All of the novel’s main characters are burdened with heavy losses that they respond to in various ways. Among Eldon Starlight’s many losses, he is estranged from his mother, his best friend was killed in the Korean War, and the love of his life, Angie, dies in childbirth because of Eldon’s own negligence. He copes with the grief of these losses by drinking. In contrast, the old man (Bunky) copes with losing Angie (whom he also loved) by choosing to raise her son, Franklin, since Eldon is unfit to do so himself. For his part, Franklin must carry all of these losses, including the death of his father at the end of the story. It remains to be seen how Franklin will cope with his multiplying losses, though it’s hinted that Bunky’s example will prevail. Through the close connection between love and grief, the novel suggests that genuine love often leads to deep loss, and that people either cope with grief by resisting it and turning inward ways in that embitter them and perpetuate their pain (like Eldon), or by accepting it, which ultimately opens them to greater love for others (like the old man).
Eldon copes with grief by resisting his emotions, being pulled into a self-defeating cycle of guilt, shame, and alcoholism. Eldon’s drinking began after he left his mother with her abusive boyfriend. “Love an' shame never mix,” he tells Frank. “One's always gonna be runnin' roughshod over the other. Lovin' her. Feelin' guilt an' shame then gettin' angry as hell at myself.” Conflict between love and shame pulled Eldon relentlessly inward, and instead of seeking reconciliation, he got stuck in a pattern of drinking to stifle his guilt. After Eldon killed his friend Jimmy during the Korean War, his drinking grew worse: “He sought a place that carried no reminders, believing that a place existed that was barren of memory and recollection.” Eldon has learned to deal with the guilt of painful memories by pushing them deeper inside—learning too late that this place of “no reminders” doesn’t really exist; it can only be faked through drinking.
After Angie got pregnant, Eldon’s fear of destroying those he loved drove him to drink even more. He explains to Frank, “The dark […] always sucked me back into drinkin'. I woke up to the belief that I'd always lose or destroy them things or people that meant the most to me cuz I always done that.” By this point in his life, Eldon has internalized the belief that he is a destructive person and that there’s no way of fixing it outwardly; he copes in ways that end up perpetuating grief in his own and others’ lives.
Instead of avoiding and resisting grief, Bunky copes with it more outwardly—by spending time in nature, and especially by channeling his grief into care for others. When Frank comes home from burying his father, Bunky remarks that “sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there's a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through.” To cope with that grief, he tells Frank, “I always went to where the wind blows […] Don't know as I ever got an answer but it always felt better bein' out there.” In other words, there might not be understandable answers to grief, but instead of resisting or hiding from it, Bunky allows his grief to lead him into the comforts of nature. His losses might not be fixable, but there’s something bigger than himself that offers enduring stability instead of spiraling internal pain.
After the devastating loss of Angie, Bunky copes by adopting Frank. When Eldon first brings Frank to Bunky’s farm, “he said he'd raise ya cuz he owed [Angie]. I didn't get it an' I asked him and all he done was keep on lookin' down at you for the longest time. […] Then he said that she brung him to life.” Instead of wallowing inwardly in his grief, Bunky copes with it by giving Frank life much as Angie “[brought] him to life.”
At the end of the novel, the lingering question is how Frank will respond to the heavy griefs he’s encountered—will he follow more in Eldon’s footsteps or in Bunky’s? The ending hints that Frank will follow what Bunky has instilled in him, going “where the wind blows.” Overlooking the farm, Frank feels that he is “hung there above that peaceful space where the wind ruled,” in a dream world where he can imagine meeting his ancestors—leaning on realities outside himself—and thereby finding a semblance of peace.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Love, Loss, and Grief ThemeTracker
Love, Loss, and Grief Quotes in Medicine Walk
"I want you to take me out into that territory you come through. The one you hunted all your life. There's a ridge back forty mile. Sits above a narrow valley with a high range behind it, facing east […] Because I need you to bury me there."
The kid sat with the coffee cup half raised to his mouth and he felt the urge to laugh and stand up and walk out and head back to the old farm. But his father looked at him earnestly and he could see pain in his eyes and something leaner, sorrow maybe, regret, or some ragged woe tattered by years.
“All's I'm tryin' to say is that we never had the time for learnin' about how to get by out here. None of us did. White man things was what we needed to learn if we was gonna eat regular. Indian stuff just kinda got left behind on accounta we were busy gettin' by in that world."
"So I don't get what we're doin' out here then."
[…]
"I owe," he said,
"Yeah, I heard that before."
"I'm tired, Frank."
[…]
"That's the first time you ever called me by my name."
"'What he done was brave. You know that, huh?"
"Done what?"
"Tellin' you. That took some grit."
"I don't think it'd take much grit to tell what ya already know."
"Maybe. But it sat in his gut a long time. Most'll just give stuff like that over to time. Figure enough of it passes things'll change. Try to forget it. Like forgettin's a cure unto itself. It ain't. You never forget stuff that cuts that deep."
He thought about what Becka had said and worked at finding some pattern to the shards and pieces of history he'd been allowed to carry now. They jangled and knocked around inside him. It felt like jamming the wrong piece into a picture puzzle. Like frustration alone could make it fit the pattern. He cast a look back over his shoulder at his father, who seemed to be asleep, but he'd mumble when the horse's step over a rock or a root made him lurch in the saddle. When the kid looked back at the thin trail they followed he felt worn and makeshift as the trail itself.
"Jimmy used to say we're a Great Mystery. Everything. Said the things they done, those old-time Indians, was all about learnin' to live with that mystery. Not solving it, not comin' to grips with it, not even tryin' to guess it out. Just bein' with it. I guess I wish I'da learned the secret to doing that. […] I never belonged nowhere, Frank. Never belonged nowhere or to nobody," he said.
He took the knife and held it under his ribcage and Jimmy stopped, his body going perfectly still as he stared at him over the rim of his hand. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was peace there and he nodded at him. The knife went in almost on its own and he twisted it like he was trained to do and leaned forward cheek to cheek with Jimmy and heard his last breath ease out of him.
Time was a thing he carried. It took him a long time after Korea to realize that. […] It rankled him, the unease, the slow creep of terror, like being hunted, tracked by some prowling beast invisible to the eye, recognized only by the sense of looming danger at his back. Then, always, time's dank shadow would fall over him again and sweep him into its chill. […] He spiralled downward and the measure of his days was the depth of the shadow itself. He wandered. He sought a place that carried no reminders, believing that a place existed that was barren of memory and recollection. But he bore time like sodden baggage.
“I recall standin’ on the porch early one morning with a mug of coffee, looking out across the lake, an’ I felt like for the first time I could stand this life. I could settle. […] She brung that alive in me, Frank.
“It got me to wonderin’. Got me wonderin’ if time could make goin’ back to other things possible too. Goin’ back to other people, other places. My mother and such. Never ever thought them kinda thoughts before. Found myself wonderin’ if returnin’ was somethin’ a man could do, if ya could walk back over your trail and maybe reclaim things. They were odd thoughts but she hadda way of getting them into my head.”
“You were scared ya couldn’t be what ya had to be,” the kid said.
“More’n that,” his father said. “Scared I couldn’t be what I never was. I never told her about Jimmy, about my mother, even though she told me I could tell her anythin’. I was ashameda myself, Frank. Bone deep shamed. I was scared if I started in on tellin’ about myself I’d break down an’ I wanted to be strong for her. I really did. But layin’ there knowin’ how weak I really was brung on the dark in me. The dark that always sucked me back into drinkin’. I woke up to the belief that I’d always lose or destroy them things or people that meant the most to me cuz I always done that.”
“I knew what he meant, Frank. I got made better too. But not better enough on accounta when she needed me most I wasn’t there an’ she died cuz of that. I looked at the two of you on that rocker an’ all’s I could do was walk away. All’s I could do was walk away because I guess I come to know right there that some holes get filled when people die. Dirt fills ’em. But other holes, well, ya walk around with them holes in ya forever and there weren’t nothin’ in the world to say about that. Nothin’.”
When the kid dropped off to sleep himself he didn’t know. He dreamed there was a man and a woman seated on a blanket. They were talking and their heads were bent close together, but he couldn’t see their faces or hear what they were saying. Then he was on the porch of a house he didn’t recognize. The sun was going down. The sky was alive with colour and he could see it bending and receding above the fields. A woman was there. She stood in the middle of the field, looking at him. She waved with both arms and he waved back at her but it was his father she was waving at.
“Sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there’s a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through, that’s sure […] Me, I always went to where the wind blows.” The old man put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him square on. “Don’t know as I ever got an answer but it always felt better bein’ out there.”
The kid nodded. They looked at each other. The horse neighed softly in the barn and the old man pulled the kid to him and clasped his arms around him and rocked side to side. The kid could smell the oil and grease and tobacco on him and it was every smell he recalled growing up with and he closed his eyes and pulled it all into him.
He closed his eyes for a moment and when he looked down into the valley again he thought he could see the ghostly shapes of people riding horses through the trees. […]
He watched them ride into the swale and ease the horses to the water while the dogs and children ran in the rough grass. The men and women on horseback dismounted and their shouts came to him laden with hope and good humour. He raised a hand to the idea of his father and mother and a line of people he had never known, then mounted the horse and rode back through the glimmer to the farm where the old man waited, a deck of cards on the scarred and battered table.
