The Memory Palace: A Memoir
Language: English
Pages: 305
ISBN: 1439183325
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the tradition of The Glass Castle, two sisters confront schizophrenia in this poignant literary memoir about family and mental illness. Through stunning prose and original art, The Memory Palace captures the love between mother and daughter, the complex meaning of truth, and family’s capacity for forgiveness.
“People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you’ve been through,” Mira Bartók is told at her mother’s memorial service. It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira, her sister, and their mentally ill mother. Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen, beautiful piano protégé Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room. She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well, but as her mental state deteriorated, Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped, murdered, or raped.
When the girls left for college, the harassment escalated—Norma called them obsessively, appeared at their apartments or jobs, threatened to kill herself if they did not return home. After a traumatic encounter, Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe. But while Mira pursued her career as an artist—exploring the ancient romance of Florence, the eerie mysticism of northern Norway, and the raw desert of Israel—the haunting memories of her mother were never far away.
Then one day, a debilitating car accident changes Mira’s life forever. Struggling to recover from a traumatic brain injury, she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her life—she had to relearn how to paint, read, and interact with the outside world. In her search for a way back to her lost self, Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying.
Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland, where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible. At the hospital, Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years. Filled with family photos, childhood toys, and ephemera from Norma’s life, the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever.
Massachusetts. Maybe I’ll write the director of the place. Or should I call? Do I have the courage? She doesn’t have to know I called. Maybe she has a social worker now, someone who can help. It’s possible that social services in Cleveland have improved since 1990. There is always a sliver of hope in me, the hope that I can still save her and see her again. The monks have finally finished. Everyone from the school and surrounding community is invited to the closing ceremony. We place flowers
envelope with five dollars. But I am feeling very bombarded by events, insights of past months and days. I feel very much hated by unknown parties. When will you come see your old lady again? They sometimes have extra cots in the large room downstairs. Or you can take my bed and I can sleep on a mat on the floor. Love, Mom. She mentions a social worker named Melissa who helps her out. She’s from an organization called MHS, Mental Health Services for Homeless Persons, Inc. I write back and ask if
disappear from the memory bank by the time I get home. As far as practicing daily goes, I write every day when I am working on a literary project. However, because I live with a brain injury, if I have dinner with friends the night before, that means I don’t write the next day. Or if I speak at a conference and have to travel there and back, I am usually so mentally fatigued that I probably won’t write for a couple or few days. I have to measure everything I do very carefully. It goes the other
child. I remember artifacts from museums, fossils, masks, and bones. The part of my brain that stores art and all the things I loved to look at and draw is for the most part intact. Perhaps the visual part of my brain can help retrieve the events that are lost. If neuroscientific research suggests that the core meaning of a memory remains, even if its details have been lost or distorted, then if I find the right pictures, the pictures could lead me to the core. In my mother’s room, while she
della Vittoria in the distance. Is this what it means to wander? Gold, capricious light on water, arches unfurling, all the way to the sea? Is it a heart splitting open? Is it loss? Or is it the seductive verisimilitude of beauty, waving and singing a stranger’s land? In my memory palace, there is a long corridor lined with marble statues. The ceilings are decorated with Italian grotteschi: sylvan landscapes of centaurs, nymphs, gargoyles, and swans. Guilded paintings adorn the walls. At the end