I was deeply moved by Erin McReynolds’s essay “And These Too Are Defensive Wounds” [September 2024], in which she struggles to process her mother’s murder and her evolving feelings about the murderer. My sister, Anne, was murdered in 1974. The crime was never solved. On the one hand, I’m grateful that my parents and I were spared the ordeal of a trial, but I will always wonder if Anne had a connection to her killer and if there was a reason he chose her as his victim. It took me years to be able to talk about my sister’s death and to grieve openly. I admire the courage it must have taken for McReynolds to dive into the courtroom transcripts and to share her inner journey. I thank her for standing up for her mother and for all victims of violence.
I agree with Erin McReynolds’s decision to speak out against the parole of the man who murdered her mother. The “fawning” response to abusers that she mentions in the interview on your website [“Memories on Trial,” interview by Andrew Snee] was new to me, and I’m interested to learn more about it. I provide online therapy and serve many clients who are processing trauma. One of the methods we use is to ask them to write a “trauma impact statement.” McReynolds’s letter to the parole board goes through some of the impacts she experienced, and I was impressed with her honesty. Her essay and others like it in The Sun have helped me understand a little better the trauma people face. I hope they have made me a better therapist.
“Wedding Colors,” by Chante Owens [September 2024], was a sad and beautiful essay. What a heel her boyfriend was for not supporting her and not reprimanding the man who stupidly blurted out, “Brett brought a Black girl!”
Wesley Verhoeve’s paired images on the back of your September 2024 issue left me scratching my head—until I noticed that at the center of each photograph stands a living being, precariously perched, rising above the detritus that surrounds them.
Since receiving the September 2024 issue of The Sun in the mail, I have been mesmerized by Michael Mwasi’s photographs, especially the cover shot.
On the right a young man, Martking, wears a bracelet on each wrist, including a beaded one that reads “Kenya.” Cell phone in hand, he looks us in the eye through glasses, under a backward-facing hat. But it’s the woman on the left, Eunice, who pulls me in. She is holding a glass but also aiming a finger of the same hand at the photographer in hello, or maybe flashing a peace sign. Her face, her smile, and those eyes—so knowing, maybe even loving as well.
“Returning” [interview with Suzanne Kelly, by Derek Askey, August 2024] brought back memories of my dad’s funeral. The purchase agreement for the casket and vault stated in bold letters, “Hundred-year guarantee against failure.” The image of my dad’s body locked away inside those containers struck me as horrifying. He was a dairy farmer, familiar with the cycles of life and decay inherent in that occupation. This seemed completely out of character for him. Then his fundamentalist, conservative Lutheran pastor advised us to find solace in the knowledge that there would be a resurrection of the dead, and we would someday be reunited with Dad in the living flesh in heaven. Suddenly it began to make sense: preserving the body in a vault would make Jesus’s work easier when he returns to resurrect them. I wonder now whether the Christian belief in the physical resurrection of the body has kept many of us from embracing a return to the earth upon our death.
I’m a bit behind on my reading these days, so I just finished the June 2024 issue. I was delighted to see my favorite magazine tackle the difficult topic of disability, as I am a published researcher in the field of disability studies.
I do wish the issue had presented writing by people with disabilities themselves. There is an overabundance in general of stories like “Guardians,” by John Vurro, who writes about caring for his autistic son. While I empathize with the author and believe it is valuable to share these types of experiences, we too often hear only from parents and caregivers, whose perspective is necessarily one-sided. Such stories are so prevalent that disability scholars have a term to describe the author: “autism mom”—as in, a parent who focuses solely on what their child’s disability means for them, and who centers themselves in the autism experience even though they are not autistic.
As an autistic person myself and an advocate for people with disabilities, I’d love to see more writing in The Sun from the perspective of disabled people themselves. We don’t need others to speak for us, especially those who are nondisabled, cannot understand or fathom our experiences, and may even see us as some sort of burden or problem.
Thanks to S.H. for reading my essay and for the feedback. I wrote “Guardians” from the perspective of a parent who was going through the muddled legal process of obtaining guardianship of their adult child in the state of New Jersey. It was an attempt to help other parents who may be dealing with the same confusing and alienating process understand the ramifications and perhaps find some comfort. I didn’t intend to take my child’s perspective or to claim ownership of his story. Rather I was trying to understand the complexity of our connectedness; how one moment of hardship shifts our emotional center as a family; and, most important, what this process means for my son’s life now that he is part of a legal system.
I agree that all people should write their own story; that all stories are important; and that one perspective, such as mine, should in no way surpass, mute, or ignore other voices. There should be room for everyone. I’d love nothing more than to have my son write, speak, and especially advocate for himself. Sadly he is unable. Yet I hope that he will be one day. Nothing would make me happier.
Reading Leath Tonino’s “The Peaceful Circle—Year in a Wild Marsh” [April 2024], I was completely convinced that the video described was real, and I ran to my computer to find it on YouTube. After realizing the story was fiction, I laughed out loud and read it again, enjoying it even more the second time. The comments left by “viewers” were so clever and creative. Even the usernames (@callofdoody) all seemed authentic. And the accompanying photo by Marilyn Lemmon was spot-on, as is so often the case in The Sun. Beautiful.
I eventually cancel most magazine subscriptions when the unopened issues begin to clutter my life, but I’ve read The Sun faithfully for twenty years. Until I came across it, I’d never bothered to find out who the editor of a magazine was. Then I fell in love with Sy Safransky’s Notebook—and, over time, with Sy. I knew he was a happily married man, yet I told my husband, “If you die, I’m heading for Chapel Hill.”
In 2016 we treated ourselves to a Sun writers’ retreat at the Esalen Institute, where I sat naked next to [longtime Sun contributor] Sparrow in a natural hot tub under a million stars, the waves of the Pacific crashing below us. Who could have imagined? Sy spoke before dinner and lamented his inability to retire. The magazine was his love, his life. Later I sought him out. “Nobody loves The Sun with you at the helm more than me,” I said. “I am giving you my permission to retire.”
In 2020 I saw my mother through death after years of dementia, and I discovered that I have a gene for frontotemporal dementia. A tangled path awaits me. When I read about Sy’s own dementia and retirement [“A Letter from Sy’s Desk,” December 2023], I cried on and off for days. I cry now as I write this.
There is nothing to be done. I wish I could hold his hand.
