Books --- The Raft

Like the movie, “Gravity,” the book, “The Raft,” by S.A. Bodeen, is also a survival story.  But compared to the movie, I found “The Raft” to be a more satisfying story for several reasons.

One, being a book rather than a movie, we can feel the feelings and hear the thoughts of the main character, fifteen year-old Robie Mitchell. With a movie, we can only see how those thoughts and feelings appear from the outside.  In this case, Bodeen did such a good job of showing Robie’s fear as the plane crashes, I was literally shaking.  Okay, it was slightly chilly, but I still couldn’t tell that my shakes weren’t nervous energy from the story; it was that scary.

Two, the main character, Robie, is always engaged in reacting to the disastrous events occurring around her.  Eventually, she is ground down to the point where there is no hope for survival, yet with Max’s encouragement, she continues to crawl on.  If the writer had not sent in a ship to rescue her, she would have died.  In this story, she does not save herself by her own wit and ingenuity, but is rescued by other people.

Three, in the end, the main character has something to live for. She has a family waiting for her.  And she has a mission --- to tell Max’s family the story of how he saved her life.  And, by leaving it to our imagination just how she does that, and what she might say, the author has created a story which is unforgettable.

Comparing this book to the movie, “Gravity,” is simple:  The movie, while worth seeing for its point of view, is still fantasy.  This book is built on reality, and it shows.

Movies – Gravity (3D) (Spoiler Alert)

 The movie, Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is a survival story.  Technically well executed, the special effects showing the destruction of the shuttle and, eventually, the space stations as they circle the earth, allow the viewer to experience the hair-raising terror and claustrophobia that accompany a disaster in space.

In the end, however, the movie was not as emotionally satisfying as it could have been.  This was due to shallow plotting on the part of the writers.  The protagonist, Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock), is shown to be a broken person who doesn’t much care whether she lives or dies; her young daughter died a year or so before this, and she has no family left.  As a result, when she finally decides to care enough to try and survive, and then does survive, when she rises from the mud in a sort of “I am woman, and I survived” ending; it leaves the viewer flat.  Why should we care for a character who doesn’t really care for herself, and doesn’t have anything to live for, or anything to come back to?  The character just does not have a stake in the game.

In my opinion, it would have been much more satisfying for her to have had a once-strong and loving relationship with her daughter, which was seriously strained by her long absences for the previous six months of mission training --- to the point where her daughter loses it, and angrily says (just before launch) that she never wants to see her again.  And as Stone grows through the disaster, she realizes that she is the adult in the relationship, and her daughter’s outburst was only an expression of extreme fear that her mother might not be there for her as she grows up.

And after this realization, nothing can stop her from getting back and being there for her daughter.  So, the first thing she does --- even before they find her alive and pick her up --- is to call her daughter to tell her that, yes, no matter what they told her, she is still alive, the mission ended early, and she will be home to bring cupcakes to class for her birthday next week.

Words --- Expectations

      I was not completely surprised when my wife, Judy, died. The beginning of the end had started almost two months before, when her oncologist finally stopped the series of chemo treatments that had made her miserable for years, but no longer held her breast cancer in check. This was after her tumor marker had climbed to 480, and after a CAT scan had revealed widespread nodules throughout her body. And, yes, her breast cancer was “lazy” or very slow growing.  She had first been diagnosed with breast cancer over 20 years ago.  Her doctor was far more worried about his other patients who had tumor markers in the thousands. But it was at that point in Judy’s treatment that it seemed like the doctor had given up to the inevitable. He had tried everything and nothing was working. (Except “SpongeBob,” which had actually brought her tumor marker down two years before, but the side effects were too agonizing to live through again.) Then the doctor went away on a three-week vacation.

      Judy’s death was not unexpected.  I knew something was wrong in mid-July when Judy called me at work, at 10:00 o’clock in the morning, in tears because she could not get the sound to work on the television.  I had to come home and fiddle with the remote controls to fix it. It was something simple, maybe the mute button had been pressed on the TV remote.  So I wondered.

      That night she fell.  Twice.  The next morning I took her in to the Compass Oncology clinic and they ordered up an MRI then and there.  Judy had a two-centimeter tumor in her brain.  By that time she could barely speak;  she was unable to find the words she needed to express herself.  After that I did not return to work at the office full-time for almost two months.

      The clinic prescribed steroids to reduce the swelling and in a couple of days Judy had regained most of her ability to talk --- and laugh.  But she still could not write; the tremors in her hands were too bad.

      On July 31 she underwent an hour and a half Gamma Knife (radiation) treatment meant to zap the tumor.  It became excruciatingly painful --- a 15 on their scale of 1 to 10.  For a woman who had borne two children --- under back labor --- and who lived with recurring, sometimes daily, migraines, for her to say that it was the worst pain imaginable, is saying a lot.  She remembered screaming in agony, but I don’t know.  All I heard from the waiting area, were the Doctors and Nurses telling her, via microphone into the treatment room, that it was “almost over.”  The clock on the wall showed that she had another 25 minutes to go.  Sometimes pain is so bad that you cannot take a breath to scream;  so I don’t know whether she actually screamed or not.  But it gave her nightmares after that.

      After the treatment, we looked for Judy to improve in her ability to speak coherently.  She started out about the same, doing mostly okay.  But since, during this time, various doctors were prescribing lower and lower doses of the steroids, which had helped to reduce the swelling in her brain, until she was taking none at all, she was gradually going from better to worse.

      After our anniversary, August 9^th, I posted the following on the poetry thread of Meg Cabot’s writing forum:

this is the last one

the last year

the last August

our last anniversary

I open the door and step out

into the cool morning air

to get the paper

and wipe away tears

Soon

too soon

it will mean less

without you

It's in the small things

that I feel the death-train coming

Your nouns are gone

Your verbs have left

You speak only in conjunctions

and long pauses

as if

in the silence

there must be meaning

and I should understand

but I don't

You laughed with joy

today

I pray

it won't be the last time

And you cried out in fear

terrified that I didn't hear

but you are still here

with me

It's all right

Soon

too soon

there will come a time

when you won't know me

when I'll have to give you up

to other people

to take care of what's left

of your body

Jim Morrison said it well—

at least

in the first few bars —

"This is the end

Beautiful friend

This is the end

My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end

I'll never look into your eyes...again"

Happy anniversary, my love

I know you'll forgive me

for not mentioning it

Only five days ago

You knew it was coming

But today

You didn't remember

and there is no guilt in love

Words --- Comment

     When Cindy approached and asked me if I would write a short poem to comfort a friend whose dog had died, I did not hesitate to say yes. I like hacking poetry, and I had coughed up a couple of less-than-metric verses in the last couple of months.  So I clutched at my motto, “How hard can it be?”, and plunged in.

     It hurt.

     A lot.

     Not an agonizing, how-can-I-possibly-stand-it screaming hurt, but more of a deep pit of tears ache kind of hurt.  Because with pets, it hurts even more to lose them. They give us their heart and soul, as it were, only to die all too soon.

     Years ago, a few months after having lost my two remaining brothers, five months apart, we lost our only cat to feline leukemia. As I stood over her in the vet’s office, while they administered the injection that ended her life, the tears just rolled to down my face.  I felt bad --- not only for her, but also for my brothers, and for the fact that it wasn’t her fault. We can be the best person we are capable of being, and it still ends in death. For everyone.

     So I wrote “Requiem to Sadie” in memory of a dog I never knew. But now, every time I read it, it reminds me of my wife, Judy.  We were together for 40 years, but now she’s gone.