Editorial Content for the Flower Bearers: A Memoir

After finishing THE FLOWER BEARERS, a rather crude thought surfaced unannounced in my mind.

It was a barely articulate suggestion that this dissonant, tender and exuberant but often frightening memoir by American poet, novelist and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths should have one of those warning stickers on the dust jacket --- something to the effect that its contents include graphic descriptions of mental illness that may not be suitable for all readers. Believe it or not, I mean this as a note of praise. She tells it like it is, in almost present-tense immediacy.

Yet the volume of content specific to Griffiths’ long struggle with diagnosed dissociative identity disorder and its accompanying anxiety issues is far less dominant than many other currents of emotional, artistic and creative tension running through her life.

"In its 60 short chapters, THE FLOWER BEARERS often reads like extemporaneous poetry or meditative stream-of-consciousness prose. At other times, it rushes at you in a tirade of anger and frustration..."

From the fragmented imagery of an unstable childhood, through her chaotic young adult years as an intermittently successful aspiring poet, to a more grounded middle age --- marked by her dramatic marriage to the notoriously brilliant Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie --- THE FLOWER BEARERS weaves a haphazard but honest account of a life lived mainly at its most extreme edges.

As an artist whose creativity feeds on amplified and multilayered emotion, Griffiths pours eloquent and profound meaning into her relationships --- those human ties where connection is everything and where loss can be so catastrophic as to be immobilizing, even beyond the usual parameters of grief.

The thread of loss that runs through the fabric of Griffiths’ life while simultaneously threatening to tear it apart is the sudden death --- alone and unnoticed until too late --- of her best friend and “chosen sister,” fellow poet Kamilah Aisha Moon. Moon died on the eve of Griffiths’ wedding to Rushdie. Everyone in the wedding party knew about it, except the bride herself.

When told the tragic news after the ceremony, Griffiths’ mind, heart and body fell into a black hole of uncontrollable prolonged anguish. Instead of a joyful honeymoon, Rushdie found himself caring for a new wife whose depression was so acute that at first she could not be left alone.

Within a year, as Griffiths slowly recovered her identity and focus, their roles would be reversed when Rushdie was attacked on stage at a speaking engagement by a knife-wielding would-be assassin who nearly succeeded. She is surprisingly concise and methodical in describing the dizzying sequence of events as Rushdie fought for his life. And she found within herself an unexpected reservoir of coping and supporting strength that had never appeared during previous crises.

In its 60 short chapters, THE FLOWER BEARERS often reads like extemporaneous poetry or meditative stream-of-consciousness prose. At other times, it rushes at you in a tirade of anger and frustration, particularly when Griffiths’ phone call to a New York mental wellness hotline got her arrested and brutalized by city police. Mental health breakdowns are still criminalized on a daily basis, and society is painfully slow in demanding better treatment for victims.

However, it would be rudely unjust to set aside the book without celebrating the evocative experience that gave rise to its title. It might make us think of cute little girls in flouncy dresses scattering rose petals at a wedding. But the historical role of flower bearers actually belongs to celebrations at life’s ending. About one-third of the way into her memoir, Griffiths describes a treasured moment when she and Aisha began placing cut flowers on the graves of iconic Black American poets, beginning with James Baldwin.

Every reader will find a wide choice of fitting takeaways from THE FLOWER BEARERS. This is the one that softly fastened itself to my heart.