TIME OUT: Memoir tells of a love for life and beyond
WE DO not live life without encountering love and loss. Love and loss are inextricably bound. As we love, so we grieve – the depth of one determining the intensity of the other. One cannot grieve if one cannot love.
Each grief is different as each relationship is different. The grief for a partner, for a husband or wife is tremendous, wordless, individual, personal and unique as each relationship is unique. Love is togetherness. Grief is encountered alone.
Perhaps this is why grief for a partner often reflects what was important in the relationship, how a couple communicated with each other, what interests they shared and what had meaning for them both.
For some couples, what they shared may have been a particular piece of music that the mourner listens to again and again, or a poem that is repeated, read to the person who died in remembrance of when it was enjoyed together.
For others, a time of year is especially evocative, or a place they visited together is returned to alone where “secret anniversaries of the heart” are remembered.
For John Quinn and his wife, Olive, their relationship was expressed in the letters they wrote to each other from the moment they met, which may be why John chose to mourn the death of his wife and keep her close by continuing writing letters to her.
By publishing those Letters to Olivehe invites us to accompany him on a journey through grief that is deep because of the depth of love that preceded it.
It is a story without an end because when John Quinn fell in love with Olive Rosemary McKeever it was for ever. It was a love for life and beyond. The progress of that love, its serendipitous beginnings, its romantic progression, its everyday challenges, its ordinary expression, its extraordinary depth, its difficulties, its faithfulness, fidelity and dramatic untimely end are portrayed in this most beautiful narrative.
Letters to Oliveincludes us in John's articulation of grief, which is psychologically invaluable, not just for himself, but for everyone who reads this story who has ever groped for meaning in the labyrinths of loss. But the book also has particular psychological significance.
At a time in Irish society when courtship sounds quaint, when fidelity is undermined, when family is often unsupported and marriage vows can be dismantled easily, John’s letters to Olive provide a timely tribute to married love in all its realities and to the sustaining presence of those we love – a presence not even death can sever.
Letters to Oliveis a love story made magnificent by its simplicity. It is a life story that is captivating. It is a tribute to the beauty of Olive herself, as person, as wife, mother, carer, life well lived and courageously so, and as John's "one and only love". It is a tribute to John as a man who has the courage to express publicly his innermost and most intimate experience of loneliness for his wife.
Grief is a special journey and Letters to Oliveis a transformative observation of grief. It highlights the commonality as well as the individuality of grief, how each grief, as each life, is unique, regardless of similarities.
John Quinn exposes the heart and soul of grief at its most raw and real. He shows how terrifying grief is; how physically painful in the searing of remembrance in a piece of music, in lyrics,in a photograph, in sleeplessness, in loneliness, in despair and in the anguish of reaching out towards someone no longer visible, but who is also present in memory.
Grief is a special journey and John’s journey through grief exposes our fundamental human vulnerability, our essential frailty, our exceptional strength and the extraordinary capacity to go on by those who “have longed for death in the darkness”, but who continue for the sake of others and of life itself.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist
Letters to Olive: Sea of Love, Sea of Loss, Seed of Love, Seed of Lifeis published by Veritas