A sad leave-taking
On May 11, I was surprised to see an obituary for Nuala O’Faolain. I knew nothing about her except what I had read in her memoir, Are You Somebody?, a touching and devestating account of a mean and meager Irish upbrining. She died of lung cancer at the age of sixty-eight. At the end of her life she had this to say in a radio interview:
“I thought there would be me and the world, but the world turned its back on me,” she said. “The world said to me, ‘That’s enough of you now, and what’s more, we’re not going to give you any little treats at the end.’ ”
An enormously sad farewell that I have thought of often in the last week–a degree of hopelessness one wishes no one had to feel in dying. So too, what of the victims stranded and trapped in Burma and China?
The obituary is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/11ofaolain.html?scp=1&sq=Nuala%20O’Faolain%20Obituaries&st=nyt
Well, nobody was ever going to nominate Nuala for the Little Mary Sunshine award. She wrote like she was giving you an emetic after a dose of poison.
Every time I throw “My Dream of You” in the library donation pile, I end up reading it again and shoving it back on the shelf.
I like Nuala’s sad comment — it is a sharp expression of what it feels like to be thrust off the stage by cancer, and of the puncturing of one’s pleasant prospects of a sort of infinitely extended rosy evening of life. We are all quite likely to have to face such a rude shock!
I don’t think she meant she was rejected by people. I believe she had had a lesbian love and had a male lover at the time of her death. Her funeral was movingly celebrated by my teacher Fr Enda McDonagh, and public tributes at her death shows she was held in wide affection.