two books that gave me everything

I read so many books in July I'm struggling to remember them all.  Most were surprisingly good, and two swept me up and carried me so far away I'm only now just remembering what this reality stuff is.  

Like last month, I have one itty bitty review and one big one.  I only have big things to say about it. It blew me away.  

Imagine a City by Elise Hurst

I am in love with these illustrations, which are incredibly imaginative and delightfully bizarre. Once you peer into one of these pages you will get lost in ways you never imagined - as a bunny riding an elegant train with a penguin, taking flight on a flying fish and, appropriately enough, exploring a bookstore where the books come to life.



They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson



​They Left Us Everything is an emotional journey through Plum Johnson's grief and search for self after losing her parents and childhood home.   After almost twenty years spent caring for her aging parents, Alex and Virginia, Plum is both liberated and burdened by their deaths, which happen just a mere three years apart. Though Plum loses them, and the loss is enormous, she finds them again through their belongings as she clears out their house, her childhood home, and prepares to sell it.

I was deeply touched by They Left Us Everything.  Perhaps it has something to do with my childhood, which was spent observing my mom and grandma care for my grandpa, who was wheelchair-bound with complications from cerebral palsy.  When a person enters the caregiver role, their life is completely swallowed by the needs of the person or people they’re caring for.  After spending twenty years caring for my grandpa, it didn’t surprise me just how long it took my mom and grandma to figure out who they were once my grandfather passed away.  In Plum's situation, Alex lived with Alzheimer's for several years.  As his health deteriorated, the need for Plum's assistance became so overwhelming, that extra live-in help was required.  During Alex's long battle with Alzheimer's, Virginia also relied heavily on Plum for companionship, so much so, that Plum struggled with bitterness, an emotion that conflicted with her love for Virginia.  Just like my mom and grandma, I believe Plum is trying to figure out who she is after giving herself entirely to caregiving for nearly twenty years.  When Plum volunteers to pack up her parent's belongings, she not only discovers who they really were, but also what it means to be Plum.  

Unlike Plum, my family's belongings slipped away, a little at a time, over many years, and though I have a few of those treasures, I didn’t sift through an entire house of belongings to acquire them.  I was enamored with Plum's thorough and loving excavation of her parents' home.  For me, the letters exchanged between Alex and Virginia, and Virginia and her mother, were the greatest treasure found.  Hundreds of letters that transported Plum to Victoria and Alex's wild romance and eventual marriage, and their involvement in WWII.  I was also impressed by how the belongings were meted out between Plum and her three brothers, and dumbfounded by what happened when descendants of the previous owners of the house showed up.

Plum's deft insight shines through the grief and often highlights its depth, stirring up many relatable moments.  You will cringe when a retirement home is referred to as "a warehouse full of abandoned parents waiting to die," and angrily weep when Plum bathes Alex and discovers he's cognizant enough to be ashamed.  When Plum questions, "who were our parents?  They are in everything we see around us, everything we touch, but did we really know them?" you will walk through your house and wonder whether the puzzle pieces of your parents form an image and whether you are mirrored in that image.

But don’t reach for that box of tissues just yet.  Just like the belongings in Plum’s childhood home, there is much hilarity to be found in They Left Us Everything.  Though it comes to fruition through grief, Plum maintains a sense of humor throughout the memoir and finds it in even the darkest corners of life.  Plum decorates her sadness and loss with humor and constructs a shield with its force.  And not just any kind of humor.  I'm talking pee-your-pants, you-can't-breathe, tears-cascading-down-your-face humor.  Virginia, who was a kaleidoscope of emotions and beliefs, was often the source of Plum's outrageously humorous descriptions. When Virginia made an appearance at a school party she was pregnant and dressed for the winter weather - "oversized galoshes and a mammoth white Borg coat that came down to her ankles."  Naturally, to keep her two young sons from bolting, Virginia tied a yellow rope around her middle, and as Plum puts it, her "two younger brothers clung to the ends like little farmers attached to a clothesline, trying not to lose sight of their barn in the blizzard."  Plum's humor dots the memoir in just the right places and consistently prevails in her battle against grief. 

My gratitude, respect, and praise for They Left Us Everything is immeasurable.  If possible, I would place a copy of it in the hands of anyone who has ever put every fiber of their being into caring for a loved one, even at the expense of themselves.  And for anyone who has battled the stages of grief one memory, keepsake, or expired tin of stewed tomatoes at a time.