“Grief... A Comedy” - AKA an Epic Love Story from Alison Larkin, Go Get It Now
One minute I am in bed reading Alison Larkin’s new book “Grief… A Comedy” and the next minute I am on my knees crying, “I can’t lose him, I only just found him.” A crowd of onlookers have gathered and they stand gawking at the unresponsive man, my man, the man who has just fallen to the concrete at my feet. Beside him I scream, “Call 911. Do something! Help me. I only just found him.”
Then, I wake and I find him, delightful at my bedside, a cup of coffee in his gentle hand. And my world sets itself right again. He is better than OK and so have I been lately since we met. I know straight away why I’ve had this terrible dream, it’s got everything to do with falling head over heels for this kindred soul and even more so to do with my fellow adoptee author Alison Larkin, and this “Grief a Comedy” book of hers. She hopes the book will encourage adoptees like me to really give love a chance, and the timing of her sending a copy my way couldn’t have been more perfect, or perhaps more predestined.
Alison and I are not just adoptees who spent the majority of our lives avoiding heartbreak and tolerating the wrong men we didn’t like that much, so that if they did leave us, it wouldn’t really matter. We are also both authors who have incorporated our loved ones into our narratives, who feel the presence of those who aren’t with us, who full-on converse with them. We note synchronicities and have prophetic dreams, and dare we say communicate with those beyond our earthly realm.
Alison doesn’t know any of this about me because we have never met, but since I have read both “Grief… A Comedy,” and her biographical novel “The English American,” I know all these things about her. I also know that we both found our first mothers and that these women both happened to share a poor sense of timing and little to no boundaries. That we both found our reunion experience “exhausting and overwhelming.”
But the most intriguing commonality to me is that at 55 we both seemed to have found that one illusive true-love connection that so often adoptees come to believe is just not written in the cards for us, you know with all the rejection and abandonment trauma showing up and jacking with our psyches. The only difference being that Alison’s book about finding her person just happened to find me the same month I was finding mine. Again in my humble opinion not a simple coincidence.
In “Grief… A Comedy,” Alison recounts how, after decades spent with Mr. Wrongs and/or Mr. Right Nows, she happened upon THE love of her life — an Indian expat named Bhima. She shares how she found Bhima and sadly how she lost him — too soon, waaaay too soon — and she explains how she managed to carry on after her fiance’s tragic and unexpected passing, and how he returned to her in spirit to help her write their love story and urge her to find love again.
She meets Bhima in 2019 and by the summer of 2020, she is SO in love. So in love that she decides she wants to do something to encourage her fellow adoptees to allow love in and so starts giving talks again for the first time in many years.
“I tell them I understand how terrifying it can be, for someone who has been abandoned to trust in love, but after 50 years, I’ve finally taken the leap, and I have never – ever – been so happy.
I tell them you don’t need to have a relationship with a dog or a human that you don’t realllly want because you think you won’t ever get what you want. I know some of the adoption experts love to say adopted people are doomed because we experienced this thing when we were babies, so we’ll never be able to trust anyone enough to truly love. But if I can do it, you can. I know it’s scary. But I promise you, if you take the step, you’ll get to travel through life without having to experience its gnawing abject loneliness. And the difference is unimaginable.”
Later she begins writing a one woman show about it all and then this very book. At one point early in her story Alison writes, “I want to find love. True love. The kind I have longed for all my life, but have not yet managed to find.”
And I sigh and nod, knowing this feeling too well. So many times I have watched couples, seemingly paired up perfectly, and wondered what it was about me that made that kind of love feel impossibly out of reach. And then, Alison writes, “I can’t believe I’ve met someone who I just flat out love to be with. So I do give him the time of day. And in time I give him my nights.”
She goes on:
“We can’t be in love,” I say.
“Why not?” Bhima says.
“There’s no friction. We don’t have to negotiate.”
“I know,” Bhima says. “Isn’t it great?”
And then.
“Instead of pulling away, I allow myself to come closer.”
And so do I.
Not only does Alison fall in love with Bhima, but through the most intimate and tender scenes between them, she allows her readers to fall in love with him as well.
You see in “Grief… A Comedy” Alison brings us along with her as she writes her beautiful true love story. And Bhima? He is in spirit right beside her, peering over her shoulder, asking questions, interjecting, prodding, poking, encouraging her throughout her creative process. He is there holding Alison up as she moves the wrenching pain in her heart through her fingers and onto the page, a path toward making sense of nonsensical loss, of processing the unthinkable, of somehow coming out the other side of unrelenting grief. Which I am happy to report she does with true adoptee-grade grace, grit, and resilience.
So this is why just days after a wonderful dream where my lover and I are swimming in the crystal blue waters of a remote seaside cove, I am now dreaming I am on my knees begging him not to die. I only just found him. The nightmare I’ve just woken from I know is all about having finished Alison’s book and realizing I too, after a divorce from Mr. Wrong and a seven-year relationship with Mr. Right Now, at 55, have finally taken that dive. A dive into depths I’ve never known, and this time, it feels so right and oh so easy.
All that said, I could write a book about this book, I love it so much. Not only is it a phenomenal love story, but it also includes an array of unforgettable and entertaining interactions with people ranging from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Chris Rock and Andrew Dice Clay. Beyond that Alison’s prose is swift and poetic, her wit sharp, and her story telling brilliant, delicate and chill-bump worthy. Take for example these striking excerpts:
“Here we both are in our 50s, fully in love for the first time in our lives with someone who gets us. And I know in my knower that this is a man I can trust with my life …”
“Out of Bhima‘s bedroom window, we watched the green leaves turn yellow, then red, then brilliant orange, then fall to the ground.”
“We will create a home together that people we love will want to come to whenever they wish; we will spend time with the people we love. We will connect more, not less.”
And then there are these.
On Reunion With Her First Mother“We will walk toward each other in slow motion and our souls and hearts will join. The life I’ve lived thus far, feeling separate and different, will be over in an instant. I will, at last, feel connected to my own kind. Our moment of meeting will mark the end of insecurity and mistrust and the birth of an angst free life.” And then “Did meeting my birth mother instantly solve my problems in the love department? In a word: No.”
On Motherhood - “Unlike the mother who raised me, I got to grow my own baby. Unlike the mother who gave birth to me, I got to keep it.”
On Adoption Trauma - “Now I know that from the moment of your birth, you learned that love and connection would result in loss. That explains a lot,” said Bhima.
On Nature vs Nurture - “The only thing you inherit from your birth parents is your DNA. Your sense of right and wrong comes from your environment and from you.”
Alison has taken an incredibly painful event in her life and created an inspiring and beautiful story. Though tempted to dive into so many aspects of this narrative, I will not even chance giving away a bit too much about this beautiful book. I cried, I laughed, I sighed. I especially loved how Alison put it all out there, from talking to her always charming dead fiance, to chronicling the psychic moments and synchronicities that came both before and after Bhima’s passing.
Having finished her book, I texted her on Facebook and told her that at 55, I thought maybe I’d just found my Bhima. “It’s so easy,” I wrote, attaching a picture of me and my special person. I too can’t believe “I’ve met someone who I just flat out love to be with.” She wrote me back noting that Bhima often wore a similar orange shirt as my person wore in the picture. I wrote back to her adding that just after I finished her book, my beau and I went to a French restaurant for dinner and we were met by an Indian waiter. That the restaurant was empty except for an Indian wedding party, and how odd I found that to be. Another small divine synchronicity.
Then a few weeks later, as I was rereading “Grief… A Comedy” preparing to write this piece, and just after reading the part about a night of star-gazing with Bhima, I opened my Facebook page to find an image of Bhima bent over his telescope and realized I was reading the part about his passing on the very anniversary of it. So, yes Alison I too believe. And I thank you and Bhima for this wonderful book. I believe in messages from spirit, and in psychic coinkydinks, and like you, I too believe in soulmates — even for love-wary adoptees like you and me.
