“One way or another.”
Erasure“One way or another” is a saying attributed to Ben Ellison and passed into family speech through Agnes Ellison. It first appears as comfort offered to Lisa after her marriage to Barry has ended, then carries a more painful resonance beside the account of Ben’s death.
Meaning and First Use
After Lisa tells Agnes that she and Barry are divorced because he ran off with another woman, Agnes pats her arm and assures her that she will get through it. She invokes the saying as her father’s familiar advice: “One way or another.” In this exchange, the phrase works as consolation rather than a promise that the hurt can be undone; its assurance is that life will continue and Lisa will endure it.
Family Inheritance
The saying is not presented as a newly invented comfort. Agnes attributes it to her late husband, making the words a small inheritance carried forward in ordinary family conversation. Her response to Lisa also contrasts with the strained circumstances around them: Lisa’s blunt account of the divorce meets a gentle gesture and an appeal to a phrase their father used.
Recurrence and Resonance
The phrase gains a darker context in the narration about Ben. After surviving four heart attacks, he shoots himself on an unseasonably warm February evening while Agnes is away meeting her bridge club. His suicide prompts Agnes to call the children, in order of age, with the same instruction to come home for the funeral. Read beside this account, the saying retains its consoling function but no longer sounds uncomplicated: the words survive their speaker, while the family’s experience shows that endurance does not mean every loss can be resolved.
