Yesterday, I granted myself a day off from this challenge. After my father’s funeral, I felt entitled. So I’ll be one day off from the rest of the group doing this challenge. So be it.
Many years ago, I came home from the funeral of one of my closest friends and opened my laptop. The story I wrote had its genesis in something I’d seen: her petite mother, her equally petite aunts, and her blonde cousin standing by her graveside, singing a hymn. I watched these brave women in their black dresses, and the thought came to me: a parent should never have to bury their child.
It happens all the time, of course. I knew it even then. Especially in the wake of recent horrific tragedies, it would be foolish to try to deny it. But the image stays in my brain to this day, the image and its accompanying thought. On that day, the way I addressed the thought and the image was to write.
Yesterday, though, I chose not to. By the time I got home with my takeout dinner, it was past eight o’clock, and I was done. I actually did think about writing, but not for long. The only thing I could have written about at that moment was the day’s events, and I simply do not have the distance to do this.
But this morning, as clients call and kind friends continue to reach out, as post-funeral tasks beckon, as I realize that the world is going to go on whether I like it or not, I took some time to disappear into my novel. Some of my current feelings are in the words I wrote, albeit in a very different context. It’s possible I’ll be drawing on more of these experiences as the book develops. More than possible. Likely.
One reason I rarely write to a word count is that I tend to edit, especially an earlier day’s material. It’s still productivity, but it doesn’t lend itself to a challenge like this.
Take today, for example. I wrote for over an hour, adding and revising, but I also deleted a lot of what I’d dictated a few weeks ago because what I was writing today was clearer and worked better. By the time I excised all the crap that needed to go, I ended up with a net loss of 70 words.
Today’s 1,000 words was originally meant to be a blog post about the latest family drama surrounding my father’s upcoming memorial service. By the time I reached the end, though, I no longer felt the need to share it. Writing it out—venting on the screen—proved to be sufficient, and I do not need to dwell on it any longer.
The late great Laurie Colwin wrote in her final novel about the difference between family by chance—the one you’re born into—and family by choice. Some people are close to their families by chance. When there has been a loss or other major event, they find comfort in drawing together. I, however, have found the most comfort in communications with my friends a/k/a my chosen family. I have received beautiful email condolences, thoughtful messages and posts, and several phone calls. I’ve been offered dinner by a couple people, wine by several, and prayer support by many. More than a few have invited me to contact them 24/7 if I should need to talk or vent. Notwithstanding the family drama, I feel supported and cared for as I approach what I expect will be one of the hardest days of my life.
Another day of working on my novel. I started with some dictated material, but the scene went off in a different direction than I’d originally anticipated, laying the groundwork for complications I hadn’t seen coming.
Did it again today. This time, I did add words to my novel, although I cheated slightly because I used material I’d dictated on the Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend while I planted my window boxes.
Dictating has plusses and minuses. The plus side is that you get to record the thoughts as you’re having them. The minus is that sometimes when you go back over that material, you find very little worth keeping, and you wind up editing the crap out of it until it’s practically new anyway. Granted, it’s not as if I found nothing at all when I went back to my dictated material, but I feel fairly confident I’d have come up with something very similar if I’d simply sat down with the computer now instead of telling my story (and remembering to dictate “paragraph” and such) several days ago while mixing potting soil with vermiculite.
In any case, that’s Day Two. Twelve to go. Wish me luck.
Two weeks ago, my plan for this exercise was to dive in and write another 14,000 words of my novel in progress. That was the plan.
As the old adage goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Because instead, most of my writing brain over the next few days will be writing my father’s eulogy.
His passing was both expected and unexpected. Expected in that he was eighty-seven years old, and to a certain extent, anybody’s passing at that age is kind of expected. Unexpected in that after several years of slow decline, he dropped off the cliff in his final week. On Saturday, when he went into hospice, he was able to get into his wheelchair in the morning, and by evening, two of us assisting couldn’t manage to get him out of bed and into the chair. Saturday evening, he ate dinner in bed, and we sat with him and chatted. By Sunday when I arrived after church, he was in the hospital bed the hospice people had brought the day before, and he could barely mumble. Sunday evening, at Mom’s request, I called some family members and friends of my parents so the ultimate call wouldn’t come out of the blue. By Monday, he barely moved, although when I tried to swab his mouth, he made his opinion clear, clamping his lips shut and moving his arm as if to wipe his mouth. That evening, as the night caregiver and I sat in the living room to give Mom time with him, I overheard her encouraging him to go, telling him that his parents and siblings were waiting to see him.
I’d begun drafting his obituary on Monday, the same day I reached out to the funeral home to let them know what was coming and to find out how and what things needed to be done. Function, don’t feel. Tuesday, I spent the day working on a brief for a client. When I finished, I fed the cats and made soup. At 8:12 p.m., my phone rang. It was my older sister who, as a nurse, has been incredible in his declining days. I knew there was only one reason she would be calling rather than texting, and I was right.
Tuesday evening, everybody was holding it together and playing nicely. Mom said at least ten times that she didn’t want “a big hullaballoo,” a word I’m not certain she’d ever used before.
The next day, we met with Dan, the funeral director. None of us had ever done anything remotely like this, but Dan shepherded us through logistics and decisions. The one light moment came when it was time to choose a color for the urn. Years earlier, my parents arranged and paid for their funerals, and Dad had chosen an urn by a company called Mackenzie, but he hadn’t specified a color. Since the urn will be buried, he probably didn’t think it was a big deal, but a choice still had to be made. We all knew blue was his favorite color. When Dan put up the color choices, the blue options included navy, Wedgewood, and cobalt. Then Mom said, “That one,” pointing to Mystic Blue.
Maybe my monitor is just different from Dan’s, but on his screen, Mystic Blue was screaming-bright. My sisters could barely keep straight faces, commenting, “That’s blue, all right,” but Mom said, “That’s the one I want.” So once the cremation is complete, Dad will reside in the bluest of all blue urns.
On Wednesday, we met with a pastor friend of my older sister. Since none of us had any idea how to structure a service, his guidance was helpful. Personally, I’d have liked a little more guidance toward the traditional, such as including music, but I do not come from a family that understands the public aspects of such rituals, and so the only music will be the Marine League playing the Marine Corps hymn and a congregational singing a cappella of “Amazing Grace.”
When the pastor mentioned the idea of someone from the family talking about Dad, my sisters immediately said, “Oh, I could never do that,” the implication being that they would be far too emotional. Mom, of course, would not speak. So I said, “I’ll do it.”
My younger sister, who dearly loves to control everything relating to our parents, has been staying with Mom since Tuesday, but she goes home today, thank God. After a day and a half of playing nice, we had our blowup on Wednesday after the pastor, when she announced that the memorial service will be private. Calling hours were already restricted to a single hour before the service, which seemed unreasonable to me; now, the plan was apparently that those who come to offer sympathy and support will be kicked out after the hour so we can have the service. I pointed out that people will be coming in support of other family members, to no avail. Finally, I said the obvious: “She’s not the only one who lost him,” to which my sister snapped, “Yes, she is!” It was such a ludicrous response that I was temporarily at a loss. Then, when she started telling me how to do something—I don’t even recall what—I snapped, “Back the fuck off!” to which she replied with a half-hearted, “No, you back the fuck off.” It was all I could do not to sneer, “Great comeback!” Instead, I packed up and left to rule Mom’s world.
(The next morning when a lawyer friend emailed me on something, I responded by asking if he’d represent me if I were to choke a family member. He responded, “Of course, but my advice as your legal counsel is that you not do so.” I told him I’d take it under advisement, and he shot back, “Typical client.”)
I know I’m supposed to be patient. Right now, I’m just angry, and my bossy, irritating sister makes a very convenient target. I vented to friends last night while drinking wine. When it was bedtime, I found myself unable to recall whether I’d fed the cats. (Since they weren’t complaining, I assume I did.) I’ve been swearing more this week than I ever have. I’m honestly not certain what I’m angry about; I assume it’s a variation on grief, albeit not one I’ve experienced. Last weekend and through Tuesday, I was exhausted, which didn’t surprise me since grief is exhausting. In the past few days, though, I’m at the other end of the spectrum in that I don’t feel like going to bed. When I finally make myself go to bed, not unlike the way you’d force a child to go at bedtime, it’s difficult to turn off my mind enough to go to sleep.
So, here’s my first 1,000 words of summer. No idea if I’ll actually do it for the next thirteen days. I certainly have an excellent excuse for not doing it, but I need to refocus. Years ago, when a dear friend was dying, I coped by writing. Maybe I’ll end up doing that again.
A couple weeks ago, I made this comment to a writer friend about my struggles with my current novel-in-progress: “The last one was easy, because it was about lawyers and trials. I can write that stuff standing on my head. This time, it’s about marriage, and I don’t know anything about that!”
“Omigod! I know exactly how you feel!” she exclaimed. “Imposter syndrome!”
Most writers are familiar with imposter syndrome. In its simplest terms, imposter syndrome is exactly what it sounds like: the feeling that you’re an imposter, a fraud, someone who’s faking competence and is constantly worried about being found out.
It wasn’t the first time I’d tried the program. I’d done it online once before, with extremely temporary results. All that tracking was more than I could be bothered with, especially for the long haul.
On the other hand, at least on Weight Watchers I got to eat. In the late 1980s, Slim-Fast had a commercial that sang, “Give us a week, we’ll take off the weight.” One night, I thought, “Okay, fine. I have a week.” Sure enough, I lost weight. Mind you, the Slim-Fast plan at that time meant having one of their shakes three times a day (two meals and a snack), with one “sensible” meal. Who couldn’t lose weight on that? Especially in combination with a lot of walking and Jane Fonda’s low-impact aerobics (which were so low-impact that I didn’t bother my downstairs neighbor). Alas, keeping the weight off once I returned to a more traditional lifestyle, i.e., eating more than one meal a day, proved . . . impossible. Sigh.
It’s been a crazy few weeks, to put it mildly. Work pressures (including an unusually complicated appellate brief and a client preparing for trial), holidays, out-of-town relatives in town, and rehearsal for this weekend’s performance of Haydn’s The Creation. When I was finally able to take a day off last week—my first in nearly three weeks—I spent it cleaning the house and finally putting down most of the rugs I’d picked up from the cleaners a month earlier.
Unsurprisingly, writing has been sidelined during this period. Although my mind has never stopped trying to resolve various plot problems in my novel-in-progress, it’s been a struggle to find time, inclination, and energy all that the same time so that I can commit any of it to the page and see whether these notions actually work.
I never used to have any interest in audiobooks. They weren’t real books. Real books were in print, on paper. Maybe on tablets, but that was as much as I was willing to cede. Audiobooks—originally on tapes and CDs—seemed like a great idea for when I was out walking or driving, but they required too much concentration, because as soon as my mind wandered—traffic light, somebody crossing the street, hawk swooping across my path—I lost the thread and had to back up. I tried to embrace the audiobook of Frances Mayes’ Bella Tuscany, telling myself I’d only listen to the tapes when out walking. The incentive plan, I thought. Instead, after countless backups to capture moments I’d missed because of things I’d seen or heard around me, I gave up entirely. The walks ceased, and the tapes ended up in a box in the garage. Clearly, audiobooks weren’t for me.
P. Jo Anne Burgh 