Paula: A Memoir
By: Isabel Allende / Foreword By: Isabel Allende / Narrated By: Cynthia Farrell
Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
Ah Jeez… it’s like watching sausage getting made… poor Paula
Oh. My. GOD!!! (And I usually prefer to say GOSH, but here?! Oh. My…!!!)
Here’s the thing: I’m studying and training and hoping to become an End of Life Doula for my second act. We’re taught, Step One: Meet People Where They Are… and maybe, p’raps, kinda sorta, guiiiiiiide them to a place of Acceptance and Peace. So while it’d be AWESOME to help people to peaceful ends, I mean, it’s the ONE thing EACH of us’ll have to deal with, for each of our loved ones, for our very own selves as well? Okay, not everyone is going to be able to Get There. EsPECially not when our medical institutions and doctors don’t accept Death as a natural part of Life; not when they view Death as the ultimate failure and try try try med after med after med, procedure after procedure after procedure.
SURELY, thought I to m’self: Paula by Isabel Allende would show the Life and Death Process/Cycle in startling, glorious, words and fantastical imagery. After all, eeeeeons ago, I’d seen Allende on “Oprah” (I KNOW!), and her face was so serene, she was soooo peaceful as she described sitting at the bedside of her daughter, Paula, as Paula spent nearly a year in dying. SURELY SHE would be able to articulate the beauty of a peaceful passing, of acceptance through tears and shattered dreams and absolutely devastating Grief.
Uhm… NOOOOOOO!!!
This was an absolute atrocity; it’s a How NOT To Die sorta story. Her (Ostensibly) much-loved daughter slips into a coma, is in it for aaaages, and when she kinda sorta baaaaarely opens her eyes again, she’s but an empty shell of a being. Devastating! And when multiple doctors come to Allende with the news of, really, no brain activity? Devastating, ya know? SURELY, the super-talented What A Way With Words! Allende will, with her sense of the spiritual (Think: House of Spirits?!) be able to show a Suffering World how to hold onto Love Love Love all while doing the oh sooo near-impossible job of Letting Go.
Uhm… NOOOOOO!!!
Paula is s’posed to be Allende writing the story of their family, the ancestors, the troubled times in a troubled country, aaaallll Allende’s personal backstory so that when Paula “wakes up” she’ll have it all before her, ready to be mused over. It’s also S’POSED to be about PAULA! I’m not eeeeven gonna go Uhm Nooo again cuz dude! I’m sick of typing it, sick of feeling it.
This is 10-hours and 28-minutes way toooo much of Allende talking about her own sex life, which started super early, continued through infidelity, continued with a fling in this country, in that country, all during the same book tour… uhm… all during the same time her (Ostensibly) much-loved daughter was… DYING!!!
This is waaaay toooo much time spent in Allende prolonging the absolute inevitable, of her refusing to come to terms with reality, with refusing to release her (Ostensibly) much-loved daughter from a frozen agony, of her going soooo against her (Ostensibly) much-loved daughter’s wishes (Paula had had a freakin’ nightmare on her honeymoon that she’d be trapped in an inert body, suffering greatly, trapped and praying for release!).
It’s just an atrocity. The verrrrry last part is how Death SHOULD be Done (Judge-y statement, I know: Bad Doula! Bad!) with family members coming to the bedside, touching gently, speaking softly, whispering words of love as they FINALLY release Paula to death. But even then Allende manages to make Paula’s death the Isabel Show—she describes her own Shared Death Experience, barely coming back long enough to describe washing Paula and FINALLY taking Paula’s wedding ring from HER OWN FREAKING FINGER! Cuz see, she’d been wearing it herself cuz her pain certainly is greater than Paula’s (DEFINITELY!) much-loved husband’s. Not since the egreeeeegious Unbecoming have I listened to such a huge Everything’s About Meeeee-ish audiobook.
Brief aside: Who the heck cast Cynthia Farrell? She pronounces the names properly, but it’s all breathy, choppy, brittle. Like this book needed yet aNOTHer strike against it, ya know?
Okay, back.
I’ll leave you with something Big Sis pointed out. Just to be clear: Big Sis is faaaaaar less generous than I; faaaaaar more insightful than I. She pointed out that Allende left her daughter in an agonized Limbo just long enough to write this.
Paula died just in time for Allende to get to her Always Start Writing Date of January 8th.
She let Paula suffer until her death in December.
So happy Allende got a book outta this…
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