What About Me?

Author s comments . . . . . Jessie Boland has always coped with painful situations by tucking them deep inside, but when she is forced to deal with the loss of her eighteen year old daughter, Abby, this method runs into complications. Abby just won t tuck. Jessie blames her eldest child, Meredith, for this because Meredith insists that Abby can t just be put away, that she must be dealt with. Meredith blames her mother s determination not to do this for the collapse of their family, her brother s move to California and even her father s infidelity. Jessie s daughters are the major conflict in my novel, Working Through. Abby s death causes Jessie to turn from a marriage in which she had learned to be what she was supposed to be, to a search for self and what she could be. Her need to escape the pain of her daughter s death turns her from cool socialite to New Age yuppie; she goes back to school; joins a group in the Village that is searching for the meaning of life; learns to meditate Buddhist style, wears a Crystal to improve her aura, and consults a psychic. She has kept all this, her lover and even her psychiatrist separate from Abby, but still, she cannot seem to spread her wings. Meredith fights every change in her mother, for she sees herself losing her as surely as she has lost her sister. She knows that they both need to deal with Abby but Jessie won t. She insists that Meredith move on just as she has, get her own psychiatrist and work through her own problems. Their relationship becomes more and more confrontational and begins to effect Meredith s relationship with her own husband and small son. Their last confrontation, Jessie stormed out of her daughter s house. She looked back only once before she drove away never to return. She saw her daughter standing on the step, her face full of utter despair. Why, oh why, she cried, had Meredith done this? But she knew she could not lose Meredith too. Instead of the turnpike north and freedom, Jessie drove purposefully through the ivy covered gates and down the narrow lane to the Boland Family burial ground. She had not been there since her daughter s funeral. Relieved, she looked down at the simple stone her husband had chosen, in keeping with the gentle soul who had not even recorded her first vote.. The tears began to again spill down her cheeks, as she knelt and stretched herself prone on the simple grave . . . It was a long time before Jessie Boland left where she had warmed the earth and engraved her image into its soft surface. . . . Getting back into her car, she picked up its phone and dialed her daughter. Meredith, it s going to be all right. Don t cry and don t be sad; it will be all right we will be all right. I ll call you tonight. I ll call Dougie too . . . and your father. We will make plans to start working through. She could hear her daughter gulp back the tears in order to release a grateful thank you. And Meredith, I love you very much. It took a bit longer for her daughter to respond this time. I love you very much too. Next, Jessie called Dr. Lieberman. He was waiting for her when she arrived. It was a start.