And if Legrandin had looked back at us with that air of astonishment, it was because to him, as to the other people who passed us then, in the cab in which my grandmother was apparently sitting on the back seat, she had seemed to be foundering, slithering into the abyss, clinging desperately to the cushions which could scarcely hold back the headlong plunge of her body, her hair dishevelled, her eyes wild, no longer capable of facing the assault of the images which their pupils no longer had the strength to bear. She had appeared, although I was beside her, to be plunged in that unknown world in the heart of which she had already received the blows of which she bore the marks when I had looked up at her in the Champs-Elysees, her hat, her face, her coat deranged by the hand of the invisible angel with whom she had wrestled.
I have thought, since, that this moment of her stroke cannot have altogether surprised my grandmother, that indeed she had perhaps foreseen it a long time back, had lived in expectation of it. She had not known, naturally, when this fatal moment would come, had never been certain, any more than those lovers whom a similar doubt leads alternately to found unreasonable hope and unjustified suspicions on the fidelity of their mistresses. But it is rare for these graves illnesses, such as that which now at last had struck her full in the face, not to take up residence in a sick person a long time before killing him, during which period they hasten, like a "sociable" neighbour or tenant, to make themselves known to him. A terrible acquaintance, not so much for the sufferings that it causes as for the strange novelty of the terminal restrictions which it imposes upon life. We see ourselves dying, in these cases, not at the actual moment of death but months, sometimes years before, when death has hideously come to dwell in us. We make the acquaintance of the Stranger whom we hear coming and going in our brain. True, we do not know him by sight, but from the sounds we hear him regularly make we can form an idea of his habits. Is he a malefactor? One morning, we can no longer hear him. He has gone. Ah! if only it were for ever! In the evening has has returned. What are his plans? The consultant, put to the question, like an adored mistress, replies with avowals that one day are believed, another day questioned. Or rather it is not the mistress's role but that of interrogated servants that the doctors plays. They are not only third parties. The person whom we press for an answer, whom we suspect of being about to play us false, is Life itself, and although we feel her to be no longer the same, we believe in her still, or at least remained undecided until the day on which she finally abandons us.
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 326-327
As I've discussed doubtlessly all too often, a few years ago I had the chance to move to Hong Kong. The job offer at the university was really amazing, but mainly I was considering it because I was very much in love with a lovely young British woman and was prepared to toss away my career here at Champlain to follow a new path with her. Not surprisingly all of my friends jumped in with their thoughts on the decision I had to make. Many said I definitely had to take the position. My excellent friend Steve Wehmeyer, knowing that I would appreciate the baseball reference, told me that I had to say yes because, to quote him, "dude, you just got called up to the Show." Others told me not to go because I have an amazing life here in Vermont (which is definitely true). My best friend, who I will not identify here to protect the innocent, advised, "Follow the job because in the end women will never do what they say." While I'm not as cynical as my friend, in the end he was proven correct because the said lovely young British woman broke things off. In fact, in the last five years I've dated exactly two women, both of whom I fell in love with and asked to marry me, both of whom said yes, and then both of whom changed their mind. The woman I'm with now has come up with lots of reasons why we can't get married, but in the end she just doesn't want to, and it's because she doesn't love me enough to follow through. Hey, life goes on. In every relationship one person always loves the other more, just as in every relationship one side always leaves first (even if it is only to die). Why am I bringing this all up? For some reason this passage dredged up all these memories and all these emotions. In the end these two relationships are a microcosm of the bigger macrocosm: life also makes many promises, but very seldom follows through.
We desperately pursue a lover, just as we pursue life itself. We may have the lover we desperately wanted, but there is always someone else flirting with us. Even if we have the life we desperately wanted, there is always another life flirting with us; and when we have life itself, eventually death begins to flirt with us. We've talked about our tendency to personify death, and Proust is doing it beautifully here by equating it with a potentially unfaithful mistress. He shares with us that his grandmother had to know that she was dying, that "She had not known, naturally, when this fatal moment would come, had never been certain, any more than those lovers whom a similar doubt leads alternately to found unreasonable hope and unjustified suspicions on the fidelity of their mistresses." I keep hearkening back to Sherwood Anderson's story "Death" from Winesburg, Ohio. At the end his mother was drawn to her only two lovers, Death and Dr. Reefy. For the age she was a very experienced woman, so why had she only have two lovers? I would argue that Death and Dr. Reefy were her only true lovers because they were the only ones who had never let her down. Elizabeth never actually had sex with Dr. Reefy, so their love was not contaminated, and Death was her most faithful, devoted lover who waited patiently for her. To me Proust is hinting at the same thing when we suggests, "The person whom we press for an answer, whom we suspect of being about to play us false, is Life itself, and although we feel her to be no longer the same, we believe in her still, or at least remained undecided until the day on which she finally abandons us."
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