A Summer To Die

Another book by Lois Lowry. This one is for IHM, who lost her daughter Tejaswee recently, and for Starry, who so bravely shared her loss with us.

Image Courtesy Amazon. 

A SUMMER TO DIE
written by Lois Lowry
Published by Delacorte press, an imprint of Random House.
Age 12+

Two sisters : Molly and Meg. Very different persons. Both in their teens.

Molly is the older, tidier, prettier, golden-haired, outgoing, happier, more popular, cheerleader type. More like her mother in temperament. The one who wants to grow up to get married and have her own babies...babies to love and take care of.

Meg is the younger, messier, plainer, dark-haired, reserved, upended, difficult, not-easily-popular type. More like her father in temperament. The one who is passionate about her photography hobby, developing and printing her pictures in her own dark-room. The one who is going to grow up to have a career. Be 'a writer, or an artist, or a photographer.' The one who looks up to and admires her older sister, everything that she aspires to, but isn't.

The two often do not see eye-to-eye, and there are frequent fights, as only sisters so near-in-age, but so different from each other, can have. Inspite of that, are inseparable.

That summer, they move to the country where their father, who is a professor of literature, can get peace and quiet to finish the book he has been trying to write.

The girls start getting settled at their new school, when things take an unexpected turn. Molly starts getting nosebleeds. At first it is diagnosed as something to do with summer, and hormonal, but it turns out to be something more sinister. Molly has cancer. And it is incurable. She is going to die. 'It's as if she has become, suddenly, old.' Molly is wasting away- She has acute myeloid leukemia.

Her parents had not told her the bad news for a long time, not until they were sure of it, and were able to deal with the reality of it. Until she realises it herself one day. When Molly is taken away to the hospital, with no idea when she would be back.

"I knew then that they hadn't wanted to tell me, and they knew that I knew, that Molly wouldn't be coming home again, that Molly was going to die."

Meg cannot believe her beautiful older sister, the one who was going to be a bride, and have many babies, will die before the summer is over. It makes her feel very angry. It isn't fair!

"Why Molly? Dad, I'm the one who threw up on my own birthday cake, who broke the window in kindergarten, who stole candy from the grocery store. Molly never did anything bad!"
"Meg," he said. "Meg, don't."
"I don't care," I said angrily. "Someone has got to explain to me why."
"It's a disease, Meg," he said in a tired voice. "A horrible, rotten disease. It just happens. There isn't any why."

Molly passes away before the summer is over. It is a summer in which Meg grows up. Through her sorrow, she discovers her own voice, her own worth. She finds a friend in Will Banks, the seventy years old owner of the house that they have rented. Will becomes her student, and learns photography from her, and in his turn introduces her to the wildflowers growing all around. Helps her to find herself- likening her to the fringed gentian, a shy late-bloomer that flowers deep in the woods, long after other flowers have reached their glory and gone.

He also helps her to mourn her loss, and her encounter with mortality.

'On the drive home, I told my father, "Will Banks said a line from a poem to me once. He said, 'It is Margaret you mourn for,' and I told him I never mourn for myself. But I think he was right. So much of my sadness is because I miss Molly. I even miss fighting with her." '

There is a parallel story in the book about a young couple Ben and Maria, who have moved into another of Will's cottages, and who have a baby before Molly passes away. It is a re-affirmation of life, of it's continuity.

At the end of summer, after the book is finished, the family does move back to London. But Meg does return to the place as she has promised Will that she would be there to see the fringed gentian bloom. Healing is on its way.

Here is a poem about the fringed gentian that I would like to share, which is so like Meg's journey.

To the Fringed Gentian
by W. C. Bryant.



Image courtesy wikipedia 

 THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

And here is the poem about Margaret, which helped Meg deal with her loss.

Spring & Fall :(Margaret, Are You Grieving?)
by G. M. Hopkins.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

A wonderful book, written in her usual sensitive style by the two-times Newberry award winner, Lois Lowry. In an afterword, she tells us that as she wrote the book, she was remembering her own sister, who was lost to cancer many years ago. That does not, however make the book an autobiography. The setting, situation, all were fictional. What were real, though, in her words, are 'the feelings. The relationship between the sisters-best friends and worst enemies, sidekicks and bullies-complete with the jealousies and bickering, as well as the fierce, protective love. The anger, helplessness, and anguish that overcome an entire family caught in an unfair, inescapable situation.'