I have never read anything so fast, in fact it took me two days, two sittings. This is a moving memoir of Jan de Hartog’s recollection of his parents, a Dutch theologian father and a mother whose devotion to each other was unsurpassed. It is hard to write about a reading experience that is so passing, so deeply engaging and so moving at the same time. He talked about philosophy, particularly his father’s take on the definition of free will by Schopenhauer and Neitzche, the history of Calvinism in Holland, the Quaker tradition among the Dutch, Dutch East Indies, the just concluded World War I in Europe. But most importantly, he talked about the impending death of his mother who was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Confined in a hospital and terminally ill, she was a picture of wretchedness and despair, and the author could not define his role in seeing his mother through her death. Between shots of sedatives that made her drowsy and deranged, vomiting the malodorous stench of human decay, his mother was not one whom he could comfort readily without his having to want to bolt away. She had one night of being lost in her terror amidst her excrement and her confusion and the author found himself washing and bathing her, holding her and assuring her that everything would be all right. That night was the one night of being in the ocean of darkness where he felt he was able to feel the vast ocean of light and love that followed it.
The book is somber, but there were many moments of upliftment, specially when you realize that love is behind all that we do as the parents in the memoir exemplified, that gentleness and persuasiveness go hand in hand, that our lives are strewn with suffering and there is no assurance that a decent life will end in a graceful death, but redemption is at hand if one is steadfast in their faith.
