A review by capy
A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets. Her death brings to light her unique quality; she grows as vast as the world that her absence annihilates for her and whose whole existence was caused by her being there; you feel that she should have had more room in your life – all the room, if need be. You snatch yourself away from this wildness: she was only one among many. But since you never do all you might for anyone – not even within the arguable limits that you have set yourself – you have plenty of room left for self-reproach. 

man... it baffles me that there was ever contention around the publication of this book. we NEED works like these, we NEED people like simone de beauvoir to honor her mother in writing. this was a heartwrenching read on how one lives through and processes the death of the person who brought them into the world, especially when that relationship has taken its sharp turns over the years. i expected reading solely about death but it is a solid piece on family trauma as well. i assume that a lot of the women who've read this can see their lives reflected in the difficult mother-daughter dynamics expressed — i certainly saw a lot of my own grandmother's personality in françoise

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to this, each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days which she confused with convalescence and yet we were profoundly separated from her. 

i've lived almost 27 years on this planet without going through a relative or a friend painfully passing. every death i've experienced has been sudden, which holds at the same time its own heavy weight and levity. this book really turned my thinking from "i'm the youngest in my immediate family!" into "i'm... the youngest... in my immediate family..."
respectfully not looking forward to revisiting this book if/when i eventually need to and f*ck cancer