Small Altars

By Justin Gardiner

Tupelo Press, 2024

Paperback: $21.95

Genre: Lyric Essay, Memoir

Reviewed by Edward Journey

The cover of Small Altars is an illustration of a boy with blonde hair levitating 4 feet over a living room floor, with his legs crossed, wearing headphones.

Beyond the platitudes and self-help books on grief and how to cope with it, there is a significant sub-genre of literary and very personal reckonings with grief. These include works like the novel Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli, Tess Gallagher’s poetry in Moon Crossing Bridge, and the memoir Passing: A Memoir of Love and Death by Michael Korda. Of course, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is the masterpiece of the genre and, more recently, Daniel Wallace entered the category with This Isn’t Going to End Well. 

We can now add a distinctive new memoir, Small Altars, by Justin Gardiner, a professor at Auburn University, a writer, and the nonfiction editor of The Southern Humanities Review. Gardiner recounts the challenging life of his brother, Aaron, who was born with a borderline learning disability, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in his twenties, and succumbed to a rare form of cancer at age forty-four.

Gardiner’s meditation on grief takes a stream-of-consciousness tone, juxtaposing personal memories and anecdotes with comic book jargon, medical definitions, and references to literature and movies. One memorable passage combines a viewing of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with segues to cartoonist Georges Remi, the diathesis-stress model, comic book crossovers, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, India Ink, and Claude Debussy. Tony Stark / Iron Man is a frequent presence. The comic book references emphasize Justin and Aaron’s shared activities of reading comic books and watching superhero movies in a “near perfect childhood” in Oregon. We are reminded that Superman and Batman’s origin stories are “predicated on tragedy, on loss.” Comments about the structure of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” one of Aaron’s favorite pieces to play on the piano, alternate with details about comic book panel construction.

Gardiner provides raw accounts of sickness and its impact on all involved. There are accounts of pleasure and family harmony. There are accounts of guilt. Gardiner speaks of “the world separated – like it always is – into what comes before and what comes after.” He remembers an unforgettable image of two sisters spending hours on an expressway overpass. The older – “there must have been something wrong with her” – staring down at the traffic while the younger sat reading a book with her legs crossed. “Was [the younger sister] aware, already,” Gardiner wonders, “of the tenderness that she would one day attach to this simple routine …?”

Describing himself as “a lonely professor trying to say his goodbyes,” Gardiner reflects on Aaron’s life and accomplishments, often learning things he never realized until Aaron was gone. After twenty years, he regrets a youthful incident when he didn’t do enough to stand up for his brother. After a medical procedure, Gardiner is surprised when the physician refers to Aaron’s “grace and courage” – words “that I had rarely thought to associate with my brother,” he writes. Gardiner is surprised by the size of the turnout for Aaron’s funeral and by the respect and admiration that is accorded him. “I had often viewed my brother as an imposition,” he admits, “so I was not prepared to hear strangers speak of him with so much affection.”

I have always been a little skeptical of posthumous tributes – statues, scholarships, buildings, and the like. They may comfort the bereaved, but they’re wasted on the deceased. The old country classic that says “Give me my flowers while I’m living” comes to mind. In Small Altars, however, in trying to come to grips with his feelings after Aaron’s death, Justin Gardiner has performed the rare feat of gifting his brother with a renewed and tangible and very real presence. 

Edward Journey, a retired university professor and theatre professional living in Birmingham, regularly shares his essays in the online journal “Professional Southerner” (www.professionalsoutherner.com). View his profile on the Alabama Authors Directory.