Holding Silvan by Monica Wesolowska

Today, I’m writing about Monica Wesolowska’s beautiful book, Holding Silvan. You can learn more about Wesolowka here, and you can find a copy of her book, here. 

Holding Silvan is the story of a mother and father who have a baby who is so sick that he can only live for a short time, and from a writer’s point of view, the book is an excellent example of how to make an overwhelming event into a story.

One of the things Wesolowska does when she realizes Silvan will die, is collect memories of people she knew who have died. She remembers Maurice, a family friend who she referred to as uncle. He was delighted by Wesolowska and her then two-year- old brother, Kim, who loved to say, “I do dat.” Maurice found the phrase endearing and said it, too. On the day he died, his wife needed a check deposited at the bank. “ ‘I do dat,’ he said and set off to the bank where he died standing in line.” (46)

In a few paragraphs, Wesolowska creates a character we will like and be sad about when he died, and she does this by including events from his life. Here, she is showing that part of grieving means remembering that person’s life; not just that he died. “[W]hat makes absence acceptable is the life story that precedes it, the life story that remains.” (47) As writers, if we are going to bare witness to that absence, we ought to pay careful attention to the life that was there, as Wesolowska does with her baby boy Silvan. We ache for him not only because he died, but because Wesolowska showed us he once lived.

Another thing Wesolowska does is tell the story of some of the nurses that shared in her agony. Silvan is very sick and Wesolowska and her husband choose to take him off life support. One nurse, who’s been carefully taking care of Silvan tells Wesolowska that she’d do the same thing if he were her child. Another one shares her own experience taking care of a severely brain damaged child for twenty-one years. “Another simply crouches at my feet, clasping my knees. ‘Let it out, let it out,’ she says as I sob.” (108)

These nurses understand suffering, and they help share the misery Wesolowska is experiencing. But they also help the reader. Personally, I had a terrible time holding the weight of this story by myself. It never occurred to me to stop reading the story; I owed it to Silvan to finish it, but sometimes events are so sad I don’t know if I can look at them by myself. So I, too, appreciated the nurses in the story. They offered a hand to hold as I read it, but that was because Wesolowska crafted them to do so. When I go back to revise some of my own sad stories, I will look again at areas where I can show where others helped me carry the sadness so I didn’t have to do it all by myself. I think that would do my readers a service.

Finally, Wesolowska  shows how the “lies” creative nonfiction writers allow in order to get at the truth. In one point of the story, she goes on a walk and someone breaks into her trunk, stealing everything. She tells a cop that among the items that were taken were all the pictures of her dead son. This was not true, and Wesolowska admits that the reason she made this part up was because she wanted him to feel her pain. I think this choice to lie is an important one because through it, Wesolowska shows readers what is true: she needs to share her pain. She cannot keep it to herself. “If I can shape Silvan’s life and death into a story, I can survive it,” she writes. (175)

And that is what she does. Wesolowska takes a look at these horrifying, treacherous, sorrowful, overwhelming days and shapes them into a story.