By Plum Johnson, 2014
This book was discussed in both my book clubs. The winner of the RBC Taylor Prize in 2014, the memoir could hardly be more timely. Half the people I know have or will soon find themselves cleaning out their elderly or deceased parents’ houses. This book is the story of one woman’s sixteen-month journey in that direction.
It is full of detail about an interesting family. Johnson’s father Alex was upper class in origin but from a family that had come down in the world. As a young man he led an escape from Japanese captivity by boat. Her mother Anne could hardly have been more different from the disciplined, careful, ascetic man she married. Anne was a Southern belle, spontaneous, messy, disorganized, funny and good natured, never a cook or a housekeeper, just short of being a pathological hoarder. Anne’s family of origin was so influential that even at 93 she saw herself as only a phone call or letter away from effecting change. Her suggestion to the Stratford Festival they use the term “Shakesperience” to enlarge their audience gave me a good chuckle.
The parents were united and fairly typical of their time in the way they managed the disciplining of their children. When Alex returned from his work day at an insurance company, Anne reported to him on the misdemeanours of Plum’s four younger brothers. The father beat them with a bamboo cane, then the mother comforted the boys and dried their tears. It’s amazing anybody grew up to be even sort of normal after such craziness.
Although Johnson makes much of how ordinary and typical her family is, they are far from either. The house she is cleaning out has 23 rooms and a view of Lake Ontario. She attended Havergal College, and the family has silver going back to the 17oos. By remortgaging the house, the family was able to afford twelve years of in-home care for the father and three more years for the mother. Most middle-class families I know would struggle to manage six months or a year. They also seem atypical in how well the siblings get along, in how peacefully they manage the division of property at the end.
The death of our parents infantilizes all of us in some sense, while turning us into their parents if they hang on long enough. Johnson often comes across more like a petulant person in her thirties than a woman in her sixties. Her parents are more interesting characters, and the house itself becomes the strongest character in the book. The sorting through of the rooms gives the book its structure. The discovery of a huge stash of letters, many of which the recipients returned to her mother because they felt they should be preserved, moves Plum forward by leaps and bounds in understanding her mother.
I freely admit to some sour grapes in my response to this book. I came into the world in a two-room shack on a poor farm, quite unlike the mansion at the centre of this memoir. Our family did get away from this farm, but never had any valuable silver or paintings. My parents left me intangible riches, but in the end there was little property to divvy up. My family is not typical; neither is Plum Johnson’s.
We all have mothers, and the mother-daughter relationship is often the most fraught, as it is for Plum and Anne. This relationship is a universal theme in literature, and it is well developed here. We all leave some sort of property to be divided, and that is the secondary theme of the memoir.
This book made me wonder what will happen to my things when I am gone. I am just beginning to figure out what to do with 40 years of letters from my mother, letters which are both a huge blessing and a bit of a curse. The fact that one of my sons lives in the same city I do, and that I communicate with the other mostly through Skype, means my sons will never have many letters from me or me from them. I am determined the boys will have only a few papers to sort through, and for a “paper” person I do not have many.
I cannot say the same about books and dishes. Will anyone want the set of Royal Doulton Rondo china I bought at a consignment store in Winnipeg at a good price?
They Left Us Everything will evoke such musings in many readers.