Her Last Death (1-58)

SUMMARY:


The story begins when Susanna, was a thirty-seven year old woman leading her own life with a husband and two children of her own, gets a call from her aunt Irene franticly telling her that her mother, Daphne, has been in an accident and is in the hospital because of a coma in Barbados, the country Daphne now resides. Susy's sister, Penelope, and aunt continue to call her to see if she is going to come to her mother's side, however, after a couple days of self deliberation, she decides not to go. 


Before Susy finally decided not to go to Barbados to be by her mother's side she began to recall on the few times her mother contacted her in her adult life. At one point, Daphne actually told her daughter that she had been diagnosed with cancer and Susy, after keeping her children away from her mother, began to feel regret in not allowing her children to meet and interact with their grandmother. In the end, her mother was lying about the cancer and seemed top me like she used the disease to try to get closer with her daughter. However, this is not the first time Daphne said to have had a sickness when in actuality she had nothing. 


When Susy was six, her mother surprised her by picking her up from school. She told her daughter that they were going away together and it was going to be a trip she would never forget. They began driving to the west picking up her little sister as they went along. When Penelope had fallen asleep she revealed to her daughter that she had leukemia and was going to die. At such a young age, Susy was already worried for her mother's life and the future of her sister and herself.


Daphne and Susy's father, Nat, came over from England on a boat when Susy was five months old. Her parents had, in her eyes a very good marriage regardless of the fact that Daphne was only 19 and her husband older. Two year into becoming first time parents they added on to their family by having another baby girl Penelope but soon after things in their marriage fell apart. They were separated by the time Susy was four. Not long after Daphne met Garrret, and Colin and Hugh and many other men in which Daphne had affairs with. She married Colin but their marriage ended just like Nat's marriage ended with Laura, and when Nat and Laura's marriage ended Laura took the daughter they produced and a son of her own with her. 


At the young age of eight, Susy became experimenting with her own sexual identity. During one summer she spent with her father, he asked her if she masturbates, and from that day on she has been to the images of penthouse magazine. Daphne discovered this when Susy was twelve years old, the same year Daphne went to a psychiatric hospital. She wanted to come home, however Susy's grandmother threatened to cut them off financially and the girls would have no way of surviving. 


QUOTE: 


"One night, lying awake, I heard my mother's cry. I was always alert to her disasters. I heard trouble and her fear, her battering, I don't know what, but it was awful. My legs collided as I started up out of bed and raced the length of the apartment," (Sonnenberg, 33). 


REACTION: 


At this time in her life was eight years old. She has always had the motherly instinct which became apparent at the arrival of her two younger sisters, Penelope and Hattie, but to me it feels like maybe she is putting a Susy little too much stress on herself. She has already begun to worry for the safety of her mother from the time where she thought she had leukemia and she carries that worry with her until who knows when. Children do worry about their parents safety but I think that happens more later in life rather than an eight year old worrying about a twenty-seven year old grown woman. And most likely, this quote is setting the rest of the story up for Susy in a sense that no matter what she's doing or where her life brought her, she is either going to be constantly worrying about her mother or resenting her for  putting this burden on her as a little girl.