The Staircase Letters (11 page)
Read The Staircase Letters Online
Authors: Arthur Motyer
The scheduled appointment with the radiotherapist for the following Tuesday did not take place.
Hello everyone,
I am writing to tell you that our dear Elma died today, Monday, April 15, at 11.45 a.m. Winnipeg time.
The end was very peaceful, and she was free from pain. Standing around the bed with me were our three children, as well as Beth’s husband, George, and James’s fiancée, Britta. John’s wife, Carol, could not be present, but was very much with us in spirit.
After a few minutes of silence, gathered around the bed, we played the CD of Alasdair’s
Spirit Room
. It was something that Elma had enjoyed hearing many times, and we could not think of anything more apt than music inspired by a dream of a door opening into the spiritual world.
Her body was taken to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Manitoba, because she has donated it to be used for research and teaching.
The end came much more swiftly than anyone had anticipated. But on Sunday, when I realized that the end was near, I felt immensely
grateful that it was going to be, from then on, really easy for her. Swift or slow was of no consequence.
We are most grateful for all the good thoughts and support we have received from you all over the past months. You have turned what might have been a very bleak time into a time of rich and poignant beauty.
With love and gratitude from us both, Martin
I agreed with Martin that death’s pace at the end was of little consequence. Alasdair’s music had ushered Elma into a spirit room of her own, where all her horizons would be blue and bright forever. And listening to
Spirit Room
often since then, I am sure of that.
It was Carol I wrote to immediately, enclosing for her my letter to Martin.
Dear Carol,
Because a number of your letters to Elma over these last several months specifically included me and mine to her included you, and because I can no longer write to her, I
give you now what I have just sent to Martin, a finale to our rather extraordinary correspondence, meaning it also for you:
Dear Martin
,
I could not account for the sense of total disquiet I felt late yesterday morning and into the afternoon until your letter came this morning, telling me of Elma’s death, almost at the exact moment my unease was at its strongest. There is no rational explanation for such mysteries, of course, and I can only tell it to you as a fact; but I am now haunted by what I can only guess at and Elma must now know
.
Alasdair was very moved, as I was, to learn that you had all listened to his
Spirit Room
just when Elma was entering hers. She had told me several times how much she liked his music and that work, in particular, so it was wonderful that it was there to accompany her …
Though I have not been privileged to meet you, Carol, and your family, except through Elma’s eyes, I know how special you all were to her
and must be now for each other, and my heart goes out to all of you in love and sympathy. Arthur
Dear Arthur,
Thank you so much for sending me your thoughts. It was exactly what I needed, a hand to reach out to and hold on to. I am still unable to believe she is gone; it was so much faster than I imagined, and it was only a week ago that she wrote about the music she wanted to have at the ceremony. I am sure she told all this to Martin, so that her wishes will be known. I wrote him an e-mail yesterday, but am now getting some thoughts down on real paper. How lacking English is in words of consolation! and how unused we are to employing them.
With thanks and warm wishes,
carol
Dear Carol,
I appreciate so much your reply. Your own hand reaching out to me is also special and comforting.
You and Elma were able to share so much on so many levels that I always felt inadequate when I tried to say anything or do anything helpful. But there was/is nothing to say or do: I could only “be,” in the hope that would be enough.
Allow me to think of you now, even more, and wish you days of peace.
Sincerely,
Arthur
Elma’s prediction about how speedily her own cancer would develop compared with Carol’s had proven correct; Carol lived courageously for fifteen more months, almost to the day.
From that April 15th of 2002, which marked one death, until July 16th of 2003, which marked the other, I kept in touch with Carol less often but regularly. On one occasion, it was to congratulate her on being nominated for one of the world’s great literary prizes, the Booker, to which she responded: “Thank you for such warm words. I am indeed delighted.
And astonished. Three Canadians. Carol.” (It may have been accidental, but I like to think she allowed herself a brief moment of pride when she typed her name, for the only time, with a capital
C.)
On another, it was to say how much I was enjoying
Dressing Up for the Carnival
(stories Elma had also liked very much), particularly “Eros,” which was, I told her, a little gem—“so funny, so touching, so sad, so true, and every chosen word exactly where it should be.” In it, Ann—a divorced woman who finds herself at a dinner party where the “conversation drifted towards the subject of sexuality”—reflects on her own life, recalling the mysteries of sex in childhood, the comic confusions of adolescence, and the disappointments found in a marriage that failed, despite going with her husband to Paris, the city of lovers, to heal the breach.
In “Love so Fleeting, Love so Fine,” another gem in the book, a man’s vulnerable heart is exposed just because he spots a hand-printed, fairly crude sign in the window of an orthopedic shoe store in downtown Winnipeg that reads WENDY IS BACK. Who but Carol could make us see how something so apparently insignificant—who is Wendy, anyway,
and why should we care?—could “cut deeply into his heart and widen for an instant the eye of the comprehended world”?
Yet this is what Carol does, over and over again, in her stories. The world in a grain of sand. Blake would have understood.
There was also her play
Thirteen Hands
, which I read with admiration and joy:
You got it all absolutely right, line after line after line, character after character, scene after scene, absolutely bang-on all the time. I wish I were still directing plays in universities, which is what I used to do, as Elma must have told you, for I would want to direct yours; but how happy I am at my age still to be discovering such wonders as your play.
Further nominations for the Giller and the Governor General’s and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize did not get turned into awards, but when the Giller jury overlooked
Unless
in favour of
The Polished Hoe
by Austin Clarke, I learned much later from one of Carol’s friends how she handled rejection
and made clear her sense of human values. Having made the journey to Toronto with her daughter Meg and Meg’s new baby, she was able to retire to their room at the Four Seasons Hotel, not long after hearing the outcome. Once there, she embraced her new grandchild and put disappointment behind her. The baby she held in her arms provided a joy deeper than any prize the world could possibly bestow.
Whenever I would send an e-mail, I would tell Carol to save her energies and not write back, but she ignored all such suggestions, of course, as she did again that Christmas:
Dear Carol,
You probably get 3,683 Christmas cards and e-mails from all your friends and admirers the world over, but may I just make that number 3,684 when I tell you I am thinking of you and sending only warm wishes for your well-being. I hope you will continue to feel supported by the love of those who surround you.
As ever,
Arthur
Arthur,
I was just thinking of you this morning, and so it was wonderful to receive your greetings. I wish you a joyous holiday. Christmas always seems to me terribly hectic, but then it just settles down into quietness and spontaneity, and that is where we are at the moment. Blessings in the new year.
carol
In the new year I was prompted to write again about something I knew she would understand.
Dear Carol,
Since I can’t tell Elma, may I tell you— and you will appreciate it, even be amused by it, because I am now seventy-seven and a bit old to be starting all this stuff—that I have been dealing for these last many months with the very good editor and publisher of Cormorant Books in Toronto, Marc Côté, and it seems that the novel
What’s Remembered
I have been working on for several years will get published. Elma had read a
previous draft and had helped me with it enormously.
Please don’t spend your energies writing back. My computer will be able to tell if this gets through to you, and that’s all I need to know. I do hope you are feeling reasonably well these days. You inspire so many everywhere by being you.
As ever,
Arthur
I could never have guessed that the letter she wrote back the next day would be her last to me. Pure Carol. Pure gold.
Dear Arthur,
Thank you for your warm words. I must admit that I hooted and hopped about in delight and surprise!
Congratulations on being seventy-seven, such a silvery age, and on having a nearly completed manuscript (though I can’t imagine why such an accomplished person would want to write a novel). I love the state of being
nearly at the end, when I have the sense of darning a sock. It’s almost like flying. I believe that metaphor needs some work. Anyway, good luck with it.
All best,
carol
Hooting … hopping … darning a sock … flying. Those words say it all—the natural laughter, the springing joy, the connection to life’s simplicities, the soaring into a bigger world of love. That was Carol in her life and in her work, so that when she died that summer, on July 16th, 2003, at the age of sixty-eight, all those who knew her or had read her books felt the loss personally.
I wrote immediately to Carol’s family, even when I knew words would be of little use.
Dear all of you in Carol’s family,
Like thousands of others everywhere, I feel devastated by the news of Carol’s death. She and Elma and I were linked in a deeply personal way over many months, and when Elma died in April of last year, it was Carol I thought
of and wrote to immediately. Her generous reply was to tell me that was exactly what she needed—“a hand to reach out to and hold on to.”
I feel grateful to have shared what I shared with Carol, but what she gave me was always far more.
Please accept my heartfelt sympathy. Sincerely,
Arthur
“Where are my bees? Must I die now? Is this a part of life?” Carol had asked, and she had been answered.
Elma had also asked and been answered.
My turn will come next.
For Emily Dickinson, these are mysteries:
The murmur of a bee
A witchcraft yieldeth me
.
If any ask me why
,
’T were easier to die
Than tell
.
I think now about my own dying much more than I used to. I hope, when it comes, that all those I love will move past darkness into their own light, convinced that I may already have moved into mine, as I feel sure Elma and Carol have moved into theirs. In this, they have been my teachers, forever pointing out “a surprising city over the horizon.”
To this point I had borne Carol and Elma company as best I could on their hard and dangerous journey, but forever falling short of their courage. Truly, they had given their straight account without delay and were now in their spirit room, a place of light and energy, free of pain, a place of love.
What now will I say at my end—that I need more time for love, or that I used the time I was given?
Still is my heart. It is awaiting its hour
Everywhere the lovely earth blossoms forth in spring
And grows green anew! Everywhere, for ever
,
Horizons are blue and bright! For ever and ever
.
Ewig … ewig … ewig …
ARTHUR MOTYER
was born in Bermuda and now lives in Sackville, New Brunswick. Rhodes scholar, Member of the Order of New Brunswick and Professor Emeritus of English at Mount Allison University, he also wrote the novel
What’s Remembered
.
ELMA GERWIN
was active for two decades in literacy initiatives, and she was recognized as one of Canada’s top five educators with a Canada Post Literacy Award. A long-time Winnipeg resident, she was married and had three children. She died in 2002.
CAROL SHIELDS
was the beloved and award-winning author of more than twenty books. She died in 2003, leaving behind a husband, five children and twelve grandchildren.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2008
Copyright © 2007
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2008. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Motyer, Arthur
The staircase letters : an extraordinary friendship at the end of
life / Arthur Motyer ; with Elma Gerwin & Carol Shields.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37047-1
1. Motyer, Arthur—Correspondence. 2. Gerwin, Elma—
Correspondence. 3. Shields, Carol, 1935–2003—Correspondence.
I. Gerwin, Elma II. Shields, Carol, 1935–2003. III. Title.
PS
8626.
O
8468
Z
546 2008
C
813
C
2008-900334-9
Eliot, T.S. “The Journey of the Magi”,
Collected Poems 1909–1962
. London:
Faber and Faber, 2002. Used by permission.
Shapiro, Karl. “A Cut Flower,”
The Wild Card: Selected Poems, Early and Late
.
University of Illinois Press, 1998. Used by permission of the author.
Excerpted from
Unless
by Carol Shields. Copyright © 2002 Carol Shields
Literary Trust. Reprinted by permission of Random House Canada.
Extracted from
The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields. Copyright © 1993 Carol
Shields Literary Trust. Reprinted by permission of Random House Canada.
Extracted from
The Republic of Love
by Carol Shields. Copyright © 1992 Carol
Shields Literary Trust. Reprinted by permission of Random House Canada.
Carol Shields’s correspondence is reproduced with the kind permission of the
Carol Shields Literary Trust.
The e-mail correspondence that appears in this work was in no way written
with the intent of publication.
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