BOOK OF THE WEEK
Before the light fades: a memoir of grief and defiance
from Natasha Walter (Virago £18.99, 256pp)
Natasha Walter had heard her mother say, “When the time comes, I’ll kill myself,” so often that she stopped listening.
It seemed inconceivable that Ruth Oppenheim, a cheerful old lady in her seventies, who lived life to the fullest and adored her children and grandchildren, could ever accomplish such a clinical final act. But Ruth meant it.
In 2017, she gathered the whole family for lunch at her home in Watford, Hertfordshire, without showing any sign.
A few days later she met Natasha on the canal at King’s Cross in London for a normal, chatty lunch at an Indian restaurant.
Little did Natasha know that this would be the last time she would ever see her mother. Four days later, Ruth took her own life.
Uncompromising: Ruth Oppenheim in 1963. As the child of Jewish refugees, Ruth was, in her own words, “bloody” in her persistence. She knew from her own Jewish background, writes Natasha, “that the journey from normality to apocalypse can be swift”
She left a note for her daughters to circulate among her friends, explaining, “I have decided to commit suicide this year while still happy, but very aware of my fading memory and health.”
Thus, Natasha found herself in a state of deep grief mixed with crushing guilt.
Yes, she had noticed that her mother was getting weaker, more nervous and forgetful, but she had cheerfully chased away her fears.
“If I had been a better daughter all my life,” she writes, “and less willing to push her worries away, maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone that she decided to die alone.”
In this concise and deeply serious memoir, Natasha relives the days and weeks after her mother’s death.
At first she tried to carry on as usual and did her emotionally demanding job: running a refugee charity.
But she felt “unshelled, a little scurrying mollusk without armor.” She broke down and had to take six weeks off, during which she tried yoga, running, swimming and gardening to quell her guilt and depression. None of them worked.
The yoga did not clear her mind. Running hurt her knees. While swimming, she found herself “just dragging her misery back and forth through the pool.”
Natasha Walter with her mother Ruth in November 2017. Natasha had noticed her mother becoming weaker, more nervous and forgetful, but she cheerfully chased away her fears
To have any hope of understanding her mother’s mentality and coming to terms with her death, she had to delve into Ruth’s life story. And that is the essence of this compelling book.
Ruth’s German parents, Eva and Georg Oppenheim, were Jewish refugees. Eva, a promising young pianist, had escaped anti-Semitic Hamburg in 1933 by taking a job as a maid to a domineering couple in Blackheath, London.
Georg, a young communist lawyer who opposed the Nazis, had been imprisoned by the German regime and held in solitary confinement for a year.
He was released in 1936, smuggled himself into Poland on a coal train, and managed to get the papers to travel to England just before war broke out.
In London he met and married Eva. After being separated for a year on the Isle of Man, the couple lived in poverty in a flat in North London, where Ruth was born in 1942.
What this book shows in a fascinating way is how children react to their parents.
Eva and Georg, by now tired of rebellion and resistance, turned themselves into a conventional suburban family, living in a dull, tidy house.
The father who once bravely opposed the Nazis was furious with his daughter when she was arrested at the age of 19 during a protest against nuclear weapons.
Ruth’s wedding day at her parents’ house in the suburbs. Ruth, a fellow activist, met her husband at a Ban The Bomb march in the 1960s
Many years later, Ruth watched her parents die of Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, while her mother lay screaming in the hospital.
That did not endear her to the prospect of the British medical system determining the mode of her eventual death.
Natasha’s evocations of the Ban The Bomb marches Ruth conducted in the 1960s bring back the fervor of those early years of nonviolent resistance: the young nuclear disarmament campaigners did things like uncover the government’s secret underground nuclear bunker, from where they intended to continue governing the country after the nuclear apocalypse.
Ruth was, in her own words, “bloody” in her persistence. She knew from her own Jewish background, writes Natasha, “that the journey from normalcy to apocalypse can be swift.”
Ruth met her future husband on one of those marches; he would spend time in prison after interrupting a church service in Brighton during the 1967 Labor Party conference.
Dressed in an anorak and sandals, with no makeup or bra, Ruth seemed like a rather embarrassing parent to young Natasha growing up.
On the family’s refrigerator was a sign that read, “Boring women have clean houses.” Natasha, in turn, rebelled against this, got a job at Vogue and briefly lived in the world of high fashion.
When she came home with a coveted pair of Eau De Nil slingbacks, her mother’s response was, “But you have shoes”; one pair was enough.
Ruth is pictured in 1967 protesting against nuclear weapons in Aldermaston, where Britain’s first nuclear weapon was detonated
The strong radicalism in the family passed from one generation to the next, with Natasha taking part in her first Extinction Rebellion sit-down protest shortly after her mother’s death.
But the strong radicalism in the family passed from one generation to another, and Natasha soon left Vogue.
It wasn’t long after her mother’s death that Natasha took part in her first Extinction Rebellion sit-down protest, blocking a street near Trafalgar Square and linking her arms in a metal pipe to another protester.
She describes the euphoria and excitement of that day (without mentioning those in the audience who may have been trying to get to the hospital or their own mother’s funeral).
A police officer cut the metal pipes and carried her to a police cell. “But in order to be myself and live a more honest life, I must do the little I can do,” she writes. She gave up her car.
The more Natasha thinks about her mother’s life, the more logical her death becomes.
“I saw that she was someone who could confront when others backed off.
“Someone who hates denial. Someone who wanted to live an honest and uncompromising life. . . and eventually that desire even extended to the way she died, so that the way she chose to die somehow matched the way she chose to live.”