506
viewsIn Her Wake
By Boston Skirt, Monday, May 17, 2010
Many of us live with regret. We've had people in our past who've broken our hearts or walked out on us on such sudden notice that all we're left with are lingering questions burning inside us. The "what ifs" and "what could have beens" plague our lives and can never be answered because the individual who sparked these questions are no longer present to explain their side of the story. Nancy Rappaport, the author behind the moving book "In Her Wake" has experienced this type of longing and sense of loss. The story behind the memoir tells the tragic tale of Rappaport's, multi-tasking, energetic, warm and at sometimes, unstable and compulsive mother who committed suicide when Rappaport was a mere four years old.
Coping with such an enormously difficult situation amongst her five brothers and sisters, in a tabloid-worthy political Boston family made it hard to address the grief and confusion that inhabited Rappaport's world. As a now renowned child psychiatrist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School dealing with patients who have witnessed similar traumas to hers, and trying to help comfort her own children in their concerns about suicide, Rappaport began a lengthy search to uncover the woman she never got a chance to know. Her at times painful and heart-wrenching journey, is one of reflection, family division, anguish, acceptance and strength. Her eloquence and willingness to reopen even the deepest of emotional wounds makes for a compelling account of her personal struggle to understand who her mother was, why she may have ended up the way she did and how her suicide impacted those she left behind.
Rappaport intricately describes the fine line she straddled between mystified and confused daughter, doting and concerned parent and analytical psychiatrist. Her point of view in tackling various aspects of her mother's life and legacy range from critiquing her actions from a medical professional's standpoint to that of a lost and baffled child seeking comfort and advice from her beloved mother. Only after a long-lost friend of her mother's presents Rappaport with a trunk full of letters to her children, forgotten photographs and amazingly a 400 page novel belonging to her mom, does she intensely begin to investigate her past and attempts to unlock the answers to the questions she's needed for so many years. Reaching to other family members who recount their experience with the suicide and digging into a tangled genial history, riddled with addiction, reveals various theories as to why their mother took her own life. Rappaport herself consults with extended members of her blended childhood households and addresses what they remember, how they coped and how the ordeal has shaped them into the individuals they grew to be.
Perhaps the most touching and raw developments come from Rappaport's revelations within herself, how she has related such a morbid experience to the concerns she has for her own children and how much she realized her appreciation for the security she finds in her own husband. The numerous layers she peels back in terms of conflicting family opinions and trying to connect with people from her past show her innate desire to be at peace with her mother's death. Individuals in her past she had once dubbed the villains in her family story, the ones who had been blamed for tearing her family apart and causing her mother's death, are shown in a new light, one in which Rappaport learns to dig deeper into their accounts of her mom, and finally release anger she had once harbored.
Although delving into the depths of understanding who her mother was, was the core force driving "In Her Wake", it's interesting to see that in the end, more was revealed about the members of her immediate and extended families than anyone else. Rappaport's emotional journey lead her to mend fractured relationships, forgive those who may have been at fault in the past and most importantly, to put the investigation of her mother's life to rest. This book is incredible triumph in terms of how it makes you recognize that no family is perfect, parents inevitably make mistakes along the way, but in the end, the love they have for one another can overcome anything.
(In Her Wake, Nancy Rappaport, $25.95, Basic Books, inherwake.com)
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