Free Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones Page A

marriage. Feverish and weak, Prince Andrej slowly begins to slip away from them.
    He dreams he is lying in the room he is lying in, when the heavy double doors begin to open. Prince Andrej knows it is death trying to get in, and in the dream, in abject terror, he gets up and with all his will and might, attempts to push the doorsclosed. He is unable to lock them, and after a last valiant effort, “It entered, and it was death , and Prince Andrew died.
    â€œBut at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.”
    But he awakens liberated from his body and his bodily concerns, and while he attempts to show interest in his family, he is simply going through the rituals required of him before his heart stops beating forever. He is released from his earthly cares, and feels only lightness, and an overwhelming love for all of humanity. He becomes a part of the greater firmament, and no longer feels anguish, fear, or pain.
    I read the passage again, and remembered what my father had told us as he lay in his hospital bed after that terrible night, two days before he died. After I’d read the scene for a third time, and stopped the crying that had overwhelmed me, my first lucid thought was, How did Tolstoy do this? This Russian count who had about as much in common with me as an airplane had with a fly, had obviously lost someone and knew what it was to grieve; he had thought long and hard about it, and sometime between 1863 and 1866, he had written it down.
    And I understood why my father had been so distant and vague his last few days. He had finally been at peace, and it was not that he didn’t care or love us, but that he was letting go. I felt an enormous sense of relief as I realized—it is those who are left behind who suffer, not the person who dies.
    I could feel the hairs on my arms standing on end, as if I’d been plugged into a wall socket. It was a feeling I continue to have to this day when I stumble upon a great truth, revealed on the page by a great mind.
    Now I had a direction. I would follow the writers who had come before my father, and the ones who would come after. Theywould have to take his place as my guides. I began to feel a tenuous sense of hope.
    I called my mother the next day and asked what my father had thought of War and Peace . She said he’d read it several times and had studied the battle scenes in careful detail while he was writing The Thin Red Line .
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    My senior year, I applied for a coveted spot in a literature seminar called War as Told, taught by the renowned scholar Khachig Tololyan. The Thin Red Line was on the reading list, at the time the only course at Wesleyan that included any of my father’s works.
    On the first day of class, when Dr. Tololyan handed out the syllabus, I saw he’d changed the reading list. Now, instead of The Thin Red Line , we would be reading Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead .
    Obviously, Dr. Tololyan had been forewarned.
    On the very last day, we had a party. After several glasses of wine, I started to feel brave and righteous. I went up to Dr. Tololyan and asked, “Did you change the reading list on my account, sir?”
    He responded that he’d thought it would be too difficult for me if people didn’t like the book. That it might get too personal. He opted against provoking any possible friction or emotional scenes in his class.
    â€œI think it’s a better novel than The Naked and the Dead ,” I said.
    â€œDo you, now?” he said with a slight smile.
    â€œI do. And I could have told you things about the book and what he was thinking when he wrote it that might have interested you.”
    He did not look pleased, but it was the last day of class, and Ididn’t really care if I got an A or an A- (he gave me an A-). So I smiled and turned away, in search of another glass of wine.
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    Several years