A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye
A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye
There was a flash of lightning, and the room lit up as if a camera had taken Laney’s picture. Only she wasn’t smiling. Laney stared at the bottom bunk. It was still neatly made and clean. There was no sand in the sheets like in Laney’s bed. There was no little girl like in Laney’s bed.
As she counted, 'One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand', Laney grabbed Ellie and slid out of her bed to the floor. Then into the empty bed below. She had always crawled into Jenny’s bunk when it stormed and Jenny had never minded. Barely waking, she would scoot over, closer to the wall, to make room for Laney. She never teased Laney about being afraid, either. She’d move over and fall back to sleep. Her breath was warm and soothing on Laney’s neck. Laney would fall back to sleep too.
Even though Jenny was only seven, Laney couldn’t remember Jenny ever being afraid of anything. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, like Laney used to be. She wasn’t afraid of spiders or snakes or ghost stories. And she wasn’t afraid of thunder.
Jenny’s bunk comforted Laney. She squeezed Ellie tight as a soft wave of air like Jenny’s breath tickled the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and imagined being brave. If Laney were brave she’d make it to the diving stand and jump off. And maybe if she were really brave she could talk about Jenny. Laney realized she didn’t want to talk to everyone about Jenny, but she did want to talk to her mom. Laney wanted to talk about how she felt responsible for Jenny’s death. Maybe her mother would forgive her. Then maybe the family could talk about Jenny and remember her, or they could say her name without looking at one another with sadness and longing for the way it used to be. Maybe they would feel better. Instead, they confirmed Laney’s guilt with their silence.
Elaine Saunders, Laney, is 10-years-old and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. Laney’s little sister Jenny died 10 months earlier after being hit by a car. Unfortunately Jenny was crossing the street to keep up with Laney at the time, leaving young Laney with feelings of tremendous guilt and responsibility. Since the accident, Laney’s mother has also retreated into her own sadness and depression, unwilling to speak of the tragedy and rendering herself unreachable to her remaining three children.
Laney, her parents, her 13-year-old brother John and her 15-year-old sister Kate spend each summer at the family cottage on the shores of the Northumberland Strait, not too far from their hometown of Truro, Nova Scotia, and the summer following Jenny’s death is no different. While Laney usually loves summers at the cottage, Jenny’s absence, Kate’s new maturity and abrasive attitude, and their mother’s consuming grief leave Laney struggling mentally and emotionally. When Laney meets Heidi, a new girl visiting from Ontario, she flip-flops between wanting to make friends and have fun and wanting to hide and wallow in her grief and guilt. Laney is also confused as to why David Simpson, a regular “summer friend”, has become an angry bully. Then there is Miss Lucy, the “crazy lady” who lives up on the hill and keeps to herself, the lady whom David has warned everyone to stay away from. As the story evolves over the two month summer break, Laney befriends Miss Lucy after discovering that she is also grieving due to the loss of her son by drowning years before. Laney helps Miss Lucy when she has a medical emergency and shows Miss Lucy how to enjoy the beach again. Laney also comes to understand that David’s odd behaviour is his way of dealing with his father’s sudden departure from their family. Miss Lucy and Heidi help Laney to overcome her fears and win the community hide-and-seek game, participate in the haunted storytelling, and finally dive for the first time from the cottage diving stand – all indications of the growth she experiences over the summer as she deals with the loss of her little sister and the resulting changing dynamics in her family.
Melanie Mosher’s A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye is obviously a very personal work. The author included a “Dear Reader” letter in the front of the book explaining that the story has been in the works for years following the death of her own sister in 1976 when Mosher was just10-years-old. Told in the third person, A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye opens and closes with a diary entry from Laney to her dead sister. There are seven diary entries throughout the story as Laney writes to Jenny to work through her grief. Laney also mentally counts random items to calm herself and restore some sense of order to her chaotic world.
Grief, loss, mental health and family are all touched on in this simple story providing a starting point for conversations around these complex and emotional topics. The absence of technology, video games, phones and texting is noticeable and somewhat problematic as technology is such a large part of daily life in the 21st century, even in cottage country. This omission is explained away early on in the story when Kate complains that “We don’t have internet here or even good cell service.” And while Laney is a well-developed character with authentic feelings and responses to complex issues, her siblings, parents and friends could have benefitted from more character development. What isn’t missing in A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye is the spot-on description of a summer on the north shore of Nova Scotia. The red sand, hunts for sea glass and periwinkle shells, cartwheels on the grass and watermelon slices on a hot day, evoke all of the senses and will leave readers with a bittersweet yearning for summer on the ocean with childhood friends.
Cate Carlyle is a former elementary teacher currently residing in Prospect, Nova Scotia, where she is an author and a librarian.