When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry is a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as a pair of estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Since Jan died, I have been sharing her love and not looking for her, so this novel attracted me as it was a counter-narrative. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something more significant?
We Are the Boat in Troubled Waters!
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 21 secondsReading When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry; I was challenged to think about my grief journey and my ongoing mensh-in-training work.
There are more days than I am willing to admit when I had no hope.
Losing Jan unmoored me, and I have, at times, drifted aimlessly.
Hope is the cornerstone of life and the key to being self-reliant.
Ms. Quan‘s narrator, the young monk Chuluun, says early in the novel,
When the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, I will be the boat.
Many, especially Rabbi Renee, has been the boat for me.
When I did not know what to do or how to remember Jan, my Rabbi and other friends helped me traverse the troubled waters.
At the end of the book, Chuluun is making his final vows and says,
When the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, we will be the boat.
Can I be a boat for others? Am I the boat for my grief groups?
These questions cannot be answered today as I continue my mensh-in-training studies.
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