In Eric Beck Rubin’s Ten Clear Days,we meet an eighty-three-year-old woman, Mary Beck, who has just undergone emergency surgery after suffering a heart attack and stroke. Upon regaining consciousness, she learns her surgery was successful, and if she follows her treatment protocol, her prognosis looks good. The family is, understandably, relieved — everyone, that is, except Mary herself. She had previously signed do not resuscitate orders, which one of her daughters knowingly disregarded to save her life. Mary is angry. She wants to die. And because of MAiD, Canada’s recent Medical Assistance in Dying law, she is now free to make that choice.
Ten Clear Days is a novel based on a true story from the author’s own family history. Beck Rubin examines huge and complex meaning-of-life questions with both great sensitivity and urgency through the compelling narrative of Mary’s path to a medically assisted death.
Before her wishes can be honored, Mary must, for ten consecutive days, answer questions that demonstrate her mental competence and continued desire to die. An observer, introduced to readers as Au, is assigned to document those ten days, recording the hospital’s compliance with the new law. It is through Au’s notes that we learn a great deal about Mary and about her relationship with her children and grandchildren. The notes also grant us the opportunity to witness Mary’s final days and observe the unfolding of her life.
Each chapter, titled after consecutive days of the week, adds more to our understanding of Mary’s full life, which was greatly impacted by severe trauma: Mary is a Holocaust survivor. Interviews excerpted from her grandson’s PhD dissertation recount stories of Mary’s childhood in prewar Hungary, her life during the war, and her new beginnings across the ocean, as do recorded accounts from friends and family. Mary’s early experiences of trauma have cast a dark shadow over her life. She has had enough.
The dialogue in Ten Clear Days is particularly effective. Through small bits of conversation between Mary and her children and grandchildren, Beck Rubin provides readers with moving demonstrations of the deep love family members feel for each other and for Mary. We also sense the pain, especially evident in the conversations between Mary’s two daughters, and between Mary and Jackie, the daughter who is not yet ready to let her mother go. Still, the clock ticks. The ten days become nine, then eight, then seven …
What are a family’s responsibilities where the stakes are literally life and death? When there is little agreement on a correct course of action, whose wishes should prevail? While the circumstances of Mary’s death may be unusual, losing loved ones is an inevitable part of being human. How should we honor those loved ones in their last days, and how can we say goodbye? These are questions for us all. Ten Clear Days is a beautiful exploration of one family’s difficult process of finding the answers that work best for them.
Diane Gottlieb is the editor of Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage, Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, and Grieving Hope. She is the Special Projects Editor for ELJ Editions and the Prose/Creative Nonfiction Editor of Emerge Literary Journal. Her writing appears in Brevity, River Teeth, Witness, Florida Review, The Rumpus, and Huffington Post, among many other lovely places.
