Gil The Frenchy Writer
You will reflect on love, marriage, grief, caregiving, desire, and pleasure, following Gil’s self-discovery after he found Yocheved’s fiery poems she had written to previous lovers. You will wonder what causes a mourning spouse to doubt enduring love instead of letting go of grieving.
He wrote Her/Story in his voice because, in her cancer journal, she wished to leave a legacy letter she could not pen because of the side effects of chemotherapy. Dialoguing with Yocheved, questioning if not sharing passions of the past meant loving him less, he imagines what she would have told him.
Gil shares real documents she kept on her computer to probe the thoughts he attributed to her, including the unshared poems, their crises on the edge of separations, and her cancer journal. Her story shows the fearless mother who leaves Jerusalem to protect her daughter and granddaughter and causes Gil to immigrate to the States. Gil believes that revealing Yocheved as sensual, astute, and compassionate brings her as a person, the femininity who refused to be defined by abuse or mobility weaknesses, even when she was perceived as an ‘impressive achiever despite her limitations.’ Gil finds other lyrical writings, and the beginning of a book about her childhood in Jamaica, her twin, her move to Switzerland, Paris, and London, and her previous marriage to a rabbi. Gil sees it as evidence of her unfulfilled desire to be an author, He will publish it on his website as the continuation of his book. The Book of Unearthing.
She fights HIM, who attacks her already challenged body, breaking her bones. She will win several times until succumbing to His final attack; Breast cancer. When she decides to cease treatment and Home Hospice care, it’s COVID time, and Gil's caregiving up is the undeniable meaning of love and commitment.
And yet, months into grieving, after he wrote Her/Story, Gil feels compelled to write His/Story. Gil interrogates himself, opening old wounds and asking who he was in their relationship, her caregiver, lover? Did his love mean healing his past abusive behavior? To show his ascension to commit to Yocheved, Gil shares excerpts of the journal he held after offending Yocheved and joining the domestic and family violence prevention in Jerusalem. He believed that it would be a testimony that change is possible.
Ultimately he rejects the idea of love as one person filling the lack in the other. In search of the essence of their enduring passion, he concludes that love was trust and pleasure from the first encounter, preceding inevitable desire. He coins it as "friendship of the mind", transcending body and death. Gil recounts his caregiving as Eros. He claims that shamelessly loving her ‘within him when she will not come’ is her present.
Gil realizes that Yocheved’s passing gifted him to act on what he aspired to before joining a kibbutz, and he embraces, ‘in the middle of the journey of life,’ the will to write.
People who read the first drafts encouraged Gil in his determination, to be honest and raw. They told him how it causes them to reflect on their relationships, life and grief. Join them in purchasing this book. Please pass it on, offer it to the friends of your mind.
