Silver Water

By Amy Bloom (E-journal 1)

“Silver water” is a part of Amy Bloom’s collection of short stories “Come to me” which was published in 1993. The story is told in first person by Violet, younger sister of mentally ill Rose. The story revolves around a family Rose and Violet, their parents. Their father, David is a psychiatrist and their mother, Galen is a musician. Amy Bloom, a psychotherapist herself portrays the theme of mental illness of a family member in a witty fashion which otherwise is a serious issue, in the story. 

The story starts with the lines “My sister’s voice was like mountain water in a silver pitcher; the clear blue beauty of it cools you and lifts you up beyond your heat, beyond your body”. In this opening scene Violet, recalls her sister’s singing and tries to reveal her beautiful, older sister before she had her first psychotic breakdown at the age of fifteen. Rose spent the next ten years of her life in and out of hospitals with good and bad doctors before she committed suicide. Rose’s mental illness became a great challenge for the members of the family. Ten years of treatment from different hospitals obviously ruined the family’s normal lifestyle, despite of that while reading I was amazed at the family’s optimism and strength to fight against Rose’s illness. During our literacy group discussion we related the story’s plot with the movie “My sister’s keeper” where we could draw the similarities that they two stories share with respect to presenting the family’s struggle to cope with the illness of a child in the family. We also shared our personal experiences of having a mentally ill person in our extended families or other’s experiences.

Rose had many therapists, out of which many of them were bad and only a good one. Family also participated in the counselling sessions. Violet recalls the best therapist they had, a doctor named Dr. Thorne. Under Dr. Thorne’s care Rose was doing well and was able to gain more control over her compulsive behavior. She started losing weight, took her medicines on time, begins singing with the church choir and it became easier to bring her back whenever she used to losses it off. Unfortunately, after five years Dr. Throne died and Rose losses all her progress that she made. After Dr. Thorne’s death, Rose conditioned started worsening and one she kills herself, freeing herself from the struggle with her illness.

As a reader the story did leave me emotional and sad but also strangely positive. The thing that attracted me the most in the story was the evident love for each other which was dominating in this family that makes you senses the strength of the family. The narration which was done by Rose’s sister lets you see the situation of schizophrenia from the perspective of loving, brave, patient family members who cope with the effect of this illness everyday of their lives. We can see instances such as when one of the therapist while the counselling session started addressing Rose a third person when infact she was present in the room, to which Violet replied “I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to get you to stop talking about her in the third person.” This instances and many more in the story shows their acceptance and protected nature of each of the family member towards Rose as well as towards each other. I felt for a story this short, could not have been more explicit and precise. Also with the author’s use of emotional language, metaphors and simile could bring about the admiration of Violet towards her elder sister Rose.

And lastly in our discussion we tried putting the story in Indian context in order to understand that in what ways a family’s struggle might be different from the one mentioned in the story. A country like India where mental illness is still seen as taboo how then would have been the members of a family with a mentally ill person be able to cope with the circumstances and the societal pressure.