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By
Published: 2005
Category: Memoir [4]
"A Month of Sundays" is about the death of Shirley Kress Carter, born in 1937 and died as Christmas ended in 2000. Shirley was a mother of six, a professional caregiver, a resident of that northernmost patch of Vermont that qualifies almost every resident to call herself a hermit. Women like this often pass through the world unnoticed. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of her sisters, bowed by grief, would attempt to lift her up --- to pump importance into her life --- in a memoir that celebrates the holiness of an unheralded existence.
Sigh. Why me?
Then I started reading.
What Julie Mars has done is present us with a spiritual challenge wrapped in a story. Her sister gets a fatal diagnosis --- pancreatic cancer. Ms. Mars leaves her home in New Mexico and goes to Vermont to care for her. Seven months later, after a final struggle that is wrenching in the extreme, Shirley dies. And then a second struggle begins. From an interview with Julie Mars:
In the last few months of my sister's life, she returned to the Catholic Church. I found this to be very disturbing because, essentially, as soon as she began her move back toward Catholicism she became terrified of going to hell.
It was very mysterious to me that Shirley could find obvious comfort in a religion that simultaneously offered (to her) the very real prospect of "eternal damnation." I wondered what could possibly be wonderful enough on the plus side of her religion to balance out such a horrible and grim possibility.
And so Julie embarked on a once-a-week confrontation with religion. For 31 weeks --- each Sunday, whether she was at home or visiting relatives, she went to a church. Afterward, she sat in her car and made notes. During the week, as she thought about her sister, she wrote her memories of her sister.
The book you're expecting is a reaffirmation of faith --- any faith. Early on, though, Julie Mars serves up her first surprise: "Before I got up close and personal with death, I genuinely believed that the spirit went happily on into the afterlife. But when she died, Shirley just seemed dead....I felt, and feel, that her spirit died with her."
There are more surprises. What happens when you're in the room as, day after day, a loved one moves closer to the great unknown. The astonishing power of a charismatic healer. What people say when they're making what they know are farewell phone calls. And what comfort there is --- and just when you think there is no church that speaks to Julie Mars, she finds a few that do --- in going to certain churches.
Along the way, we also come to know Shirley. We get a peek at a bad marriage to a guy who fathered six kids but was no husband. And we come to understand why this smart, attractive, nurturing woman holed up in the woods and put her energy into restoration projects. She did beautiful work and she didn't wear gloves or a mask when she used solvents --- back then, who knew? --- and that is how she got the cancer that killed her. Talk about "ironic."
We also come to know Julie Mars. That she is a gifted writer who presents her grief unvarnished is the least of it. She also is wise enough to show us her troubled relationship with her father and her on-again, off-again marriage --- and not link the two in a forced, simplistic way. And she is brave enough not to serve up a pat ending.
Shirley dies. Julie gets no "closure." Indeed, she barely achieves acceptance.
Which is, I suspect, how it goes --- or will go --- for most of us. We don't "get over" anything. We get through. We make do. We suck it up and carry on, falling and stumbling at frighteningly frequent intervals. And in that long march, maybe something is transformed in us and we experience a kind of grace. Or maybe not.
The thrill of "A Month of Sundays" --- the reason you can't put it down --- is that Julie Mars is our proxy. The path she walks, it's going to be ours. We'd like to do that well, so we pay close attention. For now, this book is a great story, tautly told and deeply felt. Later, when we need it more, we may find ourselves thinking back to it and being grateful for its guidance.
Now I know why I read it without stopping and decided I had to write about it today. It's a "real" book, as raw and urgent and painful --- and joyous --- as life. Want a real book? Here you go.
To buy "A Month of Sundays" from Amazon.com, click here. [5]