Memoir provides a cathartic experience
Writer felt a lot of pain when wife died
“The Old Man’s Love Story” by Rudolfo Anaya; University of Oklahoma Press; 170 pp. ($19.95)
Rudolfo Anaya says he was seeking catharsis in the writing of his new, part-fictionalized memoir.
His intention produced that result.
“It was a way of dealing with those emotions of the experiences I was going through,” he said. “I was going through that grieving process and thinking of all those memories and events that formed our lives. I wrote some of them down.”
Anaya, the Albuquerque author of “Bless Me, Ultima,” was grieving over the loss of his wife, Pat, who died in January 2010. The couple had been married for almost 44 years.
Right after her passing, Anaya began organizing the manuscript for what became his recently published book “The Old Man’s Love Story.”
“I guess I realized it was going to be a difficult journey for me and because we had been so close and had shared so much. Our lives were really intertwined,” Anaya reflected on his decision to write the book.
“Of course there are all sorts of people who tell you to try counseling, group therapy.”
Instead, he stayed at home and wrote. And wrote some more.
Anaya said he’d had some recent experience in being a homebody. When his wife had gotten sick they had made a decision not to travel or go out much. Then Pat went into hospice care.
Anaya’s late wife lives on as a spirit in the pages of this book.
Referred to only as the Old Man, he is talking to the spirit of a woman who was his wife: “I think of you coming in the form of a dove. Each day you come to the garden. Does soul move into a new body? He sat up straight, his curiosity piqued.”
From the spirit world comes the woman’s reply: “You see me as a dove. You desire to see me again. Is our love of the earth so strong we struggle against obscurity? We do not want to die.”
This memoir is a tapestry of intellectual and emotional subjects. It touches on religion and on spirituality. But it is also a memoir of an old man dealing with mortality, with sexuality, with the meaning of love.