Coppola Memoir

Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis and mother of Sophia, has a new memoir entitled Notes on a Life. (Readers may remember her, too, for her fascinating documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now.) It's based mostly on a collection of notebook entries going back to the 70s. BookSlut reviews the book. One paragraph was especially poignant.

Early in the memoir, the Coppola family is struck by tragedy with the loss of son Gio, twenty-two at the time of his death. Here Coppola’s entries are her most raw and heartbreaking, and also her most courageous. Coppola is any other mother suffering the unexpected loss of a child when she opens her heart to the reader following the incomprehensible event: “I am in an unspeakable rage. How could life so utterly and excruciatingly sabotage me…” And while her and her family’s grief carries on, Coppola finds strength in honoring Gio’s memory throughout her writings, finally acknowledging that the “deep volcanoes of searing emotion erupting without warning” are merely reminders “that I had a son whom I treasured and lost and won’t forget.”

The paragraph reminds me of the sort of thing Nicholas Wolterstorff taught us about losing a child.