Love Was When I Loved You, One True Time I Hold To, In My Life We'll Always Go On

--"My Heart Will Go On", Celine Dion

There's an episode of Friends where Phoebe is mad at Ross for something he did in a dream she had. It's funny because she gets all worked up over something that never really happened and there's nothing he can do or say to make up for it until she admits that it wasn't anything he did in reality, but something he did in a dream.

I go through the same dilemma sometimes. Sometimes it more what I perceived an individual did to slight me than the slight itself. I mean--it's all perspective when it comes down to it. What a person does isn't nearly as important as how we react to it, right? For instance, a friend could insult me today and I could laugh it off whereas some days (most days) I could really be stung by it. A lot of different factors can enter into the complex equation of how a moment will affect us. More importantly, seemingly random stimuli can alter whether or not a given memory actually stays with us. Chance encounters, snippets of conversation, &c... are all fair game to be retained if the stars align in a particular way.

That message seems to lie at the heart of the book I recently finished, Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You. It tells the story of three brothers, their sister, and their mom, coming together to sit shiva for seven days after their father dies. They're all in the thirties and forties. Most of them are married. Some of them have kids. But they all haven't seen each other in years, even decades. Normally, this would be a recipe for some great angsty family drama. While the novel does have it fair share of drama, it also mines weaknesses of the human condition for some pretty gutsy (and hilarious) moments of humor. It's the kind of book you feel embarrassed to read in public simply because it has the audacity to both make you laugh and make you cry.

Our guide through the seven-day journey through hell in a hand basket is Judd. His wife recently left him for his boss, following a pretty devastating miscarriage. And just to ratchet up the hilarity is the fact his wife Jen tells him she's pregnant near the beginning of the book. As aforementioned, such details don't exactly spell out comedy gold, but Tropper has a gift for seeing the drunk leprechaun at the end of every thunderstorm.

One of Judd's key personality traits is, much like Phoebe, he likes to daydream about people he sees in the street, on the road, or even in Church and imagining what their life is like. More specifically he likes to imagine about women he sees and what their life would be like if they were to start dating, get married, have kids, &c... What's great is that for every relationship he imagines working out, he has one that ends in disaster for whatever reason his imagination can surmise. What's also great is that he proceeds, still much like Phoebe, to base his behavior around them on these daydreams as if he absolutely knows for certain that this will be their future together. While I wouldn't go so far as to sat these visions take up the bulk of his day Walter Mitty-like, it is a key trait to unlocking what makes Judd tick.

A lot of us, if our husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, were to leave us right before our dad died would probably be imagining a better life being out there, right? And this better life for a lot of us would probably include an upgrade in the significant other category.


near, far, wherever you are
I believe the heart does go on

Another major motif in the book which I like and which ties into Judd's personality is the fact a lot of the characters make decisions in the book based on prior histories with other characters. Old flames have one last fling with one another after not seeing each other in twenty years. Brothers hold grudges over events that happened in high school. Hell, a relationship develops out of nowhere simply because two of the characters have been neighbors. It's amazing how many people make what looks like to be the wrong choice because of nostalgia, because of a memory of how things used to be. More specifically a lot of the characters make decisions because they want to bring back the old days when everything seemed to work out in the end, to replace present day where almost everything is fucked up in one way or another.

That also goes to the point that sometimes the decisions we make in our lives are mercurial and aren't based on reason. I hate to give her credit, but Breanne had it right when she told me all those years ago when she said that more than fifty percent of the decisions we make aren't based on logic. She said that more than fifty percent of our decisions are based on emotion, on instinct, on what our gut is telling us to do. And this book seems to postulate--indeed, its main focus seems to be--that memory is directly tied up in everything we do. The characters may not remember everything as it happened. Some of the characters even have conflicting versions of the actual account of the way things went down. Yet they sure all remember how it made them feel and they sure all know how it apparently affected the course of their life to come. Every one of them harbors a decision or two that followed wherever they went, a decision that at the time was made in the heat of the moment and ended up closing certain avenues while opening other ones.

Deep in the heart of the all--in Judd's mental wanderings, in the last flings of high school sweethearts, in the blossoming of new romances--is that love is tied up also in memory. Tropper seems to throw out there that love, like memory, might be subjective, that it isn't a genuine article at all. He puts forth that love may be flimsy at best, subject to the same twists of circumstance that makes some memories permanent and others fade away. More than anything he says that everybody is capable of love; that it relies on instinct and going with the flow of fate more than anything else. And because of that people are capable of being in love with more than one person at a time, that there isn't anything wrong with loving your husband AND still being in love with the guy with whom you had all your firsts with. He seems to be saying it's okay to still love your wife even after she's cheated on you with your boss because, hey, you fell in love with her once. He wants to say if you're capable of loving someone in the best of times, you should be capable of loving someone in the worst of times too.

Love and memory. They're all tied in together. For just because your father dies doesn't mean you stop loving him. Or just because your family has grown up and apart, and aren't the family you once shared the dinner table with, doesn't mean you get to ever stop loving them. Or, finally, just because you stop being that person you used to be with that certain person he or she used to be doesn't mean the feelings you once felt for another are no longer real or go away.

People are entitled to how they feel forever. Loving the memory of someone is just a good a reason as any to continue loving them now, I say.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers