Bone: Generation Differences in the Healing Process

One part of the reading that intrigued me was the part where Leila was looking through all of Leon's paperwork. The tradition that Leon had explained to her stood out to me. Paper documents in the past were sacred to the "oldtimers." I thought it was interesting that they burned them and placed the ashes in a secret location. It kept secrets hidden and could possibly help the secret-holder to forget it if the secret was troubling them. This tradition seems like more of an escape from burdens for the older generation.

In the beginning of the story, it is mentioned that people believed that the main character's family is "a failed family" seeing that there were no sons to carry on the last name and take over the family's business. They ignored their comments and rejected the cultural belief that their family, which consisted of the mother, Leon, and the three daughters(Leila, Nina, and Ona) was unlucky. However, later on in the story, they start to believe that their family is cursed after losing Ona. Each of them had their own theories as to why that was so. Leon believed that it was because he never sent his Grandfather's bones back to China to be buried there; the mother believed that it was because of her mistakes in life such as marrying more than once; Nina thought it was because of her rocky relationship with her mother and Leon; and Leila blamed herself, thinking that her mother and Leon blamed her for Ona's death.

Ona's death was a major tragedy to the family. Each member of the family displayed grief in a different form and amount. Leon and Mah took Ona's death the hardest. Leon moved out after her death and took on various and copious amounts of odd jobs to distract himself such as fixing things like radios. Most of the time, he wouldn't finish the project. Mah never moved on after Ona's death. She always thought about it and even took to blaming the oldest daughter, Leila, for her death. "Mah said something about how everything started with me, since I was the first one,...'That's why Ona went bad.'"(pg 38). It seemed like almost every time Mah and Leila spoke to each other, Mah ended up saying something about Ona and that Leila should have done something. Nina and Leila took to avoiding thinking about Ona. They took their time to grieve and then moved on with their lives. The older generation seems to hang on longer to grief than the younger generation. This indicates a change in the times.