July 2, 2009
There are many different ways to experience loss and The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm does a good job of expressing how she experienced losing her mother to cancer. For Romm, her mother's illness and death created a searingly self-centered and self-focused envelope of grief. Shrouded in gloom and depression, Romm allowed no one in, and ignored their feelings of grief, hoarding the loss exclusively for herself.
For a woman who names both her book and her dog "Mercy", Romm exhibits little mercy herself, not towards her mother or her father, not towards her grandparents (alive and dead) or her mother's friends or her own friends. Depressed, Romm is focused on herself, on what her mother's dying means to her and to her life. What the death will mean to anyone else -- including the mother herself -- is largely ignored. Everyone else -- mother included -- is subjected to criticism for their behavior during the long illness and even before. Where exactly is the mercy?
Romm understands at the end of her memoir that loss "will never leave you." When someone is dead, they are gone forever. But what Romm does not seem to realize is that the loss she writes about in The Mercy Papers is felt by all those around her. Losing a mother is horrible, but so is losing a spouse, a sister, a daughter, and a friend. In her depression, Romm claims the most pain, the worst loss; as she matures and heals, perhaps she will come to feel sympathy and mercy for the other characters in the real life story of her mother's death.
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