I’ve been thinking about rwrb and grief. How, although not the type of book people usually recommend when talking about stories that deal with grief, it’s one of the ones that stand out to me the most, because grief is not a huge element in the story, and at the same time, without it, there would be no book.
I’ve been thinking of how rwrb is a book drenched in grief. That’s a good way to describe it. It’s a story drenched in grief, that drips onto the floor and wets your fingers when you open it.
Casey wrote it while struggling with grief themselves, the loss of a parent, and they mention that they wrote the book at their lowest, how “I was trying to create hope for myself because my circumstances weren't giving me any.” *They emerged with a book that's "a very happy, joyful, hopeful book, but there are these threads of grief and wanting to protect your heart. They show up because that's where I was at when writing it.” They said (somewhere) that they wrote about how they wished they could be loved during their grief.
How, above everything else, it’s a story that exists because of grief, both in the real world AND inside the book. Everything happens because of Henry’s grief. Henry’s grief is the moving factor that starts the events of the books. Alex may have started crushing first, with the magazine, but it is Henry who started the later events when he tried to get rid of Alex in Rio. It’s Henry who turned their fake friendship into a real one after explaining why he behaved like that because of his grief (although not justifying his behavior) in the broom closet, therefore leading to Alex also explaining his insecurities. It’s Henry who went out to the White House gardens to look for Orion like his father taught him, leading to him kissing Alex. It’s Henry who brings Alex to the V&A, where his parents brought his siblings and him. It’s Henry who buys a brownstone in Brooklyn after making the shelters international with the money his dad left for him.
So many events of the book started indirectly by Arthur’s passing. If Arthur hadn’t died and Henry was perfectly polite when he met Alex at Rio, they might not have exchanged any other word. Sure, it’s a romance, something else would have happened that lead them together, call it fate, but they wouldn’t have fallen into the cake, and they wouldn’t have started a fake friendship, and they wouldn’t have become real friends, and Alex wouldn’t have found Henry in the garden at New Year’s.
I feel like during the whole book Arthur is haunting the narrative. People say that regarding characters and many times I don’t feel like that’s true, only in suspenseful and/or dramatic stories, with detectives researching a murder and the death of one character leading to all the horrible events that happened afterwards.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a story haunted by one specific character to the point the story would be completely different (even if the outcome perhaps similar), and it’s a lighthearted story, a romance, a healing journey. A character who died not from mysterious causes or great violence, but in the most unremarkable way, an illness, a character who was a completely grown adult with kids, but whose death changed everything, and not only did it affect the entire story, but it somehow turned into something that brought happiness.
I think that’s what gets me. The fact that if it wasn’t because of Arthur’s passing Henry might have never married Alex.
Grief is painful and lonely, horribly lonely, and Casey grabs it and explains it in it’s entirely, portrays the loneliness it brings, and from the vacant hole it left they say “actually, it’s gonna turn into something good. You’re going to find happiness regardless and they will be with you through every step, even if they’re not here”.
The thing that really baffles me is how much respect Alex has for Henry’s grief. As someone whose grief hasn’t been respected, the fact that Alex, who never went through anything similar (nor do I think he knows anyone who has), respects Henry’s grief so much is baffling. Alex, who listens when Henry talks about Arthur and doesn’t bring him up if Henry doesn’t do it first and who asks Bea to try to explain the feeling, to try to help Henry better.
Casey mentioned how “Grief is such a strange thing in that it alienates you from others by being so big that it’s unrelatable and untranslatable” and yeah, that's really, really true, but what gets me is than Alex tries. He asks Bea to try to explain, to translate the feeling to him in some way because even if he does not relate he still wants to get it to help Henry.
I also like how Alex doesn't immediately assume Henry being upset is related to his grief, he's like "damn, obviously" when he realizes Henry's upset that Arthur can't be there for him after the leak. It didn't occur to him. He doesn't give it a bigger role than Henry has showed him to have (Henry hasn't really talked about his grief much to Alex, so it makes complete sense that Alex doesn't jump to it), but he also treats it as completely valid, he doesn't question why, in a moment like that, that's what is on his mind. (“Bea looks up, her fingers stilling. "Oh, love," she says simply. "He misses Dad." Oh. He sighs, putting his head in his hands. Of course.”) What he does next is ask, what’s it like to live with a grief like that, and how can he help (“Can you explain?" he attempts lamely. "What that's like? What I can do?”).
Bea’s “bottom crust of the pie” explanation flew over my head for a long time. I had no idea what she actually meant. I think I get now, though. It happens when you’re young and haven’t felt anything similar, so it goes beyond everything you’ve ever felt, and when bad things happen during the rest of your life you just feel worse than you would do normally, because this horrible feeling is one you’re already familiar with and it’s easy to fall into (it’s hard to stop yourself from feeling catastrophically sad when you’ve felt catastrophically sad before you’ve ever felt regularly sad).
Alex saying he loves Henry on purpose, with his grief and every part of him. Alex describing Arthur’s death as “the worst thing”. The way Henry talks about him is a physical feat, drifting up in the corners with fondness but sagging in the middle under the weight. / “Anyway, her last year of uni, Dad died. It happened so... quickly. He just went.” / someone Alex has met in shadows that pass through the way Henry speaks and moves and laughs.
You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they're inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system. / the way his face went slack, the smell of his hands, the fever, the waiting and waiting and terrible waiting and the even worse not-waiting anymore,
Casey just… gets it. Really gets it.
I really like this part: Then, the prince's father, the knight, was struck down in battle. The lance tore open his armor and his body and left him bleeding in the dust. Resorting to fantasy/stories/etc to deal with grief, specially as a reader and writer like Henry, is so real. When my mother died, I read Lord of the Rings. You have no idea how much Frodo has helped me to understand her death and journey with cancer. It might be silly but it has done a lot. The way Henry writes his father’s death here, the level of detail (the torn armor, the blood in the dust) and imagery, it just makes sense. His father as a knight, struck down in battle, bleeding on the dust with his metal armor torn, sword in hand, defeated. My mother as a ring bearer, with a ring of corruption and evil on her neck slowly taking away from her until she’s barely there, getting rid of it and leaving to Valinor to find peace, the marks of the chain on her neck, the smell of the sea on the boat.
So many stories people recommend as “dealing with grief” are stories with main characters whose family member/best friends/partner/etc has passed away recently and they’re struggling with moving forward. Then, perhaps a love interest comes along who helps them “learn to live again”. I’ve seen this in so many romcoms in the internet. And it’s not bad, I have many romcoms with this trope on my tbr list, but it’s just the beginning.
Rwrb is a story where the grief is old. It’s not breaking Henry’s family apart, it already has. It does not feel all-encompassing and difficult to navigate, instead, it’s familiar, something Henry (and Bea) have known for years now, have turned around and looked into most of its crevices and have felt it already it. Something they have accepted and been dealing with for some time now. Henry can talk about his father to Alex with no problem, can go to kids’ cancer wards to try to cheer them up, Bea and him no longer have to resort to their bad coping mechanisms. Henry coped with casual sex because it felt good and he wanted to feel wanted and Bea coped with drugs because it numbed her and she didn’t have to think and feel, but they don’t do that anymore. They stopped, years ago.
The painful part of grief, the angry one, the one that’s hard to accept has already passed. This is the aftermath. Years after. When they learnt to live with it, finally, even if it still hurts sometimes. It broke down their family, but it’s not as in shambles as it was before, this is the aftermath, after it has been kind of rebuilt. Arthur died when Henry was 17. He’s 23 now. It still hurts but he has started and finished university. He has been dealing with it for years. It’s familiar. He doesn’t need anyone to come and “rescue him from drowning in it”, because he’s not drowning in it anymore. He learned how to swim, even if some days his arms begin aching.
Alex doesn’t save Henry from this grief. Alex doesn’t teach Henry to live again. He might be the reason Henry starts advocating for himself and many other things, but Alex doesn’t have any importance in Henry’s grief journey because most of it happened when Alex wasn’t there. Now, Alex is there, he sees it, sometimes, and he wants to help. He’s merely a spectator, he’s not truly involved in the way Pez (for example) probably was at the start, because this is not the start. It’s a familiar ache, a scar that’s kinda faded, a memory you mention that you can’t remember fully.
I really like how Casey managed to write a grief that is not new, one that is familiar and worn, one that doesn’t completely rule Henry’s (and Bea’s and Philip’s) life like it does with Catherine, but that is still treated with respect and given attention. Henry can live a life outside of his grief, can be happy and not completely suffocated by it like his mom, but he still misses his father and always will. It’s not downplayed nor is it given a bigger role than it has. It’s there, it’s a part of Henry, an important part, but not the whole of him, not something he has to fight against every day, not something that is always present. But Alex loves it anyway. On purpose.
