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Saratoga writer finds peace in Paris after husband's death
By Brian Babcock ~ Saratoga News
Article Launched: 10/21/2008 04:12:36 PM PDT
Esther Dickler says she has never been the type to sit idly and watch as life passed her by. When she met the man of her dreams, she married him after just six months of courtship.
So when the time came to make a decision about how she would help herself heal after her husband's death in 1980, Dickler dropped everything and moved to Paris for a year. The experiences she had while living in the City of Lights is chronicled in her new book, "From My Window in Paris."
"I went there because after eight years of psychological and physical struggles as a caregiver to my husband, I knew I had to break out of the doldrums of apathy and change my lifestyle in a very drastic way," says Dickler, who lives in Saratoga. "How more drastic can it be to move to a foreign country where I knew no one and didn't speak the language? That's about as drastic as I could get."
There were times when Dickler questioned the move she made to a country more than 6,000 miles away from home. She said she was still reeling from her husband's death and the trauma of caring for him through the last eight years of his life.
Dickler calls her new book a "sequel" to "Please Leave Me ... Don't...," which chronicled the ordeal of taking care of her sick husband.
Although 18 months had passed since her husband's death when she began to write her latest book, Dickler admits that the sadness of losing the love of her life still consumed her.
"I needed to save my own life," Dickler says about moving to Paris.
Although she was doing what she thought was best for herself, friends questioned her reasoning.
"A friend of mine asked what will I do when I get to Paris," Dickler says. "I said, `I will do what the French do. I don't know what they do, but I will do what they do.'"
At 61, Dickler was taking a big step in her life, something that many people even decades younger than herself wouldn't have made. But Dickler says she doesn't understand people who live a safe and sheltered life.
"I love challenges," she says. "I get bored if I don't have any challenges. My whole life has been built on taking risks."
And although Dickler originally questioned whether the risk would pay off, life seemed to change dramatically for her only after days in Paris.
Dickler says this book wasn't meant to be more lighthearted than the first or the stories completely amusing in how they were told. However, she says, it did end up that way.
Throughout the book, which Dickler says reads much like a novel, the author chronicles her life throughout the year, touching on her problems with a lack of hot water to her difficulties communicating with the locals.
Dickler also comments how different apartments are in Paris compared to the United States. At one point, Dickler asks a French friend how old people takes baths since the bathtubs are so high.
"They don't," was the answer.
Pictures are also sprinkled throughout the book to give readers the feeling they are with Dickler in Paris. Dickler points out that her book is not a travelogue, but a story of inspiration for those who have been through the pain of losing a loved one.
Dickler actually began writing the book while still living in Paris and says she would sit down and pretend to be Ernest Hemmingway while taking notes in her apartment. But when Dickler returned home she ended up filing her notes on her trip away and began writing her first book, Please Leave Me ... Don't...
In the end, Dickler says, the yearlong trip not only helped heal the wounds left from her husband's passing but also helped her grow as a person.
"I was healed in many other ways," she says. "I got to know me and that was most important. I learned my limitations. I learned my strengths. |
