The Sloth and Avocado

 Jill Christman’s new book, If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays, is about her life—being raped, falling in love, grief, PTSD, the struggle to recover herself and her sexuality, falling in love again, miscarriage, becoming a mother and trying to protect her children from every imaginable harm, with them telling her to let them be kids and learn how to gauge the risks they take on their own. Just like she did.

 

Her essays are lyrical and endearing with their phrasing, cadence, voice, the longer woven sentences that meander through one meaning into deeper ones, precise descriptions, surprising images, and humor. She is honest about who she is, includes her doubts, some of her failings, and a few embarrassing moments. Jill searches for answers to questions that many of us share, finds enough for some of them, and learns how to live with the rest. This is intelligent, compassionate, and insightful writing.

 

For us in Griefdom, there are two other matters that matter.

 

The tragic and senseless loss of her fiancé Colin in a car accident when he was 22 is recounted, but he also appears in some of her other essays as she goes through the experiences of the next 24 years. Colin should be included in them because he is the person who led Jill back to herself and into believing that she was capable and loveable. 

 

We don’t forget those who loved us for ourselves, and we celebrate them as part of our lives long after they are gone. While we remember their deaths with sorrow, and sometimes wonder what our life would be like now if they hadn’t died, we also remember them with deep gratitude.

 

The other matter is the first essay in the book that leaves me in awe every time I read it. It’s a short piece called “The Sloth,” and it’s under 300 words. It describes the lethargy of grief with a physical image so striking that even non-grievers understand the devastation that the death of a loved one brings. If you have tried to explain your grief to someone who is clueless, and received a blank stare back, then share this essay with them. When people understand how we’re feeling, then they know better how to help.

 

In her essay “Falling,” which is not in the book, Jill is sitting on her back deck on a warm morning and writing the words that I’m reading now. I, for my part, am sitting on my back deck, in the warmth of my day, writing about reading the words that she’s currently writing. We’re obviously not in the same time zone or day, and probably not even in the same year, yet we are both here, on our back decks, and I’m listening to her talk about how she is “nudging words into sentences.” She’s sipping her first cup of coffee, comments that she can tell by the air that it’s going to be a scorcher today, watches a male cardinal, and remembers planting the redbud and dogwood trees when their two big dogs died. She sets the scene and the mood, and her voice is so open and honest that I trust everything she says, which is the bedrock of creative nonfiction. 

 

I mention the “Falling” essay because when we are remembering important events in our life with someone who has since passed on, it’s as if we are both there again and alive, and we are. The passage of time does not diminish the moments when we connect with the heart of another person. 

 

In regards to the trauma we experience, we tell and retell our stories of the past until we no longer need to. Jill understands loss, and how it is love that gets us through this “heartbreaking, beautiful world.” We need more writings, and writers, like this.

 

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I want to give a shout-out to the American Lives Series published by the University of Nebraska Press and coordinated by Courtney Ochsner. Jill’s book is part of this series. I’ve read a number of the books in it, and have valued each one. The other authors in the series that I admire are Sonya Huber, Joy Castro, Liz Stephens, Sonja Livingston, Jody Keisner, Jennifer Sinor, Suzanne Ohlmann, Lee Martin, and Dinty Moore.