The Bear Came Over The Mountain
All we need is love? Long-lasting togetherness wala love, more like
(wrote this a while back)
It is a Saturday evening and I am sat here at a cafe. The world around me is abuzz with the onset of the T20 World Cup and the Lok Sabha election results from tomorrow. Two sports of different sorts, commanding the voyeuristic eye.
I have just finished reading the story The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munro. She passed away last week (?) and I have been meaning to read her stories since.
She writes like an angel - every sentence is perfection. Like delicately shaped lace - that reveals less and tantalises more. It was melancholic and felt like beautiful sadness. I wanted to stop reading but also could not bring myself to do it. The story is about dementia and marital loyalty and how disease undoes togetherness.
The husband contends with his confined wife form an emotional bond with a fellow patient where she has been institutionalised. Munro is almost meditative in her descriptions and I was pushed to consider what constitutes duty and loyalty in a bond for life.
I think a lot about old age and companionship these days. Whenever i see an old couple, i feel a rush of love. I want to walk up to them on the street and tell them - how lucky you are, you made it this far! Some people are denied that, you know. The fates aren't always as kind and I feel so happy for you. And a tiny bit, envious. I cant help but notice the contrast with the isolation my mother feels and talks about.
But I wish more people read this story, even if I do not think I have the heart to recommend it to people.
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“You could have just driven away,” she said. “Just driven away without a care in the world and forsook me. Forsooken me. Forsaken.”
He kept his face against her white hair, her pink scalp, her sweetly shaped skull.
He said, “Not a chance.”
(Note: I wrote this before the allegations about Alice Munro’s complicity in turning away from her daughter’s sexual abuse by her husband came out. This upset me a lot but it does not take away from the fact that I enjoyed this story. I do not plan to engage with her writing further given the disappointing details that have emerged.)