose a 7-year-old child and how they eventually come to terms with that loss. The main character does get involved in another child’s life, but he doesn’t have another child of his own. I found the ending very hopeful.
This might be a better question to pose here: http://glowinthewoods.com. It’s a site that deals with infant loss and grief.
Sarah – thanks for running my question about the robot rapture. The kind folks at Wikipedia Reference Desk helped me figure out the author, and from there I was able to locate the story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Entertainment/2010_October_16#Trying_to_locate_SF_short_story_about_robots_and_rapture
The story is “The Battle” by Robert Sheckley and appears in his collection Citizen in Space. It was first published in If magazine in 1954.
The story opens with a human General preparing to counter Satan’s forces in the Sahara.
A priest gets in and asks that people be allowed to fight this battle. It is, after all, the last battle. The people’s battle.
The general counters that the battle is being fought by the people’s representatives: robots and weaponized machines.
The battle commences and the legions of Hell face the best the human military has to offer; tanks, robots, drones, etc. The machines of war win Armageddon. They vanquish Satan and his minions.
As the generals celebrate their awesome victory in their underground bunkers, far from the battlefield, they notice a strange presence on their monitors.
(quoted material starts here)
The generals were silent.
The Presence touched a twisted robot.
Upon the smoking desert, the robots began to move. The twisted, scored, fused metals straightened.
The robots stood on their feet again.
…
The bodies of the robots began to rise in the air. Around them were the angels of the Lord, and the robot tanks and soldiers and bombers floated upward, higher and higher.
(end quoted material)
Every time I hear about the increase of drones on the battlefield, I think about this story. If we don’t put humans back on the battlefields, we might not get to heaven after Armageddon!
Helpless, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking seems like the most obvious fit. I mean, it is crushing, but very beautiful.
I don’t have any specific titles in mind for Helpless but I can’t help but think of Charles Darwin and how he was driven by the loss of his beloved daughter. Granted, I think he staill had other kids but my impression of that story is that her death is what motivated him to accomplish what he did.
Of course, any helpfulness here is predicated on your friend’s belief (or not) in evolution.
One of these days I’ll actually recognize one of these books.
Helpless, call your local public library and ask for the reference librarian. They are amazing at finding this sort of thing. Even if they don’t have books in the library system they can give you titles, authors, subject, etc. Many small libraries have inter-library loan agreements within their state or with colleges and universities so they may be able to help your friend borrow some books that way–it takes awhile and sometimes there’s a small cost involved but it may be the way to go.
This won’t be incredibly specific, but there’s a woman writer who publishes in a lot of magazines (given what I read, my guess is that I’ve seen her most often in Real Simple. In fact I’m sure I’ve seen it there), and she writes about losing her daughter to an amazingly quick illness (2-3 days) and about how she went on. I know the daughter’s name was Grace, and the mother wrote one article about coming to terms with her hair – something about how she kept trying different hairstyles and colors and only after Grace died did she accept her natural look because she realized it was just like her daughter’s. She’s also written more straightforward articles about the loss. I’ve seen her stuff on and off for a few years and she seems to be very connected still with the incident (as expected) but writes a lot about getting through the initial grief to a place of functioning.
JessicaS, I believe that women (Ann Hood) wrote a book based on her daughter’s death as well called the Knitting Circle. The story seems the same.
Helpless Onlooker, I hightly recommend that book. I do not believe the author has another child at the end, but it has been awhile since I read it. It is very beautiful and moving. It is also a fast read, if you would like to read it before giving it to your friend to make sure there isn’t anything that would bother her.
Hi,
To Helpless Onlooker- A friend gave me the book Three Shadows- It’s a graphic novel that the author wrote for his friends that had lost a child. In the story, the father gets so wrapped up in trying to save his son, that he misses out on some of his son’s last days. It does end with the family having another child though. They are fairly content in the end, still remembering their son, but content.
I have a son with special needs, and a few years back I had to let go of the hope that he would recover or get better. I was spending so much energy chasing cures that I was missing out on enjoying my son. The book Three Shadows was very helpful for me in grieving and getting closure on chasing recovery. Ironically, a few months after this closure, the answer fell into my lap and my son is happily recovering. The book helped me to balance recovery with enjoying life.
Also, I was at a birthday party a few weeks back with some really cool diverse moms. One mom has two adopted children. She said that when they decided to adopt, she didn’t want the grief of not being able to conceive to cast a shadow on their adoptive family. She and her husband had a ceremony/kind of funeral, on the shore of a local lake to say goodbye to the prospect of their own biological children. She said that it was very helpful to get closure, and that she feels like the grief has eased since then.
Another mom (adopted herself) at the party does weddings and some other ceremonies. She said she has done a lot of adoption/family celebrations for step families mixing.
Your friend may not be ready at this point, but she may in the future want to have some sort of ceremony to mark closure or grief or what have you.
That’s my two cents, I hope it’s helpful in some way. Good luck to you, and what a good friend that you are trying to help her through this. Just that fact that you are trying probably helps her feel just a little bit less alone.
Sincerely,
Sam
@Helpless – My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki is a great novel (I’ve even seen it assigned to several college classes). Although this is more of a sub-plot, the main character does find herself pregnant, suffers a miscarriage, and then discovers that she is a D.E.S. daughter (that is, her own mother, when pregnant, was given a drug that is now known to cause problems- including infertility- in the unborn children), and so is very unlikely to ever have children.
Which makes is sound very depressing, but it’s very good, with some really funny parts.
Bridgh, My Year Of Meats is great!
My first thought was actually a movie, The Sweet Hereafter, about a small town who loses a many of their children in a horrific school bus accident, and how the different families cope. I believe it’s based on a novel. Be warned: there’s a fairly disturbing incest subplot. It’s a great movie, though.
Although I agree that Good in Bed is a comforting read, the narrator’s baby survives – there’s a happy ending and a sequel in which the narrator has another baby with a surrogate mother.
Sandra M. Gilbert’s Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies has a section on mourning children, if your friend is into poetry, but I’d suggest having a look through the poems before recommending them – sometimes elegy can help to articulate grief and help with mourning, and knowing that other people are processing the same grief can also be helpful, but sometimes I guess that can also make one feel worse.
It’s a YA novel, but Sarah Ellis’s The Baby Project is about an established family that has an oops baby, only to have the baby die from SIDS at a few months of age. It’s a very touching story. Though it’s told from the point of view of Jessica, who is 11, it shows how the whole family deals with the baby’s death.
@Helpless: It’s not written by a woman, but Into the Deep by Robert T Rogers (be SURE to get it by that author, there’s a few “into the deeps” out there) is a really amazing true account of Robert’s loss of his entire family in a flash flood~wife and 4 kids. It goes through how he dealt with his grief, and how he was able to find peace and eventually remarry and have children with his second wife. It DOES have a decidedly Christian leaning~I went to a church to see him speak, and it was a “focus on the family” book, but PLEASE don’t let that turn you off of it~the book itself doesn’t evangelize, it just tells about how he relied on his faith to get through all that. I’m not a big fan of organized religion, but his story is amazing enough to read no matter what your feelings on that aspect.
Helpless,
The play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay Abaire deals nicely with a whole family processing the death of the protagonist’s young son. The ending is more “perhaps, just maybe, we will survive this” than “now we’re all fine again”, but I find that more true-to-life and comforting than sunshine and happiness.
There is a film version coming out, but I can’t recommend that without knowing whether they rewrote the ending.
Helpless Onlooker might want to have a look at The Hollow Heart by Marina Devlin
The author is an Irish journalist and it is a very difficult read but a lot of women find it puts there situation and emotions into words and it can be helpful for the people around them to be able to understand what they are going through.
I’d put in a big caution about The Sweet Hereafter. It’s definitely the best movie I’d never want to see twice–it absolutely laid waste to my heart, and I’d say it was more about the fallacy of our beliefs that we can control such things than about life being okay again after tragedy. IMHO and all.
I keep thinking of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s short story/novelette “Jamie” but to be honest I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone who’s actually going through a grieving process, especially pertaining to the loss of a child.
The main character tries to do everything right with her pregnancy, but there are complications and the baby eventually dies. The story has always struck me as being incredibly brave, because the mother has to make the decision to “unplug” the baby, with limited support from family and friends who just want things to get “back to normal” as soon as possible. It isn’t until after he dies that she’s able to grieve – in fact, as he is dying, she’s incredibly angry at him (yes, angry at the baby) because of how hard it is on her and how harshly she’s being judged by friends, family, and hospital staff. It’s powerful, but it’s very dark, and I’m not at all sure it’d be appropriate for someone who’s lost a child similarly or at a similar age. I would recommend it to Helpless, though, as it might provide some unexpected insights into what the acquaintance may be going through.
Just wanted to thank @Krista for the recommendation the ‘A Road Less Travelled’ blog, which I found a really good read — I have been looking for something thoughtful on the topic for ages. Go Vine!
The Robert Sheckley story struck a cord, so I checked my library to see if there was any chance I had the collection amongst the classic science fiction my father just gave me. Strange enough I have three other short story collections, but not that one. They sound pretty interesting, though, so I now have my reading material picked out for the rest of the evening.
@Helpless – After my miscarriages I was given a copy of A Silent Love: Personal Stories of Coming to Terms With Miscarriage by Adrienne Ryan. It’s a collection of essays by real women telling the stories of losing their own children, and it covers the gamut from early miscarriage to birth defects and complications to infant death. Some of the women went on to have more children and some didn’t, and of those who didn’t some were eventually okay while some haven’t got there yet. It’s a tough book to read, and I cried all the way through it, but in the end I felt like it helped a lot with my own grief and coming to terms with the possibility that I might not be able to have children.
Helpless, I realized I gave the wrong book title on my suggestion. The Knitting Circle is one of the books Ann Hood wrote based on her daughter’s death, but the one I was thinking of was Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which is the nonfiction account of her daughter’s death and the family’s grief. Good luck to you and your friend.
@Helpless – Having recently been through a miscarriage (8/30) after TTC for 24 months now (I have a stubborn uterus), I can certainly relate. I would also suggest you check out the Fertility Friend (www.fertilityfriend.com) loss message boards for ideas on ways to comfort those dealing with losses – either pre-term or early. Also, feel free to email me (cheekymomma at att dot net) if you want to bounce some ideas off a survivor who, at 35, is facing the very real possibility of no more children (I have a 7 year old daughter that it took 32 months TTC) and learning to deal with it. I am by no means a therapist, but I don’t mind helping where I can.
Helpless, your friend might like Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman. The narrator protagonist has a very tough time with the loss of her newborn and her relationship with her young stepson. There is no new baby by the end but there is significant resolution of many of her “issues.”