Maw Books

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After the suicide of her college boyfriend, C. Comfort Shields tried to find a book to help her with her grief.  She had been able to find books to help her get through her friends accidental death three years earlier.  But in the case of losing a partner to suicide she could find nothing.  She later decided to correct that problem by writing her memoir Surviving Ben’s Suicide, A Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery.

While attending a prestigious college, Comfort meets Ben, an older 24-year old student who has just finished serving in the Navy.  Although it’s obvious that he doesn’t fit in, Comfort is immediately drawn to him and they start dating.  Comfort chronicles their ups and downs and the strain of Ben’s mental illness.  Eighteen months later, Ben kills himself and Comfort is racked with guilt.  What she doesn’t understand most is that nobody knows how to talk to her anymore.  Nobody even asks her how she is handling Ben’s death.  It’s as if because she was the closest to Ben at the time of his death, nobody will even acknowledge that he once existed in her life.

For the next fifteen years, she come to terms with Ben’s death and shares candidly her journey of life, love, hurt, guilt, and forgiveness.  Surviving Ben’s Suicide is well written but there was something to be desired.  I think that this is probably because I don’t think the back and forth time line works especially well.  Maybe I was longing for a more linear telling so I could accompany Comfort on the journey as she was making it and without knowing how she was now.  Other than that, I appreciated her honest approach to a very taboo subject and came away with an appreciation that she was able to share with the reader her candid and very personal thoughts.

A few insights I liked:

But why live if I had to discard my past life?  For me, that took away the meaning in life.  I’ve heard some people say that the meaning of life was simply to enjoy the journey.  The passage that Ben’s uncle read at the funeral said that the meaning of life was love.  Other people have said that there is no particular meaning and that we, as human beings, are overly analytical.

I believed, on the contrary, that each person hadd his or her own meaning of life and that the key to that meaning might be the link between our memories and the way we lived our lives at present.  To me, that was the secret.  That was the closest that I could come to reaching my potential.  By allowing myself to look back and to learn from the people and the events in my life, I could do better in the future.  And that was why I refused to forget about my bus accident or Ben’s suicide.  My memories of both events influenced the decisions that I made every day and the way I treated otehr people and myself.  I couldn’t think of anything more pertinent, more critical, more vital than memories.

and

One of the paradoxes of surviving Ben’s suicide is that I have learned two seeming contradictions.  One, I have the power to make a difference in some small way to others.  Two, I do not have absolute control over other people.  The balance between trying to help and backing off has been hard for me to find, but reaching Antoine [a student of hers] proved to me that I needed to keep trying.

I think this ending passage is just beautiful:

I like to think of my memories of the events in my life as old books that I keep next to my bed, on a shelf in the study, or up in the attic.  Some of them I refer to regularly.  Some I may never look at again.  Some are tragedies.  Others, comedies.  Some I understand now.  Some I will understand after a few more readings.  Others will cause me to pull out  my hair, and still I may never understand them entirely.  But the more I read, the better I will grasp the meaning of my books and the meaning that my library has in my life.

Visit C. Comfort Shields website and blog.

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