In Memory of Jerry Gray
By
1935 – 2020
Why I Write
by Jerry Gray
I have been so defined by those who were important and then their disappearance, vanished from my life because no reason was given for their coming, or going. I am writing of childhood, of course, and a damaged habit that then persisted without my noticing, a habit of not asking who that was, how they appeared or disappeared or why. My landscape is littered with disappearing parents, a brother who vanished for 20 years and died homeless, a great aunt who lived secretly 20 years in hospital, a relative who became a Carmelite nun, others whose histories or absences were mentioned only in proverbial hushed tones. So it is in certain families.