Reynolds Price - A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing

A WHOLE NEW LIFE

BOOKS BY REYNOLDS PRICE

LETTER TO A MAN IN THE FIRE 1999

LEARNING A TRADE 1999

ROXANNA SLADE 1998

THE COLLECTED POEMS 1997

THREE GOSPELS 1996

THE PROMISE OF REST 1995

A WHOLE NEW LIFE 1994

THE COLLECTED STORIES 1993

FULL MOON 1993

BLUE CALHOUN 1992

THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE 1991

NEW MUSIC 1990

THE USE OF FIRE 1990

THE TONGUES OF ANGELS 1990

CLEAR PICTURES 1989

GOOD HEARTS 1988

A COMMON ROOM 1987

THE LAWS OF ICE 1986

KATE VAIDEN 1986

PRIVATE CONTENTMENT 1984

MUSTIAN 1983

VITAL PROVISIONS 1982

THE SOURCE OF LIGHT 1981

A PALPABLE GOD 1978

EARLY DARK 1977

THE SURFACE OF EARTH 1975

THINGS THEMSELVES 1972

PERMANENT ERRORS 1970

LOVE AND WORK 1968

A GENEROUS MAN 1966

THE NAMES AND FACES OF HEROES 1963

A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE 1962

SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994 by Reynolds Price

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Scribner Classics edition 2000

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

Manufactured in the United States of America

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:

Price, Reynolds, 1933-.

A whole new life / Reynolds Price.

p. cm.

1. Price, Reynolds, 1933-Health. 2. Novelists, American20th centuryBiography. I. Title.

PS3566.R54Z477 1994

813.54dc20 93-35967

[B] CIP

ISBN 0-684-87255-2

ISBN 9780-6-8487-25-5-1

ISBN 9781-4-3910-77-5-1

FOR WILL PRICE, MY BROTHER AND ALLAN FRIEDMAN AND DANIEL VOLL

THIS is a book about a mid-life collision with cancer and paralysis, a collision Ive survived for ten years and counting. It means to be an accurate and readable account of a frightening painful time that ended; but while I know that any account of human realities will travel best in the form of a story, a compelling story is not my first aim. That aim is to give, in the midst of an honest narrative, a true record of the visible and invisible ways in which one fairly normal creature entered a trial, not of his choosing, and emerged after a long four years on a new lifea life thats almost wholly changed from the old. The record is offered first to others in physical or psychic trials of their own, to their families and other helpers and then to the curious reader who waits for his or her own devastation.

Not that I think I have special wisdom or that all my experience may prove useful for others in similar trouble; I assuredly dont. At best Im a companionable voice thats lasted beyond all rational expectation. My ongoing life then may be a fact that others can lean on in their own ways, however briefly. In my worst times Id have given a lot to hear from veterans of the kind of ordeal I was trapped in.

Ive also worked to show not only the weight of the ordeal but the luck I found right through itin friends and kin, in medical care (though with daunting exceptions), in my two kinds of work and in the now appalling, now astonishing grace of God. The human care at least was so steady that I understand how numerous others in worse straits may read this as the story of an insulated man in a skirmish.

But with all the gifts of luck and help that came down on me, the skirmish felt like total war. It does today, these years down the line. The bigger assaults of fear and pain, in whatever life they crash against, are indiscriminately strong. Only one creature bears the brunt; and the brunt slams down with no regard to the quality of the roof overhead, the cooking thats served or the presence of love or solitude. All the care and cash on Earth, however welcome, are a flimsy shield when the prospect of agonized death leans in.

My resources in writing this memoir were personal recall, questions to friends who witnessed the time, the regular calendar I kept and the poems, plays and fiction I wrote through the years in question. I also benefited from keen-eyed readings of the manuscript by my friends Erik Benson, Jared Burden, Alec Wilkinson and Daniel Voll. At no point did I ask to see my voluminous medical charts or ask any doctor to check my version. From the start of the trouble, I made a conscious choice not to open my file and confront what doctors believed was the worstI saw in their eyes that they had slim hope, and I knew I must defy them. On balance I think the choice of a high degree of ignorance proved good for me. All my life Ive tended to try to meet peoples hopes. Predict my death and Im liable to oblige; keep me ignorant and I stand a chance of lasting.

Short of searching my medical record then, what I still know is how I felt and acted at the time and what I got in the way of help or bafflement from doctors and friends. Ive likewise tried to make clear what a difficult patient and friend I was through much of the time. The dedication is offered to those three friends, from an unexpected plenty, who helped most and longest.

In any personal record that covers ten years, errors of fact and belief are inevitable. Ive worked to hold them to a faithful minimum. Conversations are reported to the best of my recollection; I tape-recorded no one. The actual names of helpful people are given; others are identified by letters of the alphabet, roles or jobs, and Ive been ruthless where I thought that was fair. When doctors and others who commit themselves to a life in medicine fail to respond to their patients as their own equals in need and feeling, then theyre launched on a course whose destination is bleak to considerthe human being as laboratory animal. While the sight of illness elicits the best from many people, the always astounding fact remains that the sight of sustained illness heightens the blundering cruelty of some. But since the giving of thanks in many quarters is another big aim here, I ask for pardon from any quarters where Ive been unjust.

Pardon too if at times I seem to award myself small medals for deportment. Any survivor of a long ordeal will know that no one makes it on pure good luck or the backs of others; and in the glare of that knowledge, either some degree of self-confidence grows or the mind disintegrates rapidly. Concealing that awareness would only be a form of deceit. I well understand that all ground won is won for the moment, and I trust its clear that my confidence is shaky.

R.P., 1994

SO FAR it had been the best year of my life. In love and friendship I was lavishly endowed. Id recently published a new play my twelfth book in the twenty- two years since my first, A Long and Happy Life. Theyd all been received more generously than not by the nations book journalists and buyers. Id been steadily rewarded with understanding readers of many kinds; and Id earned a sizable income from a brand of work that was mostly deep pleasure in the doing. For twenty-six years Id also taught English literature and narrative writing at Duke University. The annual one semesters work with good students was not a financial necessity for me but a test of sanity against the touchstone of merciless young minds. Id lived for nearly two decades, alone by choice, in an ample house by a pond and woods that teemed with wildlife; and in February Id turned fifty- one, apparently hale.