That's why her death, when it inevitably arrives, is brutal in its brevity. There's no drawn-out hospital stay or cinematic drama in her departure. On Mother's day, Rob and Renée left phone messages with their mothers. Sheffield was making cinnamon toast and coffee for his wife. And Renée Crist died just then, as quickly as it takes to say that it happened.
It's a tragedy on the most primitive level but it's to the author's credit that he shares the terrible emotional cost not through maudlin expressions of remorse but through the small details of grief. Rob sings to Renée when no one is looking and leaves all her possessions untouched in the event that she should return. He cashes her social security checks, pays off her funeral in installments, and concocts insane techniques to pass at the grocery store as a still-married husband and not a dreaded widower.
It's a tragedy on the most primitive level but it's to the author's credit that he shares the terrible emotional cost not through maudlin expressions of remorse but through the small details of grief. Rob sings to Renée when no one is looking and leaves all her possessions untouched in the event that she should return. He cashes her social security checks, pays off her funeral in installments, and concocts insane techniques to pass at the grocery store as a still-married husband and not a dreaded widower.
When Sheffield finally does reflect on his loss directly, recalling a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, its simplicity is devastating: "I always had to butt my head up against that sentence: 'I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.' I was hoping that this was a lie. But it wasn't. Whatever I learn from this grief, none of it will take me any closer to what I want, which is Renée, who is gone forever. None of my tears will bring her closer to me. I can fit other things into the space she used to occupy, but whether I choose to do that, her absence from that space is permanent. No matter how good I get at being Renée's widower, I won't get promoted to being her husband again. The loss doesn't go away - it just gets bigger the longer you look at it."
Defined by its musical sensibilities and by the absence of its most interesting character, Love is a Mix Tape is a genuinely moving remembrance, elevated by its emotional bluntness and universal in its appeal. It's likely to give even the most cynical readers cause to reflect on the modest joys of their own lives and to offer up a silent prayer for the soul of a dead punk girl. We might all hope to inspire such an interesting mix of the sonic and the sublime when it's time to paint our masterpiece.
Defined by its musical sensibilities and by the absence of its most interesting character, Love is a Mix Tape is a genuinely moving remembrance, elevated by its emotional bluntness and universal in its appeal. It's likely to give even the most cynical readers cause to reflect on the modest joys of their own lives and to offer up a silent prayer for the soul of a dead punk girl. We might all hope to inspire such an interesting mix of the sonic and the sublime when it's time to paint our masterpiece.
