ULISES TORRICELLI – LANGUAGE III

Us: David Nichols

We were dragged into the daylight for the funeral, a brief and tormenting affair – what stories could we tell, what
fond anecdotes about a personality so unformed? – and it occurred to me once again that grief is as much about
regret for what you’ve never had as sadness for what you’ve lost. (p. 264)

After a while I found it all too much. From an evolutionary point of view, most emotions – fear, desire, anger – serve
some practical purpose, but nostalgia is a useless, futile thing because it is a longing for something that is
permanently lost, and I felt its futility now. (p. 390)

These two extracts are linked in numerous ways and share several characteristics. Nonetheless, I’d like to focus on
the context in which they are embedded, the feelings they portray, and their relevance for the novel as a whole.

Both of these extracts appear in a most delicate and obscure moment for Connie and Douglas. The former, Jane’s
funeral, describes the hopeless, unwanted, unforeseen, heartbreaking experience of losing a child. For months, they
had been conceiving a new member of their family, both physically –inside the uterus– and psychologically –in their
minds–. I imagine they’d prepared a room and everything she might need on her arrival –a cradle, clothes, diapers, a
bottle, etc– to welcome her into their lives and, all of a sudden, they have to face the fact that her precious daughter
would never be able to enjoy them. All their illusions were shattered to pieces, leaving them in a baffled state as
things turned out in a very different way from what they’d expected. Douglas is, in my view, in a very similar state
towards the end of the novel, since he’s overwhelmed by the situation he and Connie are in, when they were looking
at pictures they’d taken throughout their relationship and marriage. As we can see in the second extract, it dawns on
him that they were not just choosing photos or throwing away old stuff, but that they were disposing of their past
life together, only being allowed to keep a few souvenirs.

At these two different moments in the novel, many of the feelings displayed are the same: regret, longing, grief,
sadness, futility. On the one hand, Jane’s death aroused all kinds of depressing feelings and thoughts. Connie and
Douglas were seriously damaged by it, as they’d been nurturing the idea of having another child since the day
Connie became pregnant. The couple was robbed of all their hopes and fantasies and given nothing in exchange. I
believe that filling that nothingness is one of the greatest challenges that the couple had to overcome. On the other
hand, Douglas’ realisation that his marriage to Connie was really coming to an end and that there was no way back
this time was also one of the hardest moments Douglas had to endure. After Jane’s death, it seems to me that his
one and only goal was never to fail again. Hard though he tried, Douglas only succeeded in making his relationship
with Connie and with his son worse. In trying to keep his family together, he managed to dismantle it and almost
lose it completely.

On many occasions throughout the novel, it was necessary for Douglas to let go: of his marriage, of his daughter’s
death, of his son, of his own fears and limitations. In my opinion, the extracts I’ve selected are essential because they
enable us to catch a glimpse of how tough it was for Douglas to do so. Leaving his past behind, Douglas was able to
take all that weight off his back and travel light to find new opportunities ahead.