Fedler swims the ocean of sorrow

South African expat and author Joanne Fedler recently brought out her latest book, Bring Us Home From Sorrow: A Love Letter, which focuses on her experience of losing her mother. The SA Jewish Report speaks to Fedler, who now lives in Australia. 

Why did you write Bring Us Home from Sorrow? 

I began writing letters to my mother from the day she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I knew I was about to experience one of the greatest losses of my life and wanted to track it, as a way of holding onto her. This all happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I experienced the distance as a banishment from being present with her as her life was ebbing away. I wrote letters for the nine months of her illness and for a year after she died. I then put them away not knowing if they would turn into anything I wanted to share more widely. When I started writing again, The Whale’s Last Song emerged, a mythic story about grief and loss. I then came back to the letters and began working them into a memoir about losing my mother. The letters were for me, but this book is for my sisters and my mother’s grandchildren, so they can remember her in exquisite detail. It’s also for anyone navigating the shock of grief and trying to understand what just happened to them and the person they love. 

One of the big issues you touch on is the love between mother and daughter. What is unique and special about this for you? 

My mother was a kind, generous, and unobtrusive presence. She was emotionally difficult to reach, but she loved me and my sisters fiercely. I never realised how fundamental she was to my sense of self until she died. She was the ground I stood on, the home I ached for, the only person who has loved me unconditionally. I know I was lucky and that not everyone experiences their mother this way. 

How would you describe the love between your mom and you, and your daughter and you? 

I spent my life trying to get close to my mother – I didn’t get enough of her when I was a little girl as she had a child with special needs by the time I arrived. Watching her as a grandmother to my daughter healed many childhood wounds. My relationship with my daughter is different, I was able to be completely present. I had anxious attachment to my mother, and my daughter has secure attachment. 

Losing a parent is massive for a person, no matter how old they are. Can you describe what that grief was for you and how you dealt with it? 

I have seen some people experience relief rather than grief when a problematic parent dies. For me, I experienced my mother’s death as a shock. I spent a year trying to believe that she was really gone – because we’ve lived in different countries for more than 20 years, I sometimes imagined she was just far away. After six months, I felt as if the life force had gone out of me. I was inconsolable, like a child, undefended, raw, impossibly vulnerable. It took nine months before I felt the seal of my grief lifting. Through it all, I wrote letters to her and swam in the ocean. 

Tell us about your mother and what made her so special in your life. 

My mother was a no-nonsense, practical person, a medical doctor. We were unalike in every way. She believed in medicine. She had no spiritual practice. I found this deeply challenging when she was dying, I didn’t know how to console her. My mother was my greatest fan. She took an interest in everything I did, and thought I was wonderful, though a bit “oversensitive”. 

Do your sisters have the same image of her that you do? 

We each had a different relationship with her. My younger sister, Laura, became close to her in the last few years because she helped her with finances online and they went to water aerobics together. My older sister, Carolyn, was her support person through her cancer journey, so their relationship was also very precious. 

What about your relationship with your sisters? 

My sisters and I have always been close, but grief brings up all the pain from the past. After my mother died, we had to work through childhood wounds we all carried. But we never fought over things or money. My mother hated conflict and always begged us, ‘Please don’t fight.’ As an only child, who longed for a brother or sister, she instilled in us the appreciation of having siblings. Perhaps my sisters and I have held onto that, what a privilege it is to have a friendship with someone you’ve grown up with. We’ve been a huge support to each other since she, and more recently our dad, passed away. 

The ocean is such an important tool in your book. Why did you use it? What is its importance to you and your life? How does it fit into your story? 

The vastness of the ocean helped me to keep moving forward. I felt lost in my grief, but the ocean held me, it made me feel part of all life, not “special”. It forced me to stay afloat. It’s also where I often “speak to the dead”, when I’m far from shore with the enormity of the sea below me and the sky above me. It’s my sacred praying place. 

What has being separated from your original family been like for you over the years and how did you come to terms with it? 

Emigration is a grief all of its own – I wrote a book about it, When Hungry, Eat in 2010. I don’t think you ever come to terms with the distance, though you have to make peace with the decisions you’ve made. After she finished reading this book, my daughter messaged me to say she is grateful for the life we gave her in Sydney, and that sacrifice is unavoidable. Even though I carry a lot of guilt and grief for taking my kids away from my parents and family, she said she thought she and her brother gained something special from leaving. “Leaving made us the sort of people who find home in the people we love and carry it with us. Leaving made us the sort of people who want to come back.” 

What have been the most difficult times to be apart from your original family? 

It’s only been really rough through my mother’s illness and then my father’s. Because of COVID-19 I was with my mother when she died – I had to be in South Africa for three months – but I missed my father’s death and funeral. These absences at a time when people I love need me weigh heavily on me. 

What do you miss most about your mom and dad? 

Really just chatting to them every day and having someone interested in every silly thing I do. I also miss my father’s brilliance and the deep spiritual conversations we used to have. 

What do you want others to take from your book? 

I hope others feel able to process their own experiences of grief, even if they are very different from mine. Some people have to grieve the mothering they never had; others might not have had the chance to process the horrors of watching a parent die slowly; and at the end, I hope they will be inspired to go for a swim in a natural body of water! 

How did you choose the name of the book? 

Grief is universal, which is why it’s “Bring Us” (not “Me”). It’s a kind of incantation or prayer, asking G-d, spirit, the ocean to bring us home from sorrow. We all get lost in grief and need to find a way home. 

This is a soul-baring book. How has bringing it to life made you feel? 

My mother was a private person and I have felt guilty about trespassing on her privacy by writing this book, but the responses from those who endorsed it, and readers, subsequently, has eased this. I just want others to feel held and seen in their grief. I hope this book is a mirror for people who wonder if they’re doing grief “right”. 

How has being part of the Jewish community affected how you related to family, to grief, to love? 

I really struggled with some of the Jewish rituals especially the exclusion from being allowed to say kaddish, and the swamping by the community during shiva. But there is deep wisdom in these ceremonies. My sisters and I also spent a morning decorating my mother’s gravesite with shells and stones and succulents, and I found that deeply anchoring and meaningful. A friend told me that “attending to the gravesite” is the last duty we perform for a parent, and it is not a quid pro quo. It is done entirely out of love. I think as Jews, we carry so much grief and loss, and we are diligent about honouring our dead.