Joanne Limburg - Small Pieces: A Book of Lamentations

Also by Joanne Limburg

Femenismo

Paraphernalia

The Woman Who Thought Too Much

The Oxygen Man

Bookside Down

A Want of Kindness

The Autistic Alice

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2017 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Joanne Limburg, 2017

The moral right of Joanne Limburg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The Hurting

Words & Music by Roland Orzabal

Copyright 1983 Orzabal Roland Ltd.

Chrysalis Music Limited.

All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

By Ian Robins Dury and Charles Jeremy Jankel

Templemill Music Ltd (PRS)

All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders.

The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 230 2

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 231 9

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

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To my brother

Authors Note

To protect the privacy of those involved in my familys story, most names have been changed.

Contents

Sister

She will harrow this town, she will turn him up,

whole or in pieces. Being a sister,

she knows that brothers are born to trouble.

Her part is to rescue him,

lend him a heart to face his enemies,

or failing that, confound them herself

with withheld smiles, or with her sharp

big sisters tongue; and if she finds

them gone to ground, their damage done,

shell cut the losses for both of them

and seek him out, wherever hes lying,

broken and say, Brother, theres

no shame in one lost battle, or

in ten. Put the phial down

dont drink! And if it is too late

for that, shell scruff the man and stick

her fingers down his throat, or find

an antidote, or make her own,

or heave time back, or failing that,

and even failing that, shell take him home,

and never mind how small the pieces.

I dont take notes

I dont pack a notebook with me, I dont buy one at any of the airports, or in Plainsville. The notes I take are few, scribbled in the front of my address book. Here they are in total:

Diversity

choice

options

share

Please wait while we create a variety of entertainment choices for you.

Psalm #91

In the lab, they culture competent cells.

Ant & Dec

My brothers keeper.

Bluebird of happiness.

Wild turkey.

Buzzsaw cicadas.

deer

lizard

These were my reminders of the strongest impressions, the notes I could not refrain from making the signs of my writerly incontinence. They were a clear indication, even then, that I would break the vow I had made, not to write about any of this, because to write about this, to make creative or any other kind of capital out of it, would place me so beyond the pale that the only honourable course would be to kill myself in turn.

Rabbis

You need to understand that a great deal of time has passed since the fall of the Temple, so weve had to survive all these centuries without priests and without offerings. We have relied instead on rabbis and on printed words: rabbis are no closer to God than other Jews God is broiges with us, he wont speak directly any more but they have studied his old words in greater depth than the rest of us, and for this reason, if nothing else, we bring our questions to them. We have to bring them somewhere.

The worse the situation, the more urgent the question: when youre ill, when someone dies, when jobs are lost and marriages are breaking up, when the discontented among the nations remember that they hate us and start their persecution up again thats when you go looking for rabbis. Or if you dont, someone else will. After my brothers suicide, my mother and I arrived at his home in the Midwest to discover that an old school friend of his had found a rabbi right there in the middle of the plains and contacted him on our behalf. He wasnt the sort of rabbi we were used to seeing: like my brothers school friend, he was very Orthodox, and we were more accustomed to the Reform variety, but we were dazed, and very much in need, so of course we saw him.

He told us that my brother had a Jewish soul, and right now it was more at peace than it had ever been.

He didnt deserve what happened to him, he said. We say that when someone dies as he did, that its not their fault, because something has just taken them over. I want to reassure you: he is at peace.

What I find so hard, my mother said, one of the many things was that hed been cremated before we got here cremated with no funeral.

I know that must be very hard for you to think about but it makes no difference to how we see him or his death.

My mother was all tears. I looked at her, and remembered her crying some eighteen years before, when her Auntie Yetta was cremated at Golders Green. Not only was it forbidden but also and I think she was watching the smoke coming out of the chimney when she said this how could any Jew choose to be cremated, after everything thats happened? She didnt say that again this time. She only said that she would have prayers said for my brother when we got home, and the rabbi said that would be the right thing to do. Someone should say Kaddish for my brother, for his Jewish soul.

I saw my mothers tears but I did not feel for her I could not, for my own protection, and because I was concentrating on feeling for my brother. He was angry, I thought; he was an atheist, he had married out he would not appreciate having the existence of his soul confirmed, let alone its Jewishness.

I can see, the rabbi said, that you are both in your way good Jews.

And then I clenched my Jewish teeth

But five years later, when I had a question, it was that rabbi I chose to email:

Dear Rabbi __________,

I hope I have reached the right person. I think it was you who spoke to me and my mother after my brother, Julian Limburg, took his own life in Plainsville in 2008.

My mother certainly found your words very comforting. Sadly, she died herself two years ago. As the last member of my nuclear family of origin, it fell to me to arrange her burial, memorial stone and stone consecration. It was some comfort to be able to arrange things as she would have wanted them.

You might remember that my brother was a scientist, but Im a writer by profession, and writing is how I process my grief. With this in mind, I have been revisiting the conversation we had with you, and I remember your saying that from a Jewish point of view, my brother had done nothing wrong something had taken him over, you said but when I look up the subject of Judaism and suicide, I find that mostly, the line taken is much harsher.