Learning about family history is a vital part of life in general. Understanding family history is essential because it embraces the identity, basic humanity, and diversity of background or culture. However, failing to learn from family history will become a hidden history that will never be passed on to the next generation. In the short story “Gravity” by Pam Durban, Louisa, an heiress to a Charleston, North Carolina rice plantation is taking care of her elderly mother who is currently in a retirement home preceding her mother’s death.
Louisa’s mother continually brings up the joyful memories of how Mamie, the late housemaid, has always been a part of their family’s life. Louisa felt that her mother’s stories were irritating to hear continually, but it took Louisa a while to understand that her mother’s stories about Mamie were a way of keeping her family’s history alive. The analysis will explain precisely why Louisa took her mother’s stories of Mamie for granted and later realized how important it was to cherish her mother’s stories due to the treasured history of her family’s past.
Louisa became resentful of her family’s history because Louisa’s mother repeatedly told the same story every time Louisa went to visit her. When Louisa would first enter her mother’s room to visit her at the nursing home, she knew the moment she proceeded to enter the room Louisa’s mother would tell her story. Louisa listening to her mother tell the same story about Mamie and the drive to Cooper River Bridge began to aggravate Louisa which in return made her feel less caring to hear what her mother had to say. “Surely it was not Mamie herself, the person.
The individual human being that Mother was trying to keep alive by telling their story” (47). Thoughts of hearing her mother repeat the same story mentally made her want to jump and scream “Get to the point, for God’s sake, Mother!” (50). Not truthfully knowing that the story her mother is telling is the only way she can keep the memory of Mamie alive and keep her mother’s well-being. In addition to Louisa’s carelessness, Louisa’s mother did not get sent to a nursing home for her mental state, but her mother was gaining an excessive amount of weight making it difficult for herself to move on her own.”It was not her mother’s drifting Spanish- brown canoe of a mind that had landed her in the nursing home; it was her body” (55).
After one night when Louisa’s mother fell in the bathroom along with Louisa’s help, Louisa realized that she was getting too old to take care of her mother. This is what led Louisa into whispering to her mother “Mother, don’t you think it is time to move on now” (59)? Louisa knew that saying these words would hurt her mother’s feelings and she was hoping her mother did not hear what she had said about wanting her mother to die. Even though Louisa was old and incapable of taking care of her mother, these factors were proof of her showing negativity towards her families flawed history.
After three months of Louisa’s mother living in a nursing home, Louisa gets an unexpected phone call of her mother’s death. Louisa immediately feels frightened of the death of the mother and attempts to call her long-lost brother, Hugh, for the disturbing news in all to forget that her brother was dead almost 20 years. As a result of her mother’s death, Louisa realizes that she is the only member of the Hilliard family remaining.
Louisa suddenly started to care more about her family’s history due to her loneliness and old age. She finally understands the importance of her mother wanting to tell her past stories of Mamie. Louisa needed to know that someday will be her time to pass on “to the other side” (65) and that the next generation must listen to the history of the Hilliard family.
In conclusion, Louisa understanding the importance of the passage of her family’s history was a necessity (not a nuisance). Louisa took a while to notice that without the spoken passage of her family’s history that she as well was no longer in existence.
