A Bridge for Passing - Pearl S Buck

Many times when reading older books (this one was published in 1961) the dated references make the story unreadable.  Not this one.  Buck wrote this memoir after the death of her second husband.  It's not stated, as it would be today, but it appears that he died of dementia, so she had lived through his decline and his death was expected.  At the time, she was in Japan working with the film crew for her first book, The Big Wave, about a tidal wave hitting a small fishing village in Japan.

In a gentle, soft voice she describes her feelings of grief, loss, and loneliness. She does not mention him by name only refers to him, wondering if he sees and hears her, missing his companionship.  So different from the direct, raw words that would be used in these times.

Some tidbits of information from this story:

• Obama is a city in Japan, about 6 to 7 hours from Tokyo.
• Mother Hubbard's are a style of dress with high yoke and collar and loosely flowing to the floor, intended to cover as much of the body as possible
• Homecoming is a book by Jiro Osaragi

Having been raised and lived until her early 40's in China, she brought a unique perspective to the American public on Asia.  Her writing was particularly enlightening after the horrors of WWII left bad impressions of Japanese.  She shed light on Chinese culture as the communist era was rising.

Her second husband, Richard Walsh, was her editor who had founded the John Day publishing company.  She describes them as finishing each other's sentences and hurrying home from work to share their day.  I noted this description of how she dealt with her grief:

"A desperate weariness was creeping into my bones, the weariness of acceptance, the acceptance of the inescapable, the conviction of the unchangeable.  From now on I must never again expect to share the great moments of my life.  There would be such moments as long as I was alive, moments of beauty, moments of excitement an exhilaration; above all, moments of achievement.  In such moments he and I had turned to each other as instinctively as we breathed.  That was no more to be...It is not true that one never walks alone.  There is an eternity where one walks alone and we do not know its end."

Sadly, her loneliness led her to seek companionship later in her life when she took up with a man many years her junior who took advantage of her, resulting in an argument over her will which left everything to him.

I'm glad I read this and learned more of this popular, Nobel prize winning author.

Published: 1961  Read: August 2018  Genre: Memoir