thoughts on The Optimist's Daughter

I recently read The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. My mother-in-law has a great appreciation for her and her work, so I thought I'd give her a try. I was drawn right into the story, and I liked it better and better as I read and ended up liking the last page the best. The back cover says:

The Optimist's Daughter is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Misissippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents.

There were two moments that struck me the most. One is actually a whole chapter; she is standing next to her father's open casket, receiving guests and hearing them reminisce about her well-respected father. She becomes upset that the stories people share are really false fantasies that try too hard to make him sound good and heroic. She feels defensive for him, knowing that he would want to be remembered for who he truly was; she wants people to recognize the gravity of his life and death without the show.

I think that it is a good thing to be able to forgive the failings of the deceased and celebrate the honorable parts of their character. But at the same time, ignoring their faults altogether discredits the hard work they put into living and dismisses the hard-earned lessons they've passed on to those left behind.

The second moment I love is at the very end of the book. Laurel has just spent the night in her parent's old room, rummaging through her deceased mother's things and reliving memories and emotions related to the death of each of her mother, husband and, now, father. In the morning, she is set to leave town, probably for good, to go back to her current home and job, leaving the old house to her stepmother. Before she leaves, she burns letters, books and pictures, relieving the house of all traces of her mother's memory. Then she remembers an old cabinet in the kitchen where she finds her mother's prized breadboard which Laurel's husband had painstakingly made for her. It is scarred with burn marks and deep cracks from the ill care of the stepmother. The breadboard seems to sum up everything she would want to remember about her family--it represents the family's love as well as the personality of both her mother and husband. It also represents the passing of time. In the end, Laurel leaves the breadboard, taking with her no physical memory of her past nor of her family, with the realization that "Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams."

I really like the suggestion that it is okay to let go of what once was, embrace how it has affected us for the good or bad, and move forward. But moving forward doesn't mean forgetting or not feeling: "The memory can hurt, time and again--but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due."

I agree with Laurel that it is important to remember someone for who they were and let the memories of love and hurt, failings and successes live affect us, for that is how we keep the person's memory alive. At the same time, the past is not the only thing that affects us and we must keep marching forward with time, make new memories, and make our own mark on the world.