The Aquarium, By Aleksander Hemon

Death by itself is devastating. But the death of a child is devastating beyond comprehension. How does a parent cope with the emotional trauma caused by the loss of a child?
In “The Aquarium,” well-known author, Aleksander Hemon recounts his daughter’s fight against brain cancer. Hemon and his wife, Teri watch as their nine month old “beautiful, ever-smiling daughter” (Hemon 12), loses her battle with cancer. In this story, Hemon struggles to make sense of his daughter’s illness and subsequent death.. The storytelling process is a coping mechanism for Hemon and his older daughter, Ella. This story is Hemon’s lifeline. Through it, he channels his overactive imagination, and uses the story as a medium to make sense of the rapidly changing
My baby! My baby!’ I keep howling.” (p. 12). One can only wonder if the breaking of that emotional dam allowed him to free himself to write about the ordeal. As a fictional writer, writing had been ingrained in him. It was a familiar routine and habit that had existed for years. But during Isabel’s illness there was no routine; they had been living moment to moment, scared to imagine a bright future for fear of the impending loss. Their life leading up to Isabel’s death had lacked routine and repetition: “the human sense of comfort depends on repetitive, familiar actions - our minds and bodies strive to become accustomed to predictable circumstances.” (p. 8). Hemon craved the repetition and the banality of routine. Isabel’s death, while heartbreaking, no longer shackled Hemon to the present. As such, he had no need to fear the possibilities of a life without her, because that fate had just come true. Instinctively, he fell back on his old habit of writing for comfort. Only this time, reality dictated his story. It was no longer a fictional piece, but rather a piece that had been born from sorrow, experience and anguish, and that was a culmination of the excess of words that he had. For Hemon, “[t]he words dictated the story.” (p. 7). He wrote how he felt and what he
Though Hemon had been trying to live in the present for the entire arduous journey - from diagnosis to death, he was in fact, living in a state of suspended reality. Subconsciously, he was aware of the inevitable. With a three percent chance of survival, the odds were stacked up against Isabel. Despite his best attempts at squelching any imaginative function, “[i]n [Hemon’s] hastily suppressed visions, [he’d] foreseen the moment of [his] child’s death.” (p. 12). All along he knew what the outcome would be. Yet in an attempt to cope with the situation as it was occurring, he found it easier to block off any thoughts of the future or the past. The raw pain of loss thrust Hemon back into reality where he had to find an alternative outlet for his grief and emotions. Thus “The Aquarium” was