Learn to let go

 

(Jack: Susie's dad, Abigail: Susie's mom, Lindsey: Susie's younger sister, Ray: the boy Susie loved)

     After reading a few more chapters, I realized that the core of this book is not about whether the police would track down the criminal because in the following chapters, I found that plots about the police’s investigation have been cut down. Instead, it focused more on the lives of Susie’s family and their transitions. With the proceeding of the story, through Susie’s family, I’ve seen different kinds of ways to cope with sorrow and agony. In order not to be too redundant, I’ll just talk about Susie and her parents because I’ve noticed a big difference between them.  

     As time went by, the police didn’t bring any good news. They couldn’t find any certain proof to track down the criminal, nor could they find Susie’s body, and the only thing they were sure was that Susie was dead, murdered. When the police were nearly at the point to put “unsolved” onto Susie’s case, Susie’s father started to suspect Mr. Harvey through some unperceivable behavior and nuanced expression of Mr. Harvey which nobody else but he could have noticed, and he called it “father’s instinct”. However, his instinct didn’t mean anything unless the police could collect decisive proof to connect Mr. Harvey with the case. The undissipated love of Jack for Susie propelled him to go extreme. Dwelling on Susie’s death, he became frantic and absent-minded, all he thought about was to bring Mr. Harvey to justice. Or, if he couldn’t do that, he even thought of killing Mr. Harvey secretly as revenge. A plot that not only really touched my heart but also made me deliberate was that Jack followed a person who he thought to be Mr. Harvey to the cornfield where Susie was murdered in the middle of the night, with no one else around, with a mind occupied with anger and hatred, he knocked down the person from behind. However, it turned out that that person was not who he thought was. On the one hand, I felt touched (even though I know Jack was too reckless) because I know what Jack had done was out of deep love, he couldn’t care or think too much when it seemed like a good time to avenge his daughter. On the other hand, it made me think, whether the death will be willing to see the living mess up the rhythm of their own life and go all out for avenging them at all cost? As a bystander, I could foresee the outcome when seeing Jack tracking down that person, I knew that would be a mistake. To be frank, I’m sure Jack could have foreseen it if he had not been the person involved. Nonetheless, if I were Jack, I couldn’t guarantee that I would not lose my mind as he did. It took Jack several years to let go, in the intervening years, he could not look at Lindsey without seeing the shadow of Susie, he could not help but keep vigilant all the time and keep a million eyes on his two remaining children for fear of losing more of them. Until one day, when Jack stop seeing any Susie in Lindsey, when he was willing to let go of the hand of his only daughter and gave them to another man, the so-called son-in-law, I knew that Jack was ready to go on with his life.

     Susie’s mom, Abigail was sort of like an escapee when it comes to dealing with a tragedy. She knew the fact from the heart that her daughter was gone, but she just couldn’t accept it and she couldn’t even take one more look at Susie’s room again. Her soul somehow seemed to have floated skyward along with her dead daughter’s. Hopeless and helpless, all she wanted was escape, escape from the incident, escape from her family. When her husband was out there trying to bring the criminal into justice, she was making out with the police officer who was in charge of her daughter’s case. When her husband was moving inward to the family, she was moving in the opposite direction, drifting away. When I was thinking how a tragedy could turn her on and made her cross the moral line and how repellent it was, I read a sentence ”she was hollow and lost and abandoned up” and “she couldn’t even really feel him”. Then I realized, this was her way of escaping, and a way of feeling the warmth she couldn’t feel from her husband lately since her husband focused too much on their dead daughter. It was a wrong way, in my opinion, but was her way. Shortly after, she left her house, her family, the community, to elsewhere. I’ve heard of a saying that describes something like “People tend to change after a big incident.” I think that was what Abigail did. She had never wanted to be a housewife, she had her dream, but she compromised after giving birth to Susie. She used to choose to surrender to fate, but now, she changed, she chose to live her own life, to pursue her dream. Six years later, she came back after hearing that Jack had come down with a heart attack. She was planning to do a quick check and left again, but she stayed eventually. I think that was because all these years passed by, everyone moved on, the atmosphere of the house has changed, and so she could feel the warmth and animation in her family again. When she was able to step into Susie’s room again, I knew she has also moved on.

     At first, Susie was drowning in the unfathomable ocean of hatred. Apart from missing her family and the boy she loved, she was also bent on retaliation. I think it’s the normal reaction after the tragedy and I can totally relate to her. After all, if I were her, I would think about the same thing. However, with these things haunting her, she couldn’t stop seeing the whole incident again and again in her heaven. She thought that heaven should not be like this, that heaven should not exist anything she wasn’t willing to see. Until one of her friends in heaven told her that “You should stop desiring certain answers.” and until she saw how her death changed and tore apart the whole family, how her father and sister got themselves hurt trying to avenge her, she realized she should stop holding onto them, the living. After all, as her friend said ”When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things.” I think what her friend said was right, even though the living can’t see the dead, somehow, they can feel them, they can feel the sense that the dead want them to retaliate. Stop holding onto each other doesn’t mean to forget, store each other in the heart is also a kind of remembering. There was a turning point where I noticed Susie’s change. One day, as usual, when she was overlooking her friend and the boy she loved from heaven, suddenly, she fell out of heaven into her friend’s body. That was totally a good opportunity to help solve her case, I thought. However, what Susie chose to do was surprising but afterward, understandable. She spent her back-to-the-Earth time with Ray, she had been wanting to kiss him again both before and after death, so she did, and some other intimate stuffs have also done. I did think she has dissipated a great opportunity to solve the case, but after further consideration, I understood. That was a symbol of her moving on, of her big change. She stopped dwelling on those unchangeable facts, instead, she chose to enjoy what she could enjoy.

     Even though this is not the core of the book, I still want to tell the consequence of Susie’s murderer. He wasn’t arrested, but he was dead eventually. He was hit by an icicle and fell into an iced river. Covered with snow, his body wasn’t discovered too soon. Finally, he was knocked down by something, not by Jack, but by an icicle, which was hard and cold, just like Jack’s broken heart. At some level, I think it’s a consummate ending, plain but strong.