What's your pleasure?

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I’ve enjoyed the writing of essayist Leslie Jamison, who has published memoirs that expose her own darkest moments to the world. When, soon after the death of my daughter, I saw her byline on an essay for the New York Times Book Review, I devoured it. 

“The Cult of the Literary Sad Woman” begins by painting a tableau of “epic sadness.” A fictional heroine tries to “drink herself to death,” in part because she is haunted by the death of her infant child. Jamison declares that as a young writer, she was on “Team Drunk-Crying-in-Public,” and I thought, obviously so am I. Dead child? Check. Epically sad and refusing to hide it? Check. Crying in public, possibly at a bar? Check. Ever since my daughter died, I have been defiantly inconsolable, practically daring some unsuspecting stranger or acquaintance to tell me to look on the bright side so that I could eviscerate them with the righteous anger that crackled just beneath the surface of my sadness. 

As the essay goes on, Jamison lists other celebrated “literary sad women” – Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion – but then reveals a shift in her own perspective on the “sad woman.” Referring to the original vignette of the babylost woman crying at the bar, Jamison writes:

“She was not only oozing self-pity, she also seemed self-righteous about it – convinced that her unhappiness held far more truth than the pretenses other people hid behind. . . as if she believed herself to be the only person who had ever known crippling despair.” 

Ouch, the sting of recognition. On the one hand, of course I feel sorry for myself, my baby died, how dare you! But on the other hand… I don’t know the pain of the stranger who smiled at me. Maybe they lost a baby, too. Maybe they didn’t, but they still understand the bittersweet joy and pain of being alive just as well as I do. And it is self-righteousness to refuse to admit that. 

Towards the end of the essay, Jamison presents her thesis: that writing about her own ordinary experiences of happiness can be just as profound as writing about darkness and pain, and maybe even more revolutionary. She presents to the reader an invitation 

“to think of happiness as something that might sharpen our thinking into focus, rather than blunting it…’What’s your pleasure?’ is a question that might direct us toward as much profundity as ‘What’s your damage?’”

It helps me to remember all of you who have lost your children, too, and gone on living. I’m not exceptional in my pain, and knowing that makes it harder to lose myself in despair. I tend to chafe at anything I perceive as an attempt to silence my grief or force me to perform happiness. But here among other babylost parents, I am tiptoeing out of the dark barroom to ask, what if I don’t spend the rest of my life crying with the curtains drawn? Is that a betrayal of my daughter? Or the opposite? 

What if I want to write about how much I love swimming in the icy cold ocean when the waves are big? What if I could find small contentments again, and not view every smile with narrowed eyes and cynicism? 

Will I allow myself to reclaim pleasure and joy?

What is your pleasure? Where do you find joy, or small contentments, in the midst of loss? Do you allow yourself to reclaim these experiences and feelings? And if not, can you?