ON A RECENT list of fifteen books I’ve read that will always stick with me, I included Stephen King’s Misery, not for its literary value, but for the vivid memories of the context in which I read it.
Round about the summer of 1989, my siblings and I packed into the bench seat of a conversion van and headed west with Dad and Kara toward Denver, Aspen, and Grand Junction, for reunions with various families in the Colorado tribe of the paternal clan. Always one for themed reading (or maybe it was unplanned and serendipitous?), I brought Misery along for the ride through the Rocky Mountains, where the story unfolds. As Dad steered us through Glenwood Canyon and Vail Pass, I struggled to negotiate the competing urges to devour the suspenseful novel and to sleep off the nausea that accompanies reading a book in the back of a conversion van winding through the mountains. The nausea usually won, and to my intense frustration I managed to read only a dozen pages at a time before passing out.
This narratus interruptus would have been frustrating enough to a surly preteen with a perfectionistic bent. Worse was waking to find my book co-opted by my ravenous and speedy-read-y little sister Sarah. Apparently immune to auto-biblio-onset nausea or steely enough to disregard it, she had finished her crazy stack of books and turned her attentions to my humble traveling library. “Since you weren’t using it,” she shrugged and flashed an innocent grin. I repossessed the paperback in a huff, found my place, and read another half a chapter before zonking out again.
When I came to, Sarah had lapped me and was sprinting toward the exciting conclusion. And she had heartily recommended it to our brother Jim, who now waited on deck to pounce at the first sign of my next nap.
Thus my struggle to experience that site-appropriate tale of violent, pathological obsession (with works of fiction, no less) mounted on two fronts: against the narcoleptic effects of carsickness and the vulturous advances of my pint-size co-passengers.
TWELVE YEARS AGO this summer, my sister Sarah died suddenly. She was driving the plucky little (stick shift!) Plymouth Horizon I had lent her when I emigrated to Bologna for nine months and then handed down to her permanently when that transformative experience abroad convinced me to eschew car dependence stateside. She was returning one Tuesday night to Mom’s from Dad’s along an intimately familiar stretch of U.S. Route 20, the same road that stretches across the Rockies to eventually intersect my current hometown near its western terminus at the Pacific Ocean. She fell asleep, her car drifted left of center and collided head-on with a semitruck, and she didn’t survive the crash. She was just seventeen.
My family’s investigation into the circumstances leading to her death yielded the unanimous theory that she had stayed up into the wee hours Monday night, reading Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
HOW I WISH I could take a big ol’ reunion trip with my siblings, all grown-up-like, some forming families of their own. What an extraordinary honor it would be to travel with my niece and nephew and their favorite books! And for Sarah (29-year-old Sarah) to covet my vacation read and snatch it up while I snooze at the beach or the campsite, or in the backseat of the van…I would give my proverbial left foot for the privilege.
To tag her on silly book-themed Facebook memes, swap reviews and recommendations, hook her on LibraryThing, subscribe to her blog…When I drive U.S. 20 through the mountains to the coast, I marvel at the possibilities of her adulthood, all the books I would have enjoyed her enjoying.
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My mum and aunt have written distinctly eloquent (and lavishly illustrated) accounts of losing Sarah, through which they make a compelling case for organ and tissue donation, something I encourage you all to consider.
Where in the world did the expression “good grief” come from? This is good reflection, fine writing, and it is grief, purely distilled, so my initial response of good grief has a basis in reality. I did not realize Hwy 20 reached out its claw to you across the endless stretch of this land. I do remember hearing the story of you reading Misery that trip and the Sarah theft, but I didn’t know the book was set in Colorado. You were really type A, even then. She was just a freaking clepto with books. Remember the summer of 96 when she lifted all, and I mean all, my best books from bookshelves around the house, wrote “adopted by Sarah Warrener 1996″ in them, and shelved them in her room? She repented shortly before her death, lucky and knowing it, that I found out while she was out of reach in Mexico. She gave them back, diminishing one of the obstacles to heaven. Of course, we did find the famous date-stamper that she had evidently used to change the due dates on library books to avoid the fines, the sum of which paid at least one annual salary at the local library. Rascal had it hidden deep in her desk drawer. She’s been working out the penance on that one for a while, so I hope she’s at peace. Being able to talk about her behind her back, so to speak, without her able to defend herself with that freckled giggle and twinkle is payback enough. I miss her daily and am still reduced to rubble by sudden rushes of her at unexpected times. The day after her birthday when I wasn’t looking I had a nightmare drive from Bloomington with her accident film running on continuous loop. It was a white-knuckle drive home, haunted. I see her often in Emily and Annagail, hear her responding to you and Jim. She lives on in us, but that’s not cutting it with the wish to share our lives with her. The amputation will never grow back, but the company we keep soothes the phantom pain. Misery, indeed.
I stole and read Andrew’s AP Lang summer reading book “On Writing” by Stephen King. I hate horror ~ literature and films ~ so I was dubious, but I have to tell you it’s a kickass book. Between reading it and Katie’s listing “Misery” on her book list, I’ve actually contemplated reading that SK classic.
With Sarah and now Mom gone, most of the female gentility has departed from my life. My Steve and James carry on the gentleness, sweet tempered disposition, and unusual attribute of being loved by all.
We all miss your Sarah. Even Dad, who is usually clueless about details, objected after Mom’s death when I suggested switching out the hanging quilt in his house with the one in Sylvia’s house. “But that’s the Sarah Stairway to Heaven quilt,” he said. Enough said. The Stairway quilt stays put.
Tons of Love!