Lincoln in the Bardo

“Willie Lincoln was the most lovable boy I ever knew, bright, sensible, sweet-tempered and gentle-mannered. He was the sort of child people imagine their children will be, before they have children...

His self-possession—aplomb, as the French call it—was extraordinary. His mind was active, inquisitive, and conscientious; his disposition was amiable and affectionate; his impulses were kind and generous; and his words and manners were gentle and attractive. He never failed to seek me out in the crowd, shake hands, and make some pleasant remark; and this in a boy of ten years of age, was, to say the least, endearing to a stranger. Willie had a gray and very baggy suit of clothes, and his style was altogether different from that of the curled darlings of the fashionable mothers.

I was one day passing the White House, when he was outside with a play-fellow on the sidewalk. Mr. Seward drove in, with Prince Napoleon and two of his suite in the carriage; and, in a mock-heroic way—terms of intimacy evidently existing between the boy and the Secretary—the official gentleman took off his hat, and the Napoleon did the same, all making the young Prince President a ceremonial salute. Not a bit staggered with the homage, Willie drew himself up to his full height, took off his little cap with graceful self-possession, and bowed down formally to the ground, like a little ambassador…

About noon, The President, Mrs. Lincoln, & Robert came down and visited the lost and loved one for the last time, together. They desired that there should be no spectator of their last sad moments in that house with their dead child & brother. They remained nearly 1/2 an hour. While they were thus engaged there came one of the heaviest storms of rain & wind that has visited this city for years, and the terrible storm without seemed almost in unison with the storm of grief within. During the half hour the family was closeted with the dead boy, lightning cleaved the dark sky outside, thunder as terrible as artillery fire made the crockery shudder, and violent winds charged in from the northwest. From throughout the spacious halls that evening great sounds of grief could be heard, not all emanating from the direction of the room where Mrs. Lincoln lay insensate; the President’s deeper groans could also be heard. A century and a half has passed, and yet it still seems intrusive to dwell upon that horrible scene—the shock, the querulous disbelief, the savage cries of sorrow.

It was only just at bedtime, when the boy would normally present himself for some talk or roughhousing, that Mr. Lincoln seemed truly mindful of the irreversibility of the loss. Around midnight I entered to ask if I could bring him something. The sight of him shocked me. His hair was wild, his face pale, with signs of recent tears plainly evident. I marveled at his agitated manner and wondered what might be the outcome if he did not find some relief. I had recently been to visit an iron-works in the state of Pennsylvania, where a steam-release valve had been demonstrated to me; the President’s state put me in mind of the necessity of such an apparatus.

The unkempt gentleman was fussing over the small form now, stroking the hair, patting and rearranging the pale, doll-like hands. As the lad stood nearby, uttering many urgent entreaties for his father to look his way, fuss over and pat him. Which the gentleman appeared not to hear. Then this already troubling and unseemly display descended to a new level of— We heard an intake of breath from the Reverend, who, appearance notwithstanding, is not easily shocked. He is going to pick that child up, the Reverend said. And so he did. The man lifted the tiny form out of the— Sick-box. The man bent, lifted the tiny form from the box, and, with surprising grace for one so ill-made, sat all at once on the floor, gathering it into his lap. Sinking his head into the place between chin and neck, the gentleman sobbed, raggedly at first, then unreservedly, giving full vent to his emotions. While the lad darted back and forth nearby, in an apparent agony of frustration. For nearly ten minutes the man held the— Sick-form. The boy, frustrated at being denied the attention he felt he deserved, moved in and leaned against his father, as the father continued to hold and gently rock the— Sick-form.

At one point, moved, I turned away from the scene and found we were not alone. A crowd had gathered outside. All were silent. As the man continued to gently rock his child. While his child, simultaneously, stood quietly leaning against him. Then the gentleman began to speak. The lad threw one arm familiarly around his father’s neck, as he must often have done, and drew himself in closer, until his head was touching his father’s head, the better to hear the words the man was whispering into the neck of the—
His frustration then becoming unbearable, the boy began to— The lad began to enter himself. As it were. The boy began to enter himself; had soon entered himself entirely, and at this, the man began sobbing anew, as if he could feel the altered condition of that which he held. It was all too much, too private, and I left that place, and walked alone. As did I. I lingered there, transfixed, uttering many prayers.

Mouth at the worm’s ear, Father said: We have loved each other well, dear Willie, but now, for reasons we cannot understand, that bond has been broken. But our bond can never be broken. As long as I live, you will always be with me, child. Then let out a sob. Dear Father crying    That was hard to see    And no matter how I patted & kissed & made to console, it did no… You were a joy, he said. Please know that. Know that you were a joy. To us. Every minute, every season, you were a—you did a good job. A good job of being a pleasure to know. Saying all this to the worm!    How I wished him to say it to me    And to feel his eyes on me    So I thought, all right, by Jim, I will get him to see me    And in I went    It was no bother at all    Say, it felt all right    Like I somewhat belonged in… In there, held so tight, I was now partly also in Father. And could know exactly what he was…

Could feel the way his long legs lay. How it is to have a beard. Taste coffee in the mouth and, though not thinking in words exactly, knew that the feel of him in my arms has done me good. It has. Is this wrong? Unholy? No, no, he is mine, he is ours, and therefore I must be, in that sense, a god in this; where he is concerned I may decide what is best. And I believe this has done me good. I remember him. Again. Who he was. I had forgotten some- what already. But here: his exact proportions, his suit smelling of him still, his forelock between my fingers, the heft of him familiar from when he would fall asleep in the parlor and I would carry him up to— It has done me good. I believe it has.

It is secret. A bit of secret weakness, that shores me up; in shoring me up, it makes it more likely that I shall do my duty in other matters; it hastens the end of this period of weakness; it harms no one; therefore, it is not wrong, and I shall take away from here this resolve: I may return as often as I like, telling no one, accepting whatever help it may bring me, until it helps me no more. Then Father touched his head to mine. Dear boy, he said, I will come again. That is a promise.

After perhaps thirty minutes the unkempt man left the white stone home and stumbled away into the darkness. Entering, I found the boy sitting in one corner. My father, he said. Yes, I said. He said he will come again, he said. He promised. I found myself immeasurably and inexplicably moved. A miracle, I said.”

~ George Saunders, LINCOLN IN THE BARDO
Lincoln in the Bardo, by renowned American short story writer (and Buddhist) George Saunders, is surely the first major novel to use the Tibetan word bardo in the title. The Lincoln who is in the bardo—the realm between death and rebirth—is Abraham and Mary’s son Willie, who has just died in the White House at the age of eleven. The book is a tragic father-and-son story—Abraham lost in grief, Willie lost in a ghostly and confusing realm—told simultaneously from two points of view: the living and the recently dead.

Many years ago I was driving with my family on Rock Creek Parkway in Washington, and my wife’s cousin pointed up to a graveyard and said that Lincoln’s son Willie had been buried there during Lincoln’s presidency. She described this beautiful, haunting detail—that the newspapers of the time reported that Lincoln was so grief-stricken he’d gone into the crypt on several occasions. The image sprang up in my mind of Lincoln in the crypt with the boy’s body across his knees — sort of a cross between the Lincoln Memorial and the Pieta. So the book is set on the first night that Lincoln comes to the graveyard. He enters the crypt, holds the body, and, as they say, “Hilarity ensues.”

So when I got into this Lincoln book, I thought, well, who else is going to be there? Maybe ghosts or spiritual beings. I’d been reading some Buddhist texts and was aware of the bardo as a sort of transitional state between the moment when you die and the moment you’re reincarnated. That struck me as an interesting way to destabilize the usual ghost story, to say, well, they’re not really ghosts, they’re something else. Then the book becomes a way to see what they are, what’s holding them there, what their limitations are, what their capabilities are, what their desires are, and so on…

As a writer, my goal was to try to create an afterlife that was funny and unexpected and terrifying in some way that we hadn’t seen before. Before I started, I did a lot of reading about what different religious systems think happens right after death. I thought the realm described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead was really rich and beautiful, but when I tried to drop the characters into that realm it was sort of strangely static. It was like when you’re a kid and the church tells you exactly what heaven’s going to be like. You feel it would be a little disappointing if it were exactly like they described it…

So who do we have in these bardo beings? We have a bunch of neurotic beings who are self-obsessed, completely convinced they’re correct, prefer their version to everyone else’s, and believe they’re at the center of the universe. That’s no different from human beings. They’re just like us, but more so. I love the idea in the Tibetan texts that when we’re here on earth, the body dampens the mind’s erratic power, like a horse on a tether. But then when you die the tether gets cut. The mind becomes immensely powerful, but it’s also habituated to the ways it was been used during life. So they’re kind of humans on steroids, but dead. They’re trapped, because they’re denying nature in a way. They’re not supposed to be pausing at this graveyard and if they stay there too long bad things happen to them.

This has an uncanny resemblance to what we learn in the Buddhist teachings. We’re also trapped because of our habits of mind, but that there are certain practices and ways of thinking that might lead us out of our current trap. It was interesting to see that same thing enacted within this imaginary ghostly community. In the Tibetan teachings, it’s said people get stuck in the ghost realm because they don’t recognize or won’t accept that they’re dead. They won’t accept that they have died, while we won’t accept that we will. They mistake their consciousnesses for actual, solid reality, which is sort of the joke. Reading the book, you know that they’re immaterial and they’re being produced by their own neurotic habits of mind. You know that about them, but maybe you’re not sure about that truth about yourself…

Writing this book, the thing I found myself most interested in was a question we all have to contend with. On one hand, we are born wanting to love and most of us are lucky enough to find it. And as I get older, it seems to me that the whole point of this life is make yourself more loving and less selfish. So that’s all well and good. But as you get older, you’re also faced with the fact that this is all finite and conditional. That’s a really crazy kind of one–two punch that life gives us…

So you have this very soulful, spiritual person in Abraham Lincoln. He is at a time in his life when he was arguably as wide open as any human being in history. He is so unobstructed. But he’s in a lot of trouble in his job — the country is going into the ditch and tens of thousands of people are dying every day — and then his favorite son dies suddenly. This story is a beautiful way to ponder an issue that is getting more and more important for me as I get older. What is kindness? Let’s say that it means being maximally beneficial to anyone we can help. That doesn’t necessarily mean idiot compassion. It might mean having a stout spine — pushing back, protecting people. Kindness has a large component of awareness, a large component of compassion, and also a large component of fearlessness.

Sometimes I default to niceness because it’s easier. In my life, kindness can sometimes be a get-out-of-jail-free card. You see somebody who is abusive or aggressive and you think, well, if I just smile at them, that’s enough. I don’t think that’s true and I don’t think the Buddhist teachings say that. There are many examples of great Buddhist teachers who have been quite ornery and unafraid of confrontation. At the same time, one thing that spiritual practice and writing have in common is the desire to suspend the moment of judgment. Keep the lens open as long as you can. Wait to act as long as you possibly can and get as much uninflected data as you can. And maybe even as much love as you can. Then, when you really have to act, you’ll be acting from a much solider place. It’s quite a powerful thing to do — to be confident enough to let all the data come in before acting.

In early drafts you can paint a cartoonish or condescending picture of a certain type of a person. When you do revisions, that offends you on a language basis, so you tighten it up. And in tightening the language up, you improve your vision of that person. In the same way, compassion might just be that act of reconsidering somebody with your concepts turned way down. For me as a writer, that is a language-based thing, but I sometimes feel it bleeding over in to my real life. I’ll have a quick idea of who somebody is and a quick projection will arise, a dismissive or negative thing. Then I can check that in a real-life revision process and note that that is projective, vague, unspecific. That’s a real gift. Writing helps slow reality down so you can enact that process a little more deliberately in life. It’s like training wheels for compassion.”

~ George Saunders interviewed by Melvin McLeod, Lion's Roar