โItโs been a very interesting revision of me,โ professed Canadian author Charlene Diehl to a room of captivated Wilfrid Laurier University students, fans and friends as she presented a reading of her 2010 memoir Out of Grief, Singing.
Diehlโs memoir reflects on her life-altering experience of becoming a mother and coping with the grief of losing her first daughter, Chloe, who was born prematurely. โThat incredible little girl lived for six days and then she died and then I had to figure out: now what? It was all unclear to me,โ she said.
The first section of her book begins in the fall of 1995, presenting the whirlwind of being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a disease jeopardizing her and the babyโs health, and having to deliver the baby the very next day. โI did not realize that I was becoming profoundly ill,โ Diehl explained.
Living in Waterloo and working as a professor at the University of Waterlooโs St. Jerome campus during this difficult period, Diehl found her return to the city to address the audience at Laurierโs faculty of arts to be โa weird experience.โ Realizing the painful combination of the setting and the context of her memoir, Diehl chose to veer away from the early segments of the book and present the periods of mourning and revival. โThe return has been long and surprising and strange and wonderful,โ said Diehl moments before turning to a passage.
She began reading a recollection of a nightmare, which would be one of many that she experienced in the first few months following Chloeโs death. While maintaining an articulate voice, Diehlโs emotions were revealed as the audience could hear her suppressing tears as she slowly described the frozen feeling of mourning.
What was visibly the most challenging passage recounted a conversation with her then seven-year-old son Liam whose innocent curiosity required her to explain the decision to have Chloe cremated. โThere are many ways to respect the dead, I say to my son, curious and brave in the back seat,โ she read.
Although she struggled with the question of โhow do you mother somebody that you never really got to hold?โ Diehl noted that Liam and her daughter Anna have had no difficulty in understanding Chloeโs place in their family. โItโs perfectly obvious to them that they have a sister that is theirs, which seems to me quite remarkable because they both arrived after she had departed,โ she said.
In later speaking to an English class at Laurier, Diehl expressed how writing the memoir, while exposing her personal life to the world, helped her piece together the things she remembered and felt during that time. โStories about grief are the stories that scare the crap out of us all,โ she explained. โI donโt think weโve made room for these stories to be treasured.โ
Finding death and the loss of loved ones to be an expected part of life, Diehl shared that she doesnโt believe in closure but rather making space to carry grief with her. โI donโt feel impeded by it; I feel energized,โ she articulated. Moving to Winnipeg in 2000 and establishing a new career away from academics as a director for the international writers festival Thin Air, Diehl was able to tap in to her creativity and document and transform her experience.
Although the memoir was published more than ten years after Chloeโs death, as Diehl admitted to struggling to find a conclusion to her story, she now reflected on the process of overcoming grief, revealing, โIt is one of the most important things each and every one of us will do.โ