The Life of Margaret Laurence

by James King

  A week later, on August 21, she reflected again about her career, of what the future held for her, of her reputation as a refugee from the writing life: “I do not think I will write another novel—in fact, I know I won’t. I did my books when I was given them to do, & 7 of the 14 turned out to be books of adult fiction … I wish many people could understand this. Well, they don’t & won’t. I guess I seem some kind of strange person because I have not published an adult novel for 12 years. And won’t & can’t. Lord, don’t they know how anguished that has been for me? No. Why should they?”

  The next entry is dated “August 30—Saturday St Joseph’s Hospital Peterborough” and begins abruptly: “A lifetime has happened since last I wrote in this Journal, just over a week ago. So much, indeed, that I don’t know how I can put it all down. I can’t put it all down, of course.… So much condensation will be necessary that I feel totally daunted because what I can write here will be so very little of what I have experienced & learned … All this sensible kind of approach is garbage, actually. I am very frightened of dying quite soon, but I just can’t give way to panic. I don’t dare, or I really am finished.”

  The “lifetime” began on the morning of August 22 when Margaret was waiting for Joan to pick her up so they could go to their haidresser. Suddenly, she could not breathe and phoned her doctor, who summoned an ambulance. When Joan arrived at 8 Regent Street, an ambulance was just about to drive off with Margaret; the doctor explained the nature of the emergency. Joan followed the ambulance to St. Joseph’s and remained with Margaret as she was admitted to Emergency and then Intensive Care. The first procedure was to drain her lungs, then to discover why they had filled up so quickly and dangerously.

  Not unexpectedly, Margaret’s novelist’s eyes could not shut down, even though she was in the midst of acute anxiety as to her future:

  One thing … has given me so much reassurance. I wrote The Stone Angel in the first draft in 1961. Twenty-five years ago … I drew on some experience in hospital then, when I had my gall-bladder out, & there was indeed a very old woman (not Hagar) in the 4-bed ward where I was. Now so many years later, here in this hospital, with a great many very old & senile & semi-senile women, oh God, I know I did get it right. Amazing, I was 35 then, in hospital, & now I’m 60, & much closer to the really old people than I could ever have been then.

  On August 31, Margaret wrote to Mona: “I have been in hospital a week, after a terrible attack on the 22nd—couldn’t breathe. Thought it was heart, but it wasn’t. Heart okay. They pumped about a quart of fluid out of my chest cavity. X-rays show nothing, but have to have more tests, biopsy, bronchoscopy, etc. It is pretty certain, they think, that I have lung cancer.” “Pretty certain” became certain eight days later: “I am still in hospital but hope to be home sometime this week. Have had every test and x-ray known to man, some boring and some painful. Turns out I have cancer of kidney and lung, too advanced for treatment other than palliative. Prognosis is 6 months.” Despite the crisis facing her, she had no doubt about what she was going to do with the time left to her: “I am DETERMINED to get first draft of these memoirs typed into 2nd draft, and will also use tape recorder, as I can read and dictate, even with editing, more quickly than I can type.” She added: “Odd that I should have the same illness and in same places as my brother. Weird. But I am so lucky that my kids are grown and that I have lived to do my lifework. No regrets.” Her diagnosis having been confirmed and having determined treatment would be useless, she was released from hospital on September 9.

  Joan Johnston typed the second draft of the typescript, incorporating corrections made on tape by Margaret. This typescript, begun on August 29 while Margaret was still in hospital, was completed on October 7. The third draft—made from her corrections dictated on to tape—was finished and typed by October 20.

  Despite the rapid progress on revising the book, Margaret, who called herself a “dame demented,” was deeply discouraged. That November, she asked Adele: “Please forgive me for the fairly miserable trip I put on you last evening, talking about my memoirs. It is just that I fluctuate in my feelings towards the manuscript. Sometimes I do feel it should be published, with much editing, and sometimes I feel the hell with it … it shouldn’t be published. Mostly I feel that it should be, but also that I really should be able to do more editing, and more importantly, more adding of anecdotes, myself, and I just do not think I can.… This ‘passage’ (my situation now) is a numbing experience, like writing, I guess … one realizes that some things cannot be done by an act of will. Naturally, we have always known this, but it comes home more clearly to me right now. I was able to get to the third draft of those memoirs; I don’t feel like continuing. If I felt okay, I would look forward to about a year of re-writing, editing, adding … it actually would be pleasurable. But I don’t feel like entering the manuscript again.” When the second typed draft was completed, she placed the six huge notebooks in which she had written Dance on the Earth in the garbage. Adele objected but Margaret silenced her: “This isn’t New York, & I’m not Norman Mailer. Nobody sifts through the green garbage bags in Lakefield!”

  To the journal, Margaret confided her saddest feelings. On September 20, she made this entry: “5 p.m. I have spent 2 hours in bed, not sleeping, as I had hoped, but crying. I guess I am pretty sorry for myself.” Three days later: “I feel so nauseated & can’t stop shaking all over. I am so frightened. If I go back to hospital I will never get out alive.” Five days after that, she made a resolve: “I would rather let go now, then go on to be one of those old old ladies in the hospital. I don’t want to be Hagar.”

  “What,” she asked herself, “shall I do if I keep on dying?” Everyone told her how sorry they were. “Frankly, I’m a bit sorry for myself.” Her thoughts turned back to her “little mother’s death” and to the fact she had “looked at death” since she was four. She was filled with self-recrimination:

  I really am an aberration. I was always a lonely child—(boo hoo—poor me) but I see suddenly that I am very strange & odd. How can one live for 60 years & feel fairly normal when one isn’t?

  I wrote books & I did raise my kids. But mostly what I did was write books. Why? I no longer know. I always thought I had to do that—it was important. Why was it important?

  Most people believe it is important to love people, to have a mate.

  I believed it was important to love people, raise my beloved children, & write books.

  So here I am, at 60, dying. No mate for many years. Perhaps I was wrong.… I no longer know why I made the choice I did.… Are books worth it? I thought so. Now I do not know.——This last one, into which I have poured faith & energy seems now to be worth little. I don’t know why I prayed & prayed, unconscionably, for a few more days, to complete a book that isn’t worth anything.

  On other days, she could summon up the reservoirs of self-esteem which were in her: “I am not a fatalist. But I know in my own heart, what I know. And what I know is nor terrible.”

  Heartbroken by her brother’s death on October 15, she prayed: “Please, God, help me, for I am in great distress.” Three days later, she wrote: “I am just destroyed right now thinking of Bob. I can’t stop crying, but must. I keep thinking of the hymn that Tommy Douglas requested for his funeral—the hymn that so long ago the Welsh coal-miners sang while they marched up Whitehall in 1929, to no avail: ‘Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah.’ I have to quit crying, & wash the dishes, I have to.”

  To friends, she showed her brave, resolute side. “I’m fine”—she said to those who inquired of her health not having heard the news of the cancer—“except I’m going to be dead soon.” She was also deeply considerate of the feelings of those she was leaving behind. At the time Margaret was first diagnosed with cancer, Mary Adachi was in England, staying with a friend who worked at Canada House. In consultation with Ken, Margaret decided not to break the news to Mary until she returned: Margaret did not wish to “spoil” her friend’s holiday. It “would serve no
purpose” to distress someone thousands of miles away. At about the same time, Margaret wrote to Canada House where she was scheduled to give a reading the following May to mark the publication of the Virago editions of her books. In that letter, she bluntly stated that she had only six months to live and was therefore cancelling the engagement. Of course, Margaret had not considered Mary’s connection to Canada House—and the fact that she might inadvertently hear the terrible news. When a distraught Mary telephoned, an equally distraught Margaret exclaimed: “Oh, kid, you weren’t supposed to find out!”

  Soon after Margaret called Lois Wilson to plan her funeral service. On the phone, Lois could hear the defiant and radiant Christianity of Margaret’s last years but at the edge of the voice she could discern the deep sadness than engulfed her friend. Since Jocelyn was to marry Gary Michael Dault the following month, Margaret quipped: “My daughter is planning her wedding, & I am planning my funeral.” Anticipation of the wedding provided Margaret with a much needed distraction—and filled her with a wonderful expectation: Jocelyn confided to her mother that she very much wanted to have a child.

  Just after the phone call to Lois on October 23, Margaret made this entry:

  I do not know how many pills (taken perhaps with a lot of booze) would be enough to send me off forever. I have given much thought to this subject. A. I am very frightened of a lot of physical pain. B. I do NOT want my kids subjected to what Bob & I were, when our Mum was dying. C. If this goes on & on for months, [would try patience of friends] D. Once in hospital, forget it—one has no control over what will happen. E. I don’t fear the Holy Spirit’s wrath.… I fought the battle of the pills, but not, I am sure, for the last time! I may yield, [doesn’t want to the before Jocelyn’s wedding] Okay, God, we’ll hang on for another month, eh?

  Without doubt, there was a portion of Margaret Laurence that was pulled in the direction of death, the cancer making her poignantly aware of a wish for her life to be over. This is the real core issue behind the fear of being a nuisance: you can only be such if you feel you have nothing to offer in return for the care being provided. In a sense, she felt she had finished her life’s work and had no reason to continue living. In such moments, she got in touch with her often exceedingly low self-image.

  Adele Wiseman, Mary Adachi, Alice Williams, Jean Cole, Budge Wilson and Arlene Lampert visited on a regular basis, providing much appreciated help and support. These women pulled together, providing a strong bulwark against the fraught feelings that invaded their friend and her house. Joan Johnston was in constant attendance as was Jocelyn. David and his wife, Soña Holman, moved from San Francisco to Lake-field, where they occupied the apartment at the back of the house; they undertook the lion’s share of the caretaking. In the midst of all this support, Margaret became bitterly angry at one friend—whose career she had helped advance—who treated her impending death as a sort of insult since it reminded her of her own mortality.

  Margaret dreamed of Jocelyn and David as young children, of Marg, of herself and Jack when they were first in love “& taking off for yet another adventure.” She remembered how the children had embarrassed her at the Old Winter Palace in Luxor by making the wine glasses sing; she recalled her engagement ring, which had once been Verna’s. Gradually, Margaret felt herself withdrawing from life, as if she had already entered a “different space”; this “strange sort of distancing” allowed her not to feel quite so badly about not being able to work further on Dance on the Earth. However, she did not like the uncertainty about her future: “Ambiguity is everywhere. I have always loved that ambiguity in relationship to language. It’s not quite so loveable in relationship to my own life, at least not to me.” She told herself: “I think I will be unable truly to accept my death until the last moment.”

  She was dismayed when she visited the doctor on November 26: “From all reports, it appears as though I may go for months & months & months. The cancer is building slowly, unlike what the doctors first thought. It may drag out for another year. I just can’t.… I have explained to my dearest ones, that if I decide to take that final step it is or will be only because I need it for myself, not because I am fearful of being inconvenient.” This fear began to dominate her. She worried that she had become a particularly heavy burden for David and Soña. She did not so much explain as hint that she might commit suicide.

  Margaret was able to attend only Jocelyn’s wedding ceremony, not the reception. In her journal, she expresses her delight in seeing Jack and Esther and mentions Soña drove her back to Lakefield immediately after the ceremony. These comments do not express the full range of feelings that were aroused. While milling about immediately after the ceremony, Margaret heard Jocelyn introduce Esther to someone as “my stepmother.” On the grounds that Esther had never been any kind of mother to Jocelyn, Margaret took great offence, although she said nothing to Jocelyn. In an awful moment, she must have been brought back face to face with how central the loss of her husband had been to her. She felt humiliated, hurt and deeply alone. In many ways, she remained genuinely fond of Jack.

  Shortly afterwards, Soña drove her mother-in-law back to the Adachis, where she had stayed the previous night. There, Margaret proceeded to become blindly drunk, giving full vent to her fury, a fury (directed mainly against Jack) which finds no expression in the journal since she realized it might become some day a public document.

  What right did Esther have to the title of “stepmother”?: she had not reared Jocelyn and David. This was the gist of Margaret’s complaint in response to her daughter’s remark. She was dying and would, she realized, no longer be any kind of mother to Jocelyn. So unsure was she that she had indeed been a good parent, she was deeply wounded by a casual remark, almost as if she were on the lookout for an insult. Once again, her insecurities were triggered in an exceedingly painful way. Soña drove her back to Lakefield the following day.

  On December 2, she reiterated to herself: “But I know I am on my last voyage, & if I cannot in myself bear all the storms of the humiliated & painful flesh I do not think the Holy Spirit will be anything except accepting.… If & when I make that decision, it will be mine & mine only, & no one else will know or be ‘culpable’ of even supporting. It will if it happens be between myself & God.”

  The decision to commit suicide became more real to Margaret when, on her way from her house to David and Soña’s apartment on December 7, she slipped on some black ice and fractured her leg in two places. She returned to hospital for five days. For weeks, she had been certain she had planned for every eventuality, but now she was stymied. On December 12, the day before she returned home from hospital, she attempted to map her strategy:

  I should be feeling glad about going home tomorrow, & in a way I am. But this evening I feel very depressed. Once at home, I have to try to build up a supply of pills without appearing to do so, while recognizing that with this damn leg I am going to need to take more painkillers than I did before this accident. I not only can’t talk about this to anyone—I have to try to make sure that no one suspects I have even contemplated self-deliverance. Timing, also, is all. I would have to be alone for two days…

  It would seem churlish in the extreme [to commit suicide so soon after returning from hospital] … I wish You would just make this decision soon—I am ready for it.

  One always hears or reads that someone has “died peacefully”. How can anyone except that person really know?

  This is an impossible situation. There is no way it can be worked out. There is no reason that I can see to drain & strain my children’s and my friends’ strength & lives, in order to maintain for me a “life”…. My “life” revolves around a worn-out undependable body that is only a burden to me & others.… Sure I could have done much more with my life, but I have tried to do what was given me to do.

  God, please help me to relinquish my personal self in relinquishing my body which has been my dwelling place & is now crumbling.

  The prospect of death terrified her,
but she simply could not bear to subject herself to further humiliation. She had a huge twelve-pound cast from toes to thigh and, thus was no longer able to walk upstairs. Her living room became her bedroom. She slept in a hospital bed and had to use a walker to get around. However decrepit she felt, she knew she was not really like Hagar: “I have been able to give and receive love all my life.” And yet she was not willing to go on with life at the price of pain, humiliation and complete self-abnegation. She felt powerless in the wake of the ravages that had overtaken her body and which were making it difficult for her to make any kind of rational decision. If she waited too long, she might be simply too weak to kill herself. At another level, she wanted time to finally have a stop.