Two Pieces:  Fiction and Non-Fiction

My wife, Lisa, and I recently returned from a most relaxing vacation at Kona, Hawaii (the big island).  My goal on that trip was simply to take in the fresh air, swim and catch-up on reading the many back issues of the New Yorker, I had yet to peruse.  For those not familiar with the New Yorker magazine its content consists of interesting essays regarding people or places, a few poems and one short story by young and old writers who have successfully published their work.  The length of all this content often comes to about 100 pages with the essayists all being skilled at the craft of writing.

Of the many essays and short stories I read, I would like to share two of those that really stuck out in my mind.  The first, a fictional piece called Jubilee by Jhumpa Lahiri, a female author born in Bengal but raised for the most part of her life in America.  Short stories in the New Yorker ordinarily represent a slice of life that end elliptically often leaving the reader, somewhat puzzled, wondering where the story will go next.  As the story unfolds, the author’s captivating prose takes you inside the mind of the protagonist whetting your appetite for more when suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the story concludes. At times, I have found the lack of a clear-cut ending where there is no closure to be quite frustrating.  However, I continue to read these stories more for the beauty of the language than for receiving the satisfaction of a completed tale.  After I have finished stories of this nature, they are quickly put out of mind with little memory retention. 

But on occasion, I may find myself reading a story that has a more typical structure of a beginning and ending.  Jubilee by Jhumpa Lahiri fits this description.  This story, semi-autobiographic, is narrated from the perspective of a 10-year-old Bengali girl growing up in London who comes from an Indian family who have immigrated from India.  One feels the author’s struggle to navigate her outside world of British culture with its concomitant rituals along with the world of her parents’ Bengali customs, language, and expectations.  She remembers feeling both included and excluded in a celebratory event occurring in London.  Later in her life, she reflects on this year in her life when she sees more clearly the issues, especially, that of her mother had to face with the hardened paternal customs of her native culture vis-à-vis life in London.  This then is a coming-of-age story when a young girl begins to recognize what it means to be a female migrant dislocated from her native culture trying to adapt to an entirely novel way of living.

A Family Doctor’s Search for Salvation,written by Joshua Rothman,is the second piece, a non-fiction essay, I wish to discuss.  Reading this story brought tears to my eyes.  It tells of a pediatrician, Greg Gulbransen, who accidentally killed his son by running him over in his driveway.  Rather, then taking time off at the suggestion of his colleagues, he immediately returned to his heavy case load attending to his patients and their families.  It was not paranoia when he said: “Everyone was watching me.  I was the most watched person ever—a pediatrician who backed over his own kid.”  I cannot imagine a fate much worse than that of a parent accidentally ending the life of his/her own child.  Parents (and I have personally known some) have an inordinate amount of difficulty recovering from the premature death of a child but what Greg Gulbransen suffered from was far worse.

Indeed, he sought professional help with his therapist pointing out to him that it is impossible to control every event in one’s life.  But even this knowledge could not alter the fact that it was he, and not someone else, behind the wheel that killed his son.  The psychic pain that Dr. Gulbransen faced may have destroyed many an individual. It had been rumored by some of his colleagues at the hospitals, where he consulted, that he might take his own life.   On the contrary, his reaction to this catastrophic event in his life resulted in his taking on the enormous project of reducing the pain and suffering of those beyond his work.  This was in addition to his own practice that he diligently kept and pursued.  He became involved at Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx where he brought his skills as a human first, and second as a physician, to help drug addicts.  The people he saw were hanging on to life by a thread many of whom had overdosed and barely survived.  He brought them food, assisted in their medical care and did whatever was needed to keep them alive.  But he was not just performing these benevolent acts unreciprocated.  Although the people he assisted could not reimburse him for his services, he needed these people he helped for his own healing.  There was a mutuality he felt in their stories that would become a part of his own.

When the news would cite a medical emergency in other communities, often he would make the time to reduce the suffering of those in need.  He rarely went on vacation working ceaselessly during the week.  But somehow, he thrived on his contribution he made to those he assisted.  As he put it, “I wanted to show Scott and Julia (his children) how, when the shit hits the fan, you behave like This.” 

Greg Gulbransen’s goodness was not part of a system or religion but rather was personal and even arbitrary.  They say that sometimes good can come from the bad.  This couldn’t be truer than in the case of Dr. Gulbransen.  Rather than succumb to a tragic event in his life, he fortified his existence in caring for those in dire need of help, perhaps experiencing the flow that athletes have described at the peak of their skills.  Dr. Gulbransen’s resilience and acts of goodness allowed him to overcome his grief and make the world a better place.