In the days after it happens, everything was awful. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska.
fuck
the day after
(Obviously, a trigger warning for discussion of death, grief, and loss.)
How do you talk about this? How do you write about an event that fundamentally changes what this book is about? What am I supposed to say that’ll make this feel better or make it…I don’t know, make sense? I guess there really is nothing, and having had to deal with the death of my father five years ago, I know how absurd this process is.
It’s hard for me to parse words together in a way that’s not incoherent blabbering. It’s still hard for me to talk about death, even if I haven’t been hurt about my father’s death in a while. I suppose that it’s also difficult because I worry about repeating myself on this site; it’s not the first time I’ve written about it. But, yet again, I’m struck by how well an author is able to convey the confusing and horrific moment of learning someone you loved died, of cycling through the various stages of grief, and of giving us a part of life’s terrible cycle that we’ll all have to deal with at some point in our lives.
There are a couple unbelievably heartbreaking things I want to point out before we get to my own Sob Fest 2011. Well, that’s weird to say because the next two chapters are difficult to get through because of the heartbreak, but a few things stood out to me. Of course, as soon as the Eagle tells the Colonel and Miles that something terrible has happened, I knew Alaska was dead. There was no way around it, and no clever trick. There was no reason to call them to a public meeting in the gym if she’d just gotten hurt. There was only one way this could unfold, and I hated it. I wanted more from Alaska, and I wasn’t going to get it.
And I remember having unbelievably selfish reactions to the death of my father that later left me feeling ashamed. We don’t see the reactions here from Miles, but a lot of what he says and does mirrors what I felt at the time. But before that happens, Miles has to go and shatter my heart into a trillion pieces.
The Eagle walked up to the podium and said, “Is everyone here?”
“No,” I said to him. “Alaska isn’t here.”
The Eagle looked down. “Is everyone else here?”
“Alaska isn’t here!”
“Okay, Miles. Thank you.”
“We can’t start without Alaska.”
The Eagle looked at me. He was crying, noiselessly. Tears just rolled from his eyes to his chin and then fell onto his corduroy pants. He stared at me, but it was not the Look of Doom. His eyes blinking the tears down his face, the Eagle looked, for all the world, sorry.
I didn’t cry at this reveal. I like this book, but I’m not necessarily attached to any of the characters. Well, except for Dolores Martin, of course. MY TRUE LOVE. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset. This was upsetting for any number of reasons, but I found that Green’s detailed account of Miles and the Colonel’s reaction to Alaska’s death to be utterly frightening in its accuracy. Again, I mean that relative to me; all of us react and cope in different ways, but this mirrored my own reaction to learning off my father’s death that I found myself taking breaks from the book every couple of minutes.
It’s common for people to simply disbelieve the news, and Miles does that almost immediately. “She’s not dead,” he thinks. “She’s alive. She’s alive somewhere.” Because it would be easier to deal with misinformation or a cruel, senseless practical joke than to deal with the fact that Alaska is not coming back, and with the guilt that comes from realizing that he and the Colonel contributed in a way to Alaska dying.
And that is a very selfish reaction in a way, but I’m glad it’s not ignored by Green. While Alaska made her own choices (I already hate talking about her in the past tense), these two have to cope with the fact that they helped her escape so she could drive drunk away from the school.
There are just so many devastating details here, and I can’t imagine this was easy for John Green to write. The image of the gym in “disintegration” is utterly haunting to me. The thought of the Colonel just lying there, screaming in grief, is fucked up. Miles telling the Eagle that Alaska’s playing a prank is horrific. All of these scenes are stitched together with the ghost of Alaska Young, and I found myself thinking about how Alaska would react to these things, how she’d make a joke, or how she’d silence everyone with some brilliant pearl of sad, devastating wisdom, or how she’d find a way to say, “Fuck it all,” and pass around a bottle of Strawberry Hill to drink the pain away.
Christ, she is really gone.
The other thing Green captures really well is how death can unhinge a person in a way, and he demonstrates this in the narration. Miles’s sentences become much longer, running into one another. He jumps from one topic to another, and we can see this in how Green breaks up these sections with double spaces. There’s no narration to tell us how Miles gets from one place to another and even if Green didn’t intend that, it’s a brilliant way to show us what the experience is like. I’ve always had a good memory, but there are patches of time on the day my father died that I simply cannot recall. One thing just drifted to another.
I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.
Just….goddamn it. She’s gone. And the final image of this chapter, with the Colonel collapsed on the ground, hyperventilating out of fear and shock, is a fitting end to this experience: death is debilitating to these people, and they’ve just lost someone who has meant a lot to them, and there’s nothing they can do to change it.
two days after
I didn’t sleep the night my father died either. I entertained this bizarre notion that if I did fall asleep, I would die and not wake up again. In hindsight, it’s pretty funny that I thought this. Well, at least to me it is. I mean…did I suddenly believe goblins existed and lived under my bed? I can’t explain a lot of my behavior that week, actually. I suddenly decided that a guy I’d met the day before my father’s death was totally going to be my first boyfriend, and that ultimately ended in disaster. I remember going back to work maybe two days later and zoning out for hours at a time when I should have just stayed away for a week. I made awful decisions and it’s just what happened. The experience was like being bumped out of orbit; it took a while to find my way back to a path that was familiar or made sense.
I went home the day I found out; my brother came to pick me up, and we went straight to my mother, and just hearing her was enough to undo me and heal me at the same time.
“What can we do for you right now?” my mom asked.
“I just needed you to pick up. I just needed you to answer the phone, and you did.”
It might seem a bit silly that this would be all it takes to feel something solid and dependable again, but it worked for me. I felt better just seeing my mom, even though I was a terrible mess for the first hour I came home. It was a very basic need: I just need you here, right now, in this moment, and that’s all I ask of you. Just don’t leave. Be here.
And now she was colder by the hour, more dead with every breath I took. I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.
I think John Green has introduced what will eventually be the explanation for the title: Miles has lost Alaska, physically and emotionally, and she has left him something to find. Part of me wants to side-eye this because Alaska can no longer be an active character in the narrative, but then part of me understands how I used my father’s death to grow myself, and it’s really not that much different at all. Again, I think I’ll wait to see how this pans out, but it’s a weird dynamic.
I suppose the same thing goes for the Colonel, but Green seems to be focusing more on how he and Miles are coping with the loss of their best friend. I actually feel like the Colonel is taking this worse than Miles, and understandably so. He’s known Alaska for years, and given what happened the night before, he’s incredibly quick to blame her and then himself for what happened. Figuring this out is going to be immensely complicated, too, because there’s no easy way to assign blame. Hell, I don’t even know that these two should do any such thing. What would it help? What would it change?
I’ve mentioned before that I largely read on a Kindle and I sort of adore the “Public Highlights” feature, and there’s yet another example of people highlighting a fantastic piece of writing that struck me:
What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding in an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.
Which is something I latched on to when people kept assuring me my dad’s death was quick and painless. It seemed absurd. How the hell would you know that??? How could you know that? But it speaks to how bizarre a lot of the reactions to death are, and I remember constantly questioning why our society seemed to hold on to so many idioms or customs. At the same time, I was fascinated by my own father’s funeral and at the intersection of Hawaiian culture with Buddhist and Shinto tenets at work. One of those involved the fact that my father was cremated not long after death. I’m actually thankful for this because I never once saw his body, and I’m okay with that. One of my fears manifests here in this chapter when Miles dreams of a naked Alaska who becomes very, very, very dead. I simply didn’t want to remember my father in any way like that.
So I’m intrigued by this. I was truly unprepared for Alaska’s death, and I want to see what John Green does with it. Also, what the fuck.
And this is what we all truly read this site for, am I right?
on the copyright page (I'm not sure what it's officially called) in the tags (again, not sure what the official term is) where it usually says things like "schools–fiction. interpersonal relationships–fiction" in LFA it actually says "death–fiction". I imagine that's how many people were spoiled. That happened to me once with another book. I looked at that page and it said "incest–fiction" and "abortion–fiction". I was pissed.
That's why I don't read those pages. Spoils things way too much.
OH GOD i never read those either!!!
Not even in House of Leaves?
I always read them to see if the author's snuck something in there, haha.
It also says, in the summary, "A boy reacts to his friend's death" or something like that. So glad I don't read those pages!
I read that. I wish I hadn't. I knew the whole time.
ALSO HELLO BRIEANA HOW ARE YOU IT IS NICE TO SEE YOU AROUND HERE. are we still on to meet john green next month WE CAN ALSO EAT DELICIOUS VEGAN FOOD
I WOULD LOVE TO EAT DELICIOUS VEGAN FOOD WITH YOU.
Yes, that's still the plan. I didn't buy my ticket yet and I'm freaking the fuck out that it will be sold out by the time I do. There will probably be some random worry in the back of my mind about that not working out up until I actually get there, but yes that is the plan.
Oh God this is so horrible. Losing someone important breaks you for a while, and reading these chapters are like a gut punch of recognizability.
And I was spoiled for what happens to Alaska (by the bookdiscription in our library catalog, go figure) so I could prepare for what was coming. I really dreaded reading on.
"Oh God this is so horrible. Losing someone important breaks you for a while, and reading these chapters are like a gut punch of recognizability."
This.
I expected this after the previous section, but it still is a punch to the gut. Poor Miles, trying so hard to disbelieve, to make it not be true, as if denial ever actually works. And we see the Eagle really does care, I always thought he did. I hope the Colonel is OK, but then how can they ever be OK after this? Fuck, crying again. This is good writing, but so real it hurts.
When I bought the Kindle edition off Amazon, I read the blurb before purchasing it and it said exactly what this book was counting down to, so I was spoiled before I'd even read the first word. But it didn't make reading this part any easier. It still hurt just as badly.
All I can really say is that I relate to your desire to not see a loved one's body after they've passed on–my family believes in open-casket funerals when possible and I can't for the life of me understand why. To me, it feels like a perversion of the life my loved ones led.
WHY WOULD THE BLURB SPOIL THAT.
I have no idea! Why would anyone think that was appropriate? So this whole time, I've known what was coming and had to wallow in my own dread, but at the same time, I have no idea what happens AFTER so it's not even like usual when I've seen/read something you're reviewing and can say, "Oh, Mark, you're so unprepared!" from a place of experience, because I'm not prepared, either.
tl;dr: Amazon is an evil perpetrator of spoilers and neither of us is prepared.
God, I hate open caskets, and well, funerals in general. I've told everyone in my family that I want to be cremated.
I am SO WITH YOU on open caskets. It is ghoulish to me.
When my friend's dad died, the funeral was open-casket and all I could think was that it looked like they had to cut his legs off at the knee to fit him in there (he was a tall guy). Then I felt really guilty for thinking something so stupid and I had to work to not cry. Thankfully my grandpa and nana were both cremated.
I love reading your posts…you share so much about your life. I love when you're on you're CAPSLOCK RAMPAGING but this, I like very much too. I started reading this book when you announced it, but when I got to Alaska's death, I just couldn't stop reading. I mean, I expected it, but it didn't make Miles' reactions any less depressing. My dad passed away a few years ago too and reading these chapters literally made my heart hurt. I had to finish the rest of the book that night just so I could put it away and make it stop.
Thank you for this comment. 🙂
These chapters really were brilliant. It felt so…real. All the different reactions, all the different forms of grief; that's what its like in real life.
In a way, grief is one of the binding parts of human life. There are plenty of things that are near universal, but there's no real guarantee you'll share. But at some point, you're going to lose someone. Maybe you already have, maybe you will. But it will almost certainly happen.
Its…its a little bit terrifying. I've lost people. Grandparents, people I sort of knew, but not really. The grief I felt was just a shadow of what people go through here. But I know, I know that one day I'll feel this too. And that's scary.
I agree with this. I haven't lost a grandparent, a close friend, no one in my immediate circle. And so, just like that, I am in a very small minority. But the thing is, I know it's going to happen. I know someday, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple of years, I'm going to lose someone. And I know that I won't be able to handle it. My mother lost her first husband at the age of 20, and I don't know how she survived. My brother once told me that I have this gift, that I can love people so entirely that I'm consumed by it, but that it might be my greatest flaw as well, and I think that's because he knows how much it's going to kill me to lose someone. I also hate endings…. of books, of classes that I liked, of semesters, of anything that is new and different. And I think that if I can't even handle that, how am I supposed to lose someone?
Sorry, this comment got a little long and rambly and nonsensical…. all to say that yes, I agree with you 🙂
I cried like a baby when I got to this part. Ok, I do have a tendency to cry at books, so it's not terribly surprising, but still! I had a feeling that the countdown was going to be to something tragic, but it still felt like a punch to the gut when we got to it.
I've never actually had to deal with a loved one passing away but I've been there for other people going through it, and it looks absolutely terrifying. A couple of years ago, my girlfriend's mother died, and, like Miles, the first thing I did was call my mom, in the middle of the night (scared her to death!) just to hear her voice.
So, even though we were all joking and telling you how unprepared you are and we were having fun with it….. here it is. This is the Event. And it sucks. And it's awful. And it was inevitable. And now you know why you're never prepared. And now you know why I finished this book in one night, and was crying on my balcony until dawn.
I know so many last words. But I will never know hers.
Aaaaand that's where I lost it.
I lost it there too.
I should have seen it coming, but strangely I did not even after the last chapter, where Miles thought 'Don't drive. You're drunk' and even though I did not really get all that attached to these characters I still cried.
The people in my family who died did before I really got to know them so I never experienced the pain of losing someone, but I experienced everyone else's pain. Maybe that's why I cry at every sad moment in a movie or in a book, I got good at imagining people in mourning.
This book really has changed now, I guess I was not prepared for anything and probably won't be until the last page.
*Not reading anything because I'm not caught up*
Longtime fan of yours with a quick question Mark. Are you going to Leakycon 2012?
YES YES YES YES YES.
I almost never cry because of fictional characters. I believe the last time I cried over a book was when I finished the Water Trilogy when I was 10 years old. I cried a couple times over Lost characters but that was it. When Alaska died, though? I was sobbing, and couldn't stop crying for a long time. Definitely a testament to John Green's writing.
Family death talk warning:
For me, I will never forget the way I found out my uncle and my grandfather died–it's still really fresh in my mind while the rest of the day is a blur. My grandfather died when I was eight, so that was nearly fourteen years ago, but I still remember my parents sitting me and my two cousins on the couch and confirmed the awful feeling we had all day. Earlier we were like "I have the feeling someone died. I hope it's not Pops, but they said he was at work." We had actually been staying at my grandparents' house for the week–their house is a lakehouse–and it was really weird that my parents had driven up along with my uncle. Even my maternal grandparents were at the house, and they were actually going to drive me and my brother home while later that day my parents were going to drive my two cousins to our home in Illinois. It was my first experience with death, and it was so surreal, because just the day before me and my cousins were playing in the water by the shore and I distinctly remember my grandpa walking by and telling us to be careful. I know it's not the last thing he said–but that's the last thing I ever remember him saying. I'm glad I got to spend that last weekend in his company, though. Oh, and I remember him eating bacon-wrapped hot dogs for some reason, and that was the first time I ever tried them, so I associate that food with him.
Did I also mention that he died both on Father's Day and his birthday?
Finding out my uncle died was even a worse experience, because I heard it by accident. The bathroom is right next to my bedroom, and it was still morning so I was laying in bed but was actually awake. My mom was taking a shower, and all of a sudden my dad knocked on the bathroom door and told her through the shower that "My brother Dave is dead." I thought he was joking, even though he wouldn't ever pull a joke like that. So yeah, I found out my favorite uncle died through overhearing my dad tell my mom while SHE'S IN THE SHOWER. She was getting ready to go Christmas shopping. He was understandably in shock, though, and because my uncle was only 51, and didn't think to wait until my mom was out of the shower and to sit her down, but I guess he had just gotten the phone call from his sister a few minutes earlier. This happened when I was a junior in high school so I'm even more affected by this than I was with my grandfather. He died a week before Christmas so the fifth anniversary of his death is coming up, and his funeral was a few days before Christmas. Worst Christmas ever.
Yep.
I knew that Alaska's death was what we were counting down to, which had me analyzing her in an entirely different way from the beginning. I was looking at all her reckless behavior and offhand remarks for clues as to how she would die.
The book I wanted to mention back at the beginning is A Separate Peace. The stories are so similar, as are the Gene/Finny and Miles/Alaska relationships, that I just kept flashing back to that book while I was reading this one. I have a hard time appreciating this book on its own merits because I keep comparing it back to A Separate Peace.
Part of me wants to side-eye this because Alaska can no longer be an active character in the narrative, but then part of me understands how I used my father’s death to grow myself, and it’s really not that much different at all.
I read the entirety of this book last night for a few reasons, and I was unable to be emotionally affected by this part in the same way as many of you were because I was too busy being angry at the whole thing. I think it IS different, Mark. Personal growth from a real-life tragedy is one thing, but male authors killing off female characters in order to further the development of their male protagonists is an ugly, gross pattern in fiction. It even has its own trope name: Women in Refrigerators. (I won't link to TVTropes because I heard it currently has a trojan. Can't verify, though.) I can't help but feel like Alaska got fridged.
Jura V fnvq "gur jubyr guvat", vg jnf va gur pbagrkg bs zr orvat gbb natel ng gur jubyr guvat bs ure qlvat ng gur cbvag gb or fnqqrarq ol ure qrngu gur jnl rirelbar ryfr jnf. Ng gung cbvag va gvzr, V sryg gung fur unq orra sevqtrq, vf jung V jnf fnlvat. (Jryy, V fgvyy qb, ohg gung'f abg gur cbvag.) V jnf erfcbaqvat gb jung Znex fnvq nobhg guvf fcrpvsvp cbegvba.
Have you read Bar Qnl? Talk about a freaking refrigerator lady. I was so annoyed I threw the book across the room.
I haven't, no. And now I know to avoid it. 😀 Thank you.
Yeah. And I'll say here: I adore John Green. I think he is a talented writer and a good human being who is genuinely interested in being sensitive to other people. That said, there is an issue to be had with a female character 1) being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who is arguably more interesting and damaged than the male main character, who latches onto her as some sort of muse to make his life less boring, and 2) dying in order to give the male main character some needed growth.
This is, of course, sticky, because death is a powerful motivating factor for personal growth. Sometimes characters have to die. It's what works for the story. I think what bothered me in THIS instance is that Alaska had so much story to tell, and exactly what you and Mark both mentioned — she can no longer be an active participant in what transpires. I can't say more now (*spoilers*), but yeah.
I honestly disagree with you about that. I knew someone was going to say it, but it'd be different if the book was about something else – like you know, if this was Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy just died. This just gives Spider-Man some shit to angst about while he does superhero stuff. But this book is all about this character and her death, so I don't think it's the same kind of thing. Yeah, a female character dies and the male character has to deal. But the entire point of the book is how people come to terms with death, and part of how this works is that the book keeps that fact secret from you, the reader. It couches the whole story in a situation that make more sense to a young adult. It's almost disguising itself as a different kind of book at the beginning.
I don't know, I just never thought this book was sexist when I read it, but that was a pretty long time ago, when I was a lot more uneducated about ways sexism and misogyny can inconspicuously present themselves. I certainly don't think John Green is sexist. Perhaps this book really is a bit sexist, in which case, that bites, but remember that this is one of the first books he wrote. Paper Towns, for instance, touches on some of the same kinds of subjects as Looking for Alaska, but handles them much better. (Is that a spoiler? Tell me if that's a spoiler.)
I knew someone was going to say it, but it'd be different if the book was about something else – like you know, if this was Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy just died. This just gives Spider-Man some shit to angst about while he does superhero stuff. But this book is all about this character and her death, so I don't think it's the same kind of thing.
The end result is still the same: she exists only to develop him, first by being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and then by dying. I felt utterly detached from the otherwise well-written scene in the gym because I was angry at how this seemed to be going: she comes in, ~inspires~ him with her manic pixie ~living on the edge~ ways, and now she's dead and he'll angst and learn Important Life Lessons from it. (I phrase it this way because I do not want to confirm if I'm right, since Mark hasn't read any further.) I've seen the whole "female character dies, male lead now has to bravely shoulder on and Learn Things from it" plot thread before and I am so. sick. of it. The book is about her death and what effect it has on the male characters around her, it feels like. And that makes me deeply uncomfortable, to say the least. It's a well written book, I don't deny that, but that does not make it any less problematic to me.
I don't know John Green personally, nor have I have watched any of his videos. Doesn't matter. The book is sexist, IMO, because of what's on the page.
As much I hate to admit it, because I liked this book (I took it out from the library and never bought it, so I don't have it on hand to reread along with Mark), you are right. It is actually pretty damned sexist, come to think of it. Sigh.
Oh also, where the heck did you hear that TV Tropes has a trojan? Utter bunk. I'm a Troper and the site is one hundred and ten percent safe.
Trust me, I know how it feels to really like something and then see the problems in it. 🙁 It's… pretty much inevitable. Sucks, but can't be avoided. I think how much we can deal with it is a case by case basis, everyone has their own lists of "stuff I can't stand because of x" and "stuff where I like it in spite of x".
Someone I was talking to online last night. False alarm, then? Yay!
I could be wrong. If you get a virus, I told you nothing, all right? 😛
I'm not even sure how TV Tropes could get a trojan, though. I'm pretty sure it's probably not true.
I also found the reaction to Alaska's death her to be realistic. I've been very lucky in my life — I haven't had to deal with much death. But I have had to deal with some. I've had such wildly different reactions.
When my grandfather died, I was about 11. I didn't know him well, but I liked him. When he died, I didn't feel… much of anything. I was sad, I was sad that my father was sad, but I felt like I should be MORE. I should cry. I should be visibly upset. I should be something. But I wasn't. I still feel weird about that.
Then I had a friend in college die, and it was a totally different experience. Shock, disbelief, open sobbing, fretting about my own mortality, staying up all night with a bunch of friends just crying and comforting each other, calling my parents because I just wanted to talk about it and have them tell me things would be okay… all of that.
I guess we can feel weird together? My mother's father died when I was nine or ten, and it was the same for me: sad, mostly for my mother. I had liked him, but I wasn't, you know, wracked with grief or anything. I listened to my parents tell me and my siblings what had happened, and then I went back to reading my book. I wondered if I should cry, but I didn't.
Can you see why we were not even prepared for your unpreparedness? *hugs on the astral plane*
I had been spoiled by the vlogbrothers video everyone warned you against watching. I knew Alaska would die. I knew that was the event. I knew it happened.
And I still bawled for almost a half an hour. My main reason for it was because four months earlier, a friend and neighbor of mine had died in a car accident too. I always tell people that he was my Alaska. The boy who took my breath away, but was always there to be a friend. My beautiful, mysterious, wonderful, and tragic Alaska.
"I know so many last words. But I will never know hers."
I think it's not just that she's gone, but she is SO gone. Somehow that is how this line makes me feel. I think a lot of moments in this book make me think what it would be like if one of my best friends died. I've had friends die, and relatives. But never a best friend. It hurts even to think about.
I remember feeling that it was a cruel joke even as I was telling people my dad had died. I felt like such a fake. I had a similar reaction on 9/11 – I was in Israel, East Jerusalem, we were doing voluntary work in the hospital that services the Wes Bank for prosthetics and also has a school which integrates disabled and able bodied kids – highly unusual in that culture. So we were having this crazy up and down week doing practical work and trying to chat with these children with whom we shared hardly any words. On one of the early days we had someone throw a fluorescent tube from a light fitting at us, but by 9/11 people had cottoned on to the fact that we were actually doing something positive, and greeted us as we walked to and from work. It was the day before we were having a day off, and we'd had a really good day, we had thought we might not get finished but now we knew we would, and we were in great spirits. So we merrily rolled into the hotel and up this flight of steps, and one of our leaders was at the top and he said, "There's been a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center". We all just looked at him. Then he said, "And the Pentagon is on fire". Honestly? I wanted to laugh. It seemed so utterly crazy that the PENTAGON could be on fire for pete's sake, that my brain just went, well, he is joking, of course!
I'm not sure how I got on to this…
I think I've never been so unprepared for how unprepared you were. It might sound silly, but I actually was getting a little upset the last couple of days waiting for you to get here, in that way which is a mixture of dread (Mark is so very unprepared and argh) and impatience (just read it already I can't take it any more. Which weirdly again reminds me of waiting for my dad to die… I think there was a week or so between "There is no hope" and "he's gone". I almost wanted it to be over already because surely it would be better to have it over with, to have him no longer suffering. But it wasn't.
Enough waffle. I'm strangely relieved that you have got here at last.
Please don't use the word "crazy" on this site. But thank you for sharing your story!
D'oh – note to self, don't post when half asleep.
I slept nine hours total in the three days after my dad died. The first night I slept in my mom's bed with her.
He had a heart attack and when I arrived at the hospital he was pretty much dead. His brain had been without oxygen for an hour. They kept trying, though. Finally, after 12 hours when he was having continuous seizures and his organs were ruined by a high level of sugar, my mom signed a DNR form. It took him only five minutes to flatline after that and my mom and I were the only ones who could stand to witness it. She didn't want to leave him alone and I didn't want to leave her alone. A few hours later we finally left the hospital and while I was in the restroom before we left, I remember having the strangest reaction to my face. I am the spitting image of him pretty much and so the logical thing to do was to hate my face. I told my family that I never wanted to see my face again because it hurt too much.
He was cremated, but we had a viewing first because we needed it. At the end of the first night of viewing, when only a few people were left, I made everyone leave the room so I could talk to him. I held his hand and kissed his forehead.
I've been putting off commenting because it's been a while since I've read Looking for Alaska, but when I read it, I did so on my nook, because I discovered it makes it a lot easier for me while doing day to day stuff.
So I hit this part and to put it simply, I was on the treadmill and I cried.
Yep. Perfect timing. I was at the gym and trying desperately not to sob because this just seriously hit me like a blow to the chest.
I spoiled myself by looking the book up on TVTropes because I wanted to see what the event was. When I found out… I wasn't surprised? I mean you said this book was being taught in some schools. If there's anything I know about the books they make you read in school, it's that they are always horribly tragic. Always. There's a reason for the 'Death by Newbery Medal' trope. I'm not sure why they make children read terribly sad books and hardly any happy ones, but there it is. :/
Ugh… this was heavy.
With the end of the 'the last day' chapter, I was really dreading that that was it.
I'm quite talented in trying to deny things in fiction, wanting them to not unfold…
The whole part where the scene in the gym unfolds, I spent with eyes wide open, hands over my mouth, innerly muttering "nonononononoooo!"
The scenes of grief depicted are really, really gripping… how intense and how different people react to loss…
For tonight, I am destroyed.