With Irises, award-winning author Francisco X. Stork paints the lives of two young women at a crossroads in consciousness and beliefs, faced with decisions that will either allow or destroy their most cherished dreams. Stork’s sensitive handling of an uncommon subject is a valuable journey that will help readers understand the choices we often must make as we weigh the costs of loving against the obligations we have to ourselves of living our own authentic lives.
Kate and Mary Romero have spent two years since the accident that left their mother in a vegetative state, living under the stern, restrictive, limited but loving influence of their father, Church of God Pastor Manuel Romero. His certainty that removing life-supports from his comatose wife would be a sin against God has left the family in service to the all-but-lifeless mother in the parish house provided by the congregation.
The sudden death of their father begins a process of awakening in older sister Kate, who burns to attend Stanford University and become a doctor, and in 16 year-old Mary, a gifted artist whose ability to ‘see the light’ and put it on canvas has vanished since her mother’s tragedy. Mary’s unsuccessful attempt to re-render the famous Van Gogh painting, Irises, has shown her how lifeless and dull her painting has become since her mother’s accident.
Both girls’ dreams, fostered and encouraged by their lively mother, crushed and denied by their father, bring each to the edge of despair at the contemplation of accepting endless servitude to their lifeless mother.
Vivid characters emerge to help the sisters decide whether to sacrifice their hopes to keep their mother “alive”, or to make the leap of faith called for in ending what their mother herself would call no life at all. As the faults of the father emerge, the sisters seek help from distant Aunt Julia, who has health problems of her own.
Having removed life supports from my own dying mother, I connected with the story. Soul and spirit combine in the painful process of letting go, giving this book its own luminous quality.
Highly recommended.