Diane Rehm writes raw memoir of widowhood
NPR's Diane Rehm is known for cutting to the bone of the issue in her incisive interviews.
She embraces the same tactic when telling her own story, of a life upended, in On My Own (Knopf, 162 pp., ***½ out of four stars).
After her husband starved himself through a 10-day death — his fierce final volley against the Parkinson’s disease that had rendered him completely disabled and dependent — Rehm, bereft and marooned, was left with questions and concerns that plague most women of a certain age.
What was her life about, now that he was gone? Should she have quit her job and become his caregiver rather than committing him to the facility they both agreed he required when he got so bad he couldn’t be alone? Should she have tried to stop him when he declared he would be taking the suicide-by-starvation route after his doctor said he could not provide drugs for the more dignified death he yearned for?
Who would care for Rehm herself when she could no longer do that on her own, without burdening her adult children? Would she be able to handle the myriad matters her husband of 54 years had tended to? How much longer could she work as a radio host? If she were to leave that job, what would her identity be, where would her joy and her connections come from?
Rehm is stunningly honest in telling the details of her life. She writes of how her brilliant attorney husband was always supportive of her successes and solicitous of her maladies, but was also, throughout their marriage, sometimes emotionally abusive, refusing without explanation to speak to her days or weeks (he apologized for this in his final days).
She admits that throughout her decades-long career, conversing on air with presidents, artists, and various newsmakers of the moment, she never overcame her insecurity about not having a college degree and no clear entitlement to the rarified strata she inhabited.
There is nothing whiny or self-pitying about her journey into and through widowhood. She simply describes with utter honesty an Everywoman’s experience with suddenly being half of what was whole for nearly her entire adulthood.
She writes of turning on the radio whenever she left her condo so voices would fill the empty rooms when she returned. She describes the waves of grief that crashed up against her at unexpected times. She tells of the wrenching night she decided it was time to take over a piece of “his” side of the bed.
Rehm confides in On My Own that she will retire later this year. She knows she will devote much more of her time to advocating for allowing people with conditions like the one that encased her husband — so debilitated at the end, so consumed by his inability to be reliable or useful — the right to die a dignified death.
Rehm doesn’t have all the answers, nor does she pretend to. What she does have, as always, is a flurry of important questions, perfectly considered and potently posed.
Sharon Peters is author of Trusting Calvin: How a Dog Helped Heal a Holocaust Survivor’s Heart.