Six Questions with Darlene Madott

All Lit Up: What first sparked the idea for your book, Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times? 

DARLENE MADOTT: My sudden abandonment by a man I had loved for over two decades and who I thought had loved me. I shouldn’t have been blindsided, having toiled in the vineyards of matrimonial misery for some 35 years, (as a divorce lawyer), but I was. This abandonment was both a shattering and the spark. What haunted me most, other than the way he left—a brief typed letter in my mailbox in the middle of the night without any hint at a why—was the fact that we can go through life thinking that the person who sleeps in bed beside us is someone we know, the dreams seeming so real we believe that other person must be dreaming them too. But the real mystery is that we ever find each other in the first place, that our lives intersect, and some of these results in moments of miraculous grace.  

I was reluctant to write Closing Ceremonies (Tales of Abandonment, Betrayal, and Consequence), which began with the short story “Parsing His Goodbyes,” because I didn’t want to honour the man who had left me, the cruel and cowardly way that he had. “Parsing His Goodbyes” takes its form in the “parsed” sentences of a lover’s goodbye letter. Each sentence or part of a phrase spawns a memory. By the end of the narrative, the goodbyes have transitioned from third to first person narrative, highlighting how the narrator has found a way of accepting her new solitary path. She ultimately thanks her lover for leaving her, feeling grateful for the choice that was not of her making, and one that gave her back to herself.  

So, the first half of the book contains linked love stories that explore the aftermath of love. The sorrowing souls that inhabit these tales struggle at various stages of the grief cycle: from denial and paralysis to anger and desire for revenge; to bargaining and, ultimately, for some characters and for others incompletely, acceptance and reconciliation. Some of the stories handle the love quandary comedically—for example, the stories about Francesca and Concetta, who embrace a sisterly friendship born of betrayal. Others are more elegiac, such as the story of Thor and Lovise: unsanctioned lovers who get to orbit about each other, however briefly. “Appropriation” is a coming-of-age story where the longed-for first kiss is obtained, but not in the way the kiss was desired. What links these stories? Human yearning to move out of love away from an obsessive attachment, to a selfless state where genuine love becomes possible again.  

Dying Times, the second half of Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times, was sparked by witnessing the dying times of my own mother, my senior law partner, and a rich divorcing client—all contemplating their own lives and dying process. I realized that they were each dying as individually as they had lived, in control of their attitude toward what was happening to them. The work turns out to be more about living than dying, and is quite lively.  

Marrying Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times into one work made perfect sense—as the linked short stories of Closing Ceremonies, and the novella Dying Times are about love, loss, letting go, gratitude, and forgiveness. Ultimately, taken as a whole, Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times contains a deeply human experience about how best to live and love.  

ALU: What were you reading, watching, listening to, or thinking about while working on it? 

DARLENE: The most impactful and helpful of my “sources” are quoted in “Out of “Love”—the epilogue of Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times. These include Winie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne, Passing Ceremonies, by the late Helen Weinzweig, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing, by Susan Anderson, Edgewise and Otherwise, by Len Gasparini, The Way to Love (The Last Meditations) by Anthony De Mello, The Road to Character, by David Brooks, Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, “Winters in Schruns,” A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway….and I included a few references to my own short stories, which I had only truly understood in retrospect, such as the short stories “Waiting” and “Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing?” 

The epilogue is an essay, where I address my reader directly with some of the literary, psychological, and spiritual resources that assisted me in puzzling my own way through the confusion, grief, and pain arising from my own necessary losses of persons who had been of seminal importance in my own life. 

ALU: What surprised you most while working on your book?

DARLENE: How the characters came to me and came to life—once “control freak” me got out of the way. For example, “What to Do in Case of Hurricane.” The framework came from an instruction manual which I had pilfered some 15 years earlier from the Paradise Resort in Jamaica. I found it again while trying to clean out some drawers. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if life were as easy as following a list of instructions for “What to Do in Case of Hurricane”? The story is about two improbable lovers. Their backstories both involve abuse and a CAS upbringing in Halifax. Against all odds, Jane has become head nurse at the Halifax Hospital; William Reilly O’Grady, a slum landlord of considerable means. While Jane is capable of making the leap of faith that love entails, William falls short. His betrayal of Jane’s son affects her more deeply than his betrayal of her. She can find it in herself to forgive the little boy (William) who had been locked and abandoned in a car by his mother. What she can’t understand is her own departure from common sense, her reckless disregard for the rules—for what to do in case of hurricane.  

This story continues to delight and surprise me. It was the first short story I wrote after ceasing to practice law. I prayed for this story. “Ask, and it shall be answered…” And it was. I needed to write this story. Michael Mirolla, general editor of Guernica, wanted me to cut the last paragraph, and I wouldn’t let him. I’m still vindicated in my insistence upon it remaining in place every time I perform excerpts from this story. To cut the last paragraph would be like eating the leaves of an artichoke but discarding the heart. It was a gift to me and I believe the gift needs to be played forward to my reader. 

ALU: How does your most recent work compare to your previous? 

DARLENE: Winners and Losers: Tales of Life, Law, Love and Loss, is a collection of linked short stories that turns a searchlight on the inner workings of the legal profession, and grew out of my legal background—without breaching solicitor and client privilege, of course. The fictions are told from the viewpoint of a narrator finding her way through a hostile and competitive law environment, where the pitbull litigator is tenderized through her clients, the work, the failure of her own marriage, by single mothering. So, ostensibly, while it is quite a different work from Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times, both works share the concept of an epilogue. These epilogues were absolutely vital for me to write and were given as gifts to my reader. With Winners and Losers, the epilogue is called “Surrender”, and examines the importance of escaping binary thinking around what constitutes winning and what constitutes losing. Letting go is a necessary part of daily living, the way it is necessary for a snake to shed its skin in order to grow, without which the snake dies. Surrender should not be thought of as failure.  

With Closing Ceremonies, the epilogue “Out of Love” is an essay where I address my reader directly with some of the literary, psychological, and spiritual resources that assisted me in puzzling my own way through the confusion, grief, and pain arising from my own necessary losses. I think these epilogues—not something I’ve ever encountered in a work of fiction in quite this way—are great resources to help with grief and healing. I wish someone had put together such a roadmap for me. It might have saved a lot of floundering. And I personally find that some of the resources continue to help me. Grief is not a one-time gig. Whatever the theory of “sitting shiva,” when you walk around the house for the seventh time, don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s over. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with my darling dead ones have occurred since their supposed departure.  

And, more fundamentally, Winners and Losers and the Dying Times part of Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times share the backdrop and inner workings of the legal profession as a kind of stage.  

Also, throughout my writing career, I have been obsessed with family—the internal dynamics and conflicts inherent in the nuclear family, generational secrets, and how secrets can lay in wait to sabotage those who don’t know the secret (Making Olives and Other Family Secrets). The stories in Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times could be considered “domestic” dramas—in that they revolve around intimacies, whether as between sisterly friends, or the knowledge that exists between working colleagues of each other. Jack, with his shtetel humour, is one of my absolutely favourite characters of all time. 

ALU: How did your editor help shape the book? 

DARLENE: My editor, Randall Perry, was vital in helping me shape the book, including placement of the stories. Between acceptance by the publisher, Guernica Editions, and publication, there was a more than two-year wait. This is a time very like the hours between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m.. Many doubts enter in. So, along with the nuts and bolts, roll up the sleeves, and work one’s way back through the creaking sentences, there were some larger choices to make. To have had such a sensitive and knowledgeable guide and sounding board—absolutely invaluable.  

The largest of these choices occurred with respect to the ending of the short story “Parsing His Goodbyes,” where the third-person narrator makes a sudden leap from the third person into the first person. The story had begun with “The Letter“—the lover’s five-paragraph goodbye letter, which says nothing, gives no reason, no answer to the question why. In the last pages of this short story, the “I” voice addresses “you”—the man who has betrayed her, directly, and signs off with her name, closing the loop in a kind of reply letter. As a writer, I was absolutely thrilled with the jarring immediacy of this leap. I had to defend it before not only Randall Perry, but also the general editor, Michael Mirolla, both of whom ultimately deferred to me. To assist me in my experimental and somewhat anarchic choice, Randall transcribed the whole of the ending into the third person. When I juxtaposed third person to first person for this leap of the ending, I knew unequivocally what I wanted.