A Matter of Death and Life
His latest memoir ‘A Matter of Death and Life – Love Loss and What Matters in the End’ co-written with his wife of 65 years Marilyn has been much anticipated by me.
It is at its heart a love story between two people who have co-existed since their teenage years: written in the context of Marilyn’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death at the age of 87.
As a Psychotherapist myself I came to this book somewhat in awe of Irvin. I walked away from it slightly in love with Marilyn his wife.
I knew nothing of Marilyn until meeting her here. It was a joy to learn about her life and work, an avid and committed feminist, scholar, and parent. Her courage and strength in the face of continual suffering due to her illness shone through with the steadfastness of a beam from a lighthouse. She suffered and wanted to die, she held on so bravely for so long, not for herself but for others, her children, her friends, and her husband, always conscious of the impact her death would have on them. Her compassion and love for her family, for Irvin and others was monumental.
What sadden and shocked me most about the telling of this story was seeing Irvin a prominent and influential Psychotherapist, who I so admired, be so unaware of his sexism and racism as illustrated by this passage from page 175, “A couple of months before Marilyn died, she and I took a stroll up our street and saw a new neighbor, a distinguished white-haired elderly man, obviously handicapped, being helped down the front stairs of his home and into an auto-mobile by a younger dark-skinned woman who, no doubt, we assumed, was his caretaker. The day after Christmas, these new neighbors (whom I still had not met yet) invited me to dinner and Christmas carols. I arrived at the house and was greeted by the elderly man and the caretaker. I soon learned that he was a retired MD and that the ‘caretaker’ had an MD and a PhD degree! Moreover, she was not his caretaker but his wife! She was delightful and led the Christmas carols with a glorious voice! Again, my first thought: wait till I tell Marilyn about this!”
Sexism and racism are not funny. It is disappointing that at no point in the process from first draft to publication was this picked up, called out or challenged. While Marilyn comes across as a true feminist very much aware of difference and diversity Irvin is lacking in this area.
I’m taken aback once again by Irv’s inability or unwillingness to consider the impact on his children of having to care so intimately for their mother, on page 138 “Marilyn is often incontinent, and several times daily my daughter and my youngest son, Ben (who has three very young children and is highly experienced with soiled diapers), help clean and dress her. At such times I walk out of the room: I want to preserve my memory of my beautiful unsullied Marilyn.”
Irvin seems to give no thought to the preservation of his children’s memories of their mother. This is a theme that continues throughout the book, leaving it to his children to deal with the messy practical reality of dying and death without a thought for the impact on them. While understandable given the depth of his own despair, for a man so highly regarded as a Psychotherapist this lack of reflection, especially in relation to his own family is disappointing.
So much of the emotional labor seems to have been left to Marilyn, hanging on for almost a year, not for herself but out of love for Irvin, repeatedly telling him how much pain she was in and that she wanted to die, that she was only holding on for him, repeatedly met with his denial, his need of her to recover and carry on.
This unfortunately is an age-old story - the imbalance of emotional labor in heterosexual relationships and the burden this placed on Marilyn is palpable and painful to witness.
While Irvin’s writing is still a joy to read, a point he makes himself in the book, the subtle undertones of racism and sexism highlight his blindness to these issues and the privileges that his whiteness and maleness afford him which makes the story a sad encounter indeed.