In 1994 my
parents separated. A year later, after a considerably
bluesy period, my mom spent some time in the psychiatric wing of North Shore
Hospital. My Dad said she was tired and needed some rest. But I
knew it was more than that. Her life had exhausted her and she wasn't
sure she wanted to be here anymore.
I'm not sure what triggered the
idea, but a few months later she decided to call William Styron at his Martha's
Vineyard home. At the time, the Vineyard was the only place where famous
people still had listed numbers and finding it was as easy as dialing the
operator. She left a message on his machine, knowing that it was off
season and he would most likely never hear it and, if he did, never return
it. But she spoke into the recording just the same, told him that she had
been feeling helpless but that his work in Darkness
Visible left her with some hope. That the past few months had
been a struggle but she was trying to find her way out. When she hung up
I told her that if he ever heard it he was going to think she was a crazy
person. And then we laughed, because wasn't she just a little.
An hour later the phone rang and
I answered. The voice on the other end asked for Laura and when I asked
who was calling, William Styron told me that he and his wife Rose would like to
speak to my mom. I ran upstairs, found her marking papers in bed,
and whispered his name to her. She asked me what she should say and I
nervously shoved the phone into her hand.
She called him Mr. Styron.
He told her to call him William. He said that his daughter had
called him at their home in Connecticut to relay the message from the
Vineyard of a woman who sounded like she needed him. And then he told my
mom that she shouldn't give up. She had heard this before but she listened
because this was Stryon, an author, a writer, he had suffered too, and she
respected him for all of it. She thanked him for
his work and asked him if it ever got easier. They talked for an hour and
I sat curled beside her on the bed in quiet thanks for the man on the other end
of the line.
The bluesy times came and went
and come and go still, but seventeen years later there is hope that it
gets easier. And I can't help but think that it springs from that
afternoon, from that call, from his words:
“For those who have dwelt in
depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the
abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of
hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as ‘the shining
world.’ There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been
restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough
for having endured the despair beyond despair.”
Beautiful. So touching.
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