Death & The Goldfinch

I can’t stop thinking about The Goldfinch.

This is, most definitely, in part because of the timing in my life when I read it. The week I finished The Goldfinch was also the last week of my dog Walter’s life. I was deep in my head thinking about the horrible part of death, and how much I would miss my dog. The book so beautifully talks about cycles - both more obvious ones like birth —> life —> death —> rebirth, and more subtle ones like how we repeat relationships of the past and the things we do to try to feel less lonely. By the time I got to the end of The Goldfinch I already knew that I loved it, but the final paragraph truly sealed it as my favorite novel of the year. The Goldfinch concretely changed how I felt in the final days of my dogs life. It ends with an explosion of clarity on the meaning of death:

“Nature (meaning death) always wins… maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyways… I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers.”

For me, this cemented that if we can find the link between love and death we add a most important meaning to our lives. I began to imagine that there is an invisible chain circling the earth many billions of times, each link represents someone in history feeling love for their dog. My love for Walter means that he gets to live on in the ever growing chain that will wrap around the earth in perpetuity. This chain gave me comfort and lifted me from the awful goodbye to a beautiful reminder of all the wonder that we get to experience simply from being alive. I am lucky to have loved my dog and I will continue to contribute to the invisible chain with every dog I love for the rest of my life.

At the end of The Goldfinch, this assertion made me feel like Theo (the main character) was exactly where he was supposed to be. Walter spent his last few hours laying on his favorite bed, looking out at our backyard, a cool fall breeze floating in from outside. At the end of his life, I think Walter was exactly where he was supposed to be. Finally calm.

This ability to draw these parallels between a novel and our real lives is part of what makes books magical. Another passage in the novel that hit me goes like this:

“Your descriptions of the desert — that oceanic, endless glare — are terrible but also very beautiful. Maybe there’s something to be said for the rawness and emptiness of it all. The light of long ago is different from the light of today and yet here, in this house, I’m reminded of the past at every turn. But when I think of you, it’s as if you’ve gone away to sea on a ship — out in a foreign brightness where there are no paths, only stars and sky.”

I see the same splendid parallels here - the way to think of those we miss as simply on another journey somewhere else, still safe and warm and loved. And in a way they are because we believe it. We must let the light of the past and the light of today continue to overlap - it’s how we keep the chain of love and light alive through time.

I loved my dog in all his awful faults and wonderful virtues and I loved The Goldfinch for reminding me that death is never the end - it’s simply one part of this beautiful cycle that is existence, that I am lucky to be a part of, I promise to continue to immerse myself.