Overview
The New York Times Book Review praised Alan Shapiro's The Last Happy Occasion as a "touching and intelligent, emotionally satisfying and elegant testimony to the power of poetry to instruct, heal and inspire." Vigi emerges from the final chapter of that book, "Sittin' in a Funeral Place," a powerful essay about Shapiro's sister Beth, her struggle with breast cancer, and the limitations of poetry in confronting the untransformable pain of loss.
In Vigil, Shapiro chronicles with heart-wrenching lyricism the final four weeks of Beth's life in a hospice, attended by her parents, brothers, husband, daughter and friends. One by one, as loved ones arrive to visit Beth, Shapiro reveals fragments of their personal history, bringing to life a troubled and poignant past. A visit from their brother David triggers the memory of a searing betrayal—the parents disowned Beth after learning from David that she was secretly dating a black man; a visit from the parents recalls their bitter quarrels over Beth's radical politics; a visit from Beth's black husband brings the painful memory of their wedding and her parents' refusal to attend. These recollections and feelings that surface with each visit evoke the unresolved, deeply disturbing issues that kept the Shapiro family estranged for so long, making the reconciliation that Beth's death brings to her family all the more extraordinary.
Shapiro gives an unconventionally honest account of our responses—horror, relief, impatience, exhaustion, exhilaration, projection, fear, self-criticism, and a sense of fulfillment—in the presence of the dying. Concluding with a selection of moving poems, Shapiro affirms the astonishing link between creativity and healing, and provides a coda to the whole experience. The price of human connection may be great, but human connection, in the end, has the power to redeem even the most painful of human experiences.
Synopsis
The New York Times Book Review praised Alan Shapiro's The Last Happy Occasion as a "touching and intelligent, emotionally satisfying and elegant testimony to the power of poetry to instruct, heal and inspire." Vigi emerges from the final chapter of that book, "Sittin' in a Funeral Place," a powerful essay about Shapiro's sister Beth, her struggle with breast cancer, and the limitations of poetry in confronting the untransformable pain of loss.
In Vigil, Shapiro chronicles with heart-wrenching lyricism the final four weeks of Beth's life in a hospice, attended by her parents, brothers, husband, daughter and friends. One by one, as loved ones arrive to visit Beth, Shapiro reveals fragments of their personal history, bringing to life a troubled and poignant past. A visit from their brother David triggers the memory of a searing betrayal—the parents disowned Beth after learning from David that she was secretly dating a black man; a visit from the parents recalls their bitter quarrels over Beth's radical politics; a visit from Beth's black husband brings the painful memory of their wedding and her parents' refusal to attend. These recollections and feelings that surface with each visit evoke the unresolved, deeply disturbing issues that kept the Shapiro family estranged for so long, making the reconciliation that Beth's death brings to her family all the more extraordinary.
Shapiro gives an unconventionally honest account of our responses—horror, relief, impatience, exhaustion, exhilaration, projection, fear, self-criticism, and a sense of fulfillment—in the presence of the dying. Concluding with a selection of movingpoems, Shapiro affirms the astonishing link between creativity and healing, and provides a coda to the whole experience. The price of human connection may be great, but human connection, in the end, has the power to redeem even the most painful of human experiences.
Tikkun Magazine
With his compassionate and unyielding intelligence, Shapiro finds the words to reflect a grief that is never resolved though finally articulated; his prose seamlessly joins personal experience and the larger ethical questions underlying his sister's death, and the poems that accompany show why Shapiro is one of TIKKUN's favorite poets.
Editorials
Tikkun Magazine
With his compassionate and unyielding intelligence, Shapiro finds the words to reflect a grief that is never resolved though finally articulated; his prose seamlessly joins personal experience and the larger ethical questions underlying his sister's death, and the poems that accompany show why Shapiro is one of TIKKUN's favorite poets.Booknews
A brother's story of his sister's last weeks in a hospice as her family try to come to terms with her terminal cancer and reconcile their shared and often scarred histories. For general readers. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Kirkus Reviews
Award-wining poet Shapiro, whose first memoir, The Last Happy Occasion (not reviewed) was highly acclaimed, wrenches all he can from this chronicle of his sister's death from breast cancer.As his mother, father, and brother join him at Beth's bedside in a Houston hospice, Shapiro (English/Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) recalls the rebelliousness of his oft-estranged sister. He notes the joy "we all felt for the first time as a family; joy . . . in an intimacy whose very rarity added sadness to the joy." A founder of Students for a Democratic Society while at Michigan State University, Beth would further alienate her parents by marrying an African-American. As Shapiro reflects on these events, he does so as a loving younger brother who admired but did not share her feistiness. His sometimes critical observation of other family members' behavior during her last days is juxtaposed with his own deeply felt emotions: Russ, Beth's husband, "was a peripheral figure" during those final days, in part because of his own battle with heart disease, but also because of his intense sorrow and discomfort with the family. Shapiro's father dealt with it "the way he dealt with everything—by thinking there was nothing he or anyone could do about it." His mother, doting and sad, showed her frustration by constantly kvetching about medical incompetence. Younger brother David, an actor, entertained with jokes and impressions. In the last hours before Beth died, David and the author stood at her bedside, each holding a hand: "All I could do was look on in amazement at the mystery as it unfolded." He closes the volume with a few rather heavy-handed poems and a jarringly corny recollection of dancing to Motown records at Beth's wedding.
Has its moments, both sad and profound, but as a memoir of a sister's life and death, it's far outclassed by Richard Stern's 1995 A Sistermony.