Missing Mom – Joyce Carol Oates
Missing Mom – Joyce Carol Oates
****1/2
Today, I am awashed with feelings of amour for Joyce Carol Oates. I think she has officially bumped up a notch or two on my list of favorite authors. Also, I have decided to set out and read every single one of her books. I’m counting 54 novels (?) according to the list found at Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page. I’ve read only 4 (most of the Oates material I read is her short stories, though I’ve only read 5 of those collections too). Every book I’ve read from her collection gives me this strangely comforting feeling… some sort of intellectual coziness, like my soul is just snuggling up in front of a warm fireplace while I’m reading. That feeling is addicting. Joyce Carol Oates is the kind of author whose books make me feel like there’s someone there with me, even if I’m reading alone.
Missing Mom is the story of the Eaton family, told by the perspective of 30-something-year-old Nikki. She is the daughter of Gwen Eaton, a sweet, altruistic widow who is very active in her community. When Gwen is heinously murdered by a meth-head she tried to help, her daughters Nikki and Clare are left to pick up the pieces of her mysterious life and put them back together. It’s a story centered around grief and aftershock. Nikki takes on the task of sorting through her mother’s possessions, but is just not quite ready to say goodbye. While everyone around her moves on, Nikki just needs a little time. Rather than rushing to get the house ready to be sold, she decides to move in and live the way her mother was living before she died. This provides Nikki with an enormous amount of comfort and, eventually, closure.
When I first started reading this story, I was overwhelmed with sadness and panic at the thought of anything similar happening to my mom. She has just become a career woman, working long hours for the local post office. I shudder to think about some of the similarities between her and Gwen Eaton (who’s character was modeled from Oates’s mother herself). It really made me wonder… how would one “get over” such a devastating loss? I suppose we all know, in the back of our minds, that one day we will lose our parents if we haven’t already. But it’s something that nobody really wants to prepare for.
I really enjoyed getting to know Nikki Eaton. Her fashion sense piqued my interest… how she actually WORE clothes her mother had sewed her, or handed down to her, and LIKE them. Then I realized that when Joyce Carol Oates wrote this book, she was a 67 year old woman. Hm. Well, it was still a sweet sentiment, wearing your mom’s clothes…
