This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
An Intricate and Heartbreaking World
by M.J. Hammond
In George Saunder’s novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, the death of President Lincoln’s son, Willie, propels the reader into the world of the bardo – a place often misunderstood in the Christian lexicon as purgatory, but here more appropriately explained as the place our spirits reside between birth and karmic rebirth. Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist word, and Buddhists believe when someone dies, their soul is held for 49 days between death and rebirth, because a soul without a body in a transient state can better accept the law of truth, gain enlightenment and move on to the next life. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bardo
Saunders populates the bardo with a cast of characters from the civil war era as varied and different from each other as humans can possibly get. Intertwining personal and journalistic observations from that era, his artful and humane treatment of the stories of his characters, and there are many, many stories, leaves no doubt that death is the greatest equalizer, for as different as our life experience is from each other, in the bardo, we are all in the exact same place existing under the exact same transient condition.
The three main characters in the bardo come together when they befriend young Willie when he arrives after dying from Typhoid fever. We learn that children usually pass through the bardo quite quickly, so when Willie lingers, his existence becomes the focal point and catapult of the story arc for every character, especially the main three. They watch in surprise as President Lincoln repeatedly visits his grave, opens his coffin and holds Willie in his arms. Able to see this, the young boy cannot understand why the president can’t hear or touch him and, unable to communicate with the father he loved so much, his confusion and grief mount as steadily and powerfully as his father’s until father and son are bound to each other by the crushing sadness of a loss so profound neither can move past this desolate place of hopelessness, despair, and anger. They are frozen.
It is this inability to move forward past worry, guilt and obsession that tethers every one of Saunder’s characters to the bardo. A vise grip of fear and regret locks them in this transitory state, afraid of moving forward or moving through. Some spirits live in contentment, finding a pleasant but artificial solace in the familiar repetition of thoughts and feelings from their earthly lives. Others live in a tortured and depraved state, unable to see through the gates of their self-made prisons.
But redemption is not lost forever, for humans are a crafty bunch and although some may take longer than others, eventually the awakening of a true conscious awareness of what binds them – whether nagging regret, deep seated grief, perpetual worry, and or even in a few cases stubborn pride, moves each soul into the light to shed their semi-mortal skins. Some just get tired, others learn from their neighbors, husbands follow wives, friends follow friends but regardless of the reason or circumstance, every one of them has learned to love themselves again and to let go. Really let go.
Thank you, George Saunders, for creating this marvelously intricate and heartbreaking other world where I could feel love and compassion for the best and the worst of humanity. I am better for it.
This is MJ Hammond from Amarillo, TX.
