Julie Otsuka: Diem Perdidi

Flipping through my short story anthologies late one evening I came across a gem. “Diem Perdidi” by Julie Otsuka. The 10-page story takes place over several months, as the narrator observes her mother’s mental decline from Alzheimer’s Disease. I know, the subject sounds like a downer but, somehow, it’s not. It’s an altogether sharp, poignant look at life in one all-too-common variant.

The structure of the story is what sets it apart. In interviews, Otsuka said it was the structure that finally brought everything together. The device is simple: An ever-evolving list of things her mother remembers and things she doesn’t remember as she falls deeper into the mental abyss that is Alzheimer’s. Paragraph by paragraph we see the mother struggle to hang on to her life. What’s important and what isn’t are boiled down to their essence.

For example, the mother remembers many things about her husband, Frank. She remembers that he loves peaches. She remembers Sunday drives to the sea in their brown car. She remembers the FBI coming for him during the war and not seeing him again until the war ended. Many of the things the mother remembers seem to confound the narrator—the first line of “How High the Moon,” the Pledge of Allegiance, that coffee is in Aisle 2 at the supermarket.

What the mother does not remember is what give the story its tragic undertone. The mother does not remember a recent walk where she plucked a flower from a neighbor’s yard and slipped it into her hair. She does not remember to comb her hair. By the end she does not remember her daughter’s name. It hurts.Paragraphs opening and closing the story mirror each other, revealing the decline, bringing everything full circle.

I found myself reading this piece several times to understand the journey the narrator and mother take and why it captured me so. There is a rhythm and musicality to the writing that enhances the structure. Little blips of memory come in staccato sentences, reading like riffs of jazz almost. Certain memories are repeated again and again, illustrating their importance to the mother, imprinting themselves on the reader.

Its an artful piece of writing, moving, revealing, everything a story should be.

“Diem Perdidi,” which translates to “lost day,” was first published in “Granta,” Issue 117. I came across it in “The Best American Short Stories,” 2012, edited by Tom Perrotta. It is available on “Granta,” at the library, or through the Internet Archive. •