“I didn’t have no choice, Mack. Suzy said she wouldn’t go see him unless he got sick or had a broke arm. I tried, but I couldn’t figure out how to get him sick.”
In the movie Cannery Row, Hazel tries to do something about the estrangement between Doc and his love interest, Suzy. I’ll spare you the specifics of how Hazel intervenes, but suffice to say that Doc is puzzled when he wakes up from a nap with a broken arm.
Lo and behold, Suzy contacts Doc, and–spoiler alert–the two of them resume their relationship.
My late father, known as the Doug, shared my love of this movie, which we’d often paraphrase when catching up:
“Once again the world was spinning in greased grooves.”
John Steinbeck, who wrote Cannery Row, based Doc on his best friend, a marine biologist named Ed Ricketts. The two of them drank beer, philosophized, and generally did as friends do.
In 1948, Ricketts died in a car accident. Grief-stricken Steinbeck coped via what one might call narrative therapy: He wrote another book about Ed/Doc, this time giving him the happy ending he was denied in real life. That second book is called Sweet Thursday, and the movie is a combination of both Doc-centered books.
I adore the books and the movie, and I remain fascinated by Steinbeck’s approach to his grief. I’ve written plenty about my estrangement and its ambiguous grief. We certainly speculate in group:
Would my child contact me if I were sick or injured? Dying?
There is no easy answer to that, of course. If I were a prize-winning author and could find solace in an imaginary ending, perhaps I would.
However, we mourn severed relationships with people who continue to live. Those of us who write to cope know that we cannot rely on fiction to manifest a suitable real-life outcome.
But maybe, just maybe, we can find some meaning. Maybe we can achieve some objectivity, some ability to zoom out. In addition to that, we can take the opportunity to focus on what we can control from this chapter onward. Furthermore, along this healing path, you may glimpse the possibility of your own world once again spinning in greased grooves.
