What Remains

“The dandelion is a gawky yellow flower that blooms and then collapse into a soft, clumsy down that little children blow wishes on. There was a sea of dandelions in our back yard on Madison Hill, and Grandma Binder, swinging her scythe, would mount a futile attack on them in her housedress and apron. They grew into a clotted forest of long, milky necks in the backyard, and the best she could hope for was just to cut them down to stubs. It starts with one slouchy weed – pluck it out and it’s gone. You never quite remember, can’t pinpoint the time between when there was one week and a sea of them. There was a time when the thing seemed manageable, and then we were looking backward over our shoulders, running away from it.” ~ from What Remains by Carole Radziwill

This memoir by the wife of the late Anthony Radziwill (nephew of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and cousin [and best friend] of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr.) lays out the life C. Radziwill lived as a young girl, a budding journalist, a young woman in love, a fighter, and one who lost more than seems imaginable in only three weeks' time.

The way in which she deals with her husband's invasive cancer and growing weakness show her for the true class act she obviously is. And how deeply what life has dealt her can hit someone square between the eyes...

“But cancer showed up like an unplanned pregnancy and completely defined who we were together.

We flash helpless smiles at the rest of the world when it pops in. It is subtle, the performance. We show up at dinners with friends and with family. Anthony handsome and charming, me by his side. The truth is my husband is dying, and we are lonely together. There is the disease and the person, and though I am living with one has robbed me of the other. He is devoted to something else. It is in some ways similar, I imagine, to an affair, only in an affair I could pack my bags and storm out, slam the door shut, clearly wronged. There’d be some satisfaction in that. This is a secret he won’t talk to me about, and I am not allowed to resent it. When he looks at me he sees his disease. I am managing it, too closely connected to it for intimacy. I reflect it, and I suspect this angers him. After a point, the cancer, and the thing we both hate, is that only thing that we share.”

This book is a super read on so many levels... for its Kennedy connections, its true to life language, its ability to make you feel the pain, its subtle way of getting under your skin.

It's up for grabs for anyone who wants it.