Staying, A Memoir

“Why do we find the pain of others so difficult to bear?” asks Jessie Cole in this intensely personal story. “…every friend who had called me after my father’s death would stay forever etched into my memory, just for being willing to listen to my sad voice. Bravery comes in so many forms, but this has to be one of the most overlooked.” Her poignant comment is one very good reason for allowing her story into our lives, as it might just help our own bravery when responding to another’s grief. Jessie’s pain was the result of suicide and her account of the toll this took on her family is insightful. It took many years to bring her memoir into print – her first venture into writing, it was penned as a form of therapy but unexpectedly revealed her talent as an author – and in the meantime her two novels (Darkness on the Edge of Town and Deeper Water) were published. Staying begins in Jessie’s idyllic childhood. Born in the late 1970s, she and younger brother Jake enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle in New South Wales, at one with the forest their parents planted around their home. Two older half-sisters, Billie and Zoe, brought an element of intrigue and a varied family dynamic on visits from Sydney. Then, as Jessie hit adolescence, the family was devastated by the first of two separate, but intertwined, deaths. Reading

Jessie’s story sometimes felt awkwardly intrusive, but she deserves the utmost respect for sharing it and high praise for the way she tells it. Heartbreaking, yes, but a truly beautiful book.