Knowing that you are dying makes you hold on to your life even more dearly than ever. It makes you wonder whether you deserved the past, whether the future desires you, whether you will linger on in the minds of those who love you…………
Gina Holmes’s debut novel “Crossing Oceans” is one of the best books I’ve ever read. To remember that it was an excellent emotional read would be an understatement. The book, the characters and the love it portrayed will always have an everlasting impression on me. It was by a freak chance that I laid my eyes on it. Recommended by my friend, I am happy that I decided to give it a shot.
The book throws light on the last days of Jenny Lucas, a single mother with a daughter, Isabella who has never met her father. They come back to their hometown after when many long years. Dying of cancer, Jenny is yet to break the news to her family. The reason behind her return is to make sure that even after her demise, Bella would be loved and cared. The worst part is that Bella’s father; Jenny’s high school boyfriend doesn’t know that he is a father. Married and childless, David and his wife Louis are happy to learn about Bella and agree to adopt her once the inevitable happens.
Various instances in the story have made me put down the book only wipe my tears away. One such incident is when Jenny takes Bella to the ocean to explain to her that she would soon be gone forever. She compares dying to Crossing Oceans, the same analogy Jenny’s mother had used during her last days. That night Bella tries to swim across the lake beside their house “to wait for you, Mother, when you cross the ocean.” This ends up with Bella falling into a coma to recover days later refurbishing a friendship that fell apart years ago.
Although the numerous developments in the story make it a perfect blend of life, I found the mother –daughter relationship of three generations the most intriguing. Jenny ultimately dies, out in the snow, watching the face she loved the most. Years later Isabella is pregnant with a baby girl and wonders if she would be able to do for her daughter, what her mother had done for her. Reading her mother’s journal she realises that Mother was the woman who had given her the love of a lifetime within seven short years and Mom (David’s wife Louis) was the woman who had ushered her into womanhood. Just as Jenny had feared, David was a lousy father.
Three apple trees beside the river planted by Jenny’s mother on her deathbed, by Jenny during her last days and by Isabella, pregnant with her daughter portray the love of the three generations. The book though tragic leaves a positive note with the start of the fourth generation….
In the end, I realized that life is too short to leave wounds raw and unhealed. Life is too precious to simply let it slip between your fingers. Every life is worth living. Turning the pages of my life, never should I feel that I don’t have enough memories to keep my past alive. I learnt to make more memories. For what would we be if it were not for those flashes of memories?