Gray Shawl

Gray Shawl

I thought that the essay was really heartbreaking and depressing. I loved how the boy was there for his mother during her apparent case of Alzheimer's disease; it was a terrible thing for him to have to experience. I thought of my grandfather and how terrible it was for my grandmother to experience the pain of having to remind him of when they first met and their wedding day and then during his later phases of who she was.

When the essay first started, I thought that the gray shawl was an indication of how the father was going to die, since the grandmother was wearing it after her husband died. I soon realized that after the story continued that it was a flashback or a dream that the narrator was going through. I found it really enlightening and realistic.

Whenever the narrator was wishing that they could swim and all the mother was concderned about was when the driver was coming. I still didn't seem to figure out who the speaker was talking to when they were on the phone. I think that it was a psychiatrist, but I'm not sure. At the end of the essay, I felt bad for the narrator, because even though they didn't know how to swim, they still wanted the mother to feel as if they were important to her, possibly even more so than the driver. I am not sure whether the driver was the mother's boyfriend or not, but she seemed to care more about them than she did about her own child.

virginia quarterly 2006