My Way Through

Every so often I come across a book that moves me in a memorable and transformative way. I think there’s a reason I was inspired to read ONCE MORE WE SAW STARS by Jayson Greene during this season of my life. In this poignant memoir, a father draws a map for the grieving soul as he recounts, through raw and honest narrative, the heartbreak of losing his young daughter.

Greene finds language I wasn’t sure existed as he details the agony and release I’ve been experiencing in these past months after losing my sister. Through his story, I’ve received layered and comforting truths, truths like I’m not alone, and others are walking, have walked, and will walk this rocky terrain.

Someone recently asked me why I’d want to read a book like this, questioning if this kind of story would just make me sadder. Yes and no. It’s a good sad. A necessary sad. Emotion that connects me with humankind and strengthens every empathy bone in my body. Books like this are my way through. And I’m grateful beyond words for Greene’s vulnerable portrayal of loss and life after loss because it’s become an unexpected and beautiful pathway on my own road to healing.

Six Things Writing & Grieving Have in Common

Losing someone you love has a way of stirring up a lot of reflective thinking. In this quiet season of letting go I’ve been thinking about some of the ways grieving is similar to what I do every day—crafting novels.

Here’s what I came up with . . .

Writing & grieving—

Force you to think about intention and purpose

Whether it’s mourning the loss of a loved one or hunkering down to edit, you spend a good deal of time considering why you or your character exists. Little things start to matter. Like simple acts of kindness. Thought is given to all that came before, every season of life that led to this present place. It’s a soul-rubbing process. An awakening and embracing of what’s to come.

Challenge you to take a step back and look at the world differently

One shot. You consider this as you awkwardly stumble through the reality of saying goodbye to a person or a manuscript. One shot at life. One shot with a novel. Making your words and actions count becomes exponentially more important as this reality settles in.

Require you to get honest with emotion

You ugly cry. You dive deep with the characters, rooting to the real reasons they behave the way they do. Grieving and writing draw out our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities. They push, prod, and poke until we’re raw with pain, driving us to the point we’re willing to let go. There’s a certain surrender grief and creativity share, it’s a beautiful release that feels all at once agonizing and wonderful.

Bring out the historian in you

You research a town. Expressions on people’s faces. You drag out photos of your loved one. Old letters. You take that walk down memory lane. You create a memory lane as an author and student of your characters. Things and moments gone by gain a fresh pertinence. A newfound appreciation.

Conjure thoughts about character and influence

Who do you want to be? Who do you want your characters to be? These questions take on more relevance. How will I impact others? What imprint am I leaving on the world?

Shed light on the unnecessary so easily mistaken as necessary

The picture you forgot to post. The comeback you never got to use. The unwashed dishes or dusty floors. As soon as you commit to life as a writer, if you pay close attention, you’ll identify distractions creeping up from everywhere. These life interferences dress in bold colors when you’re grieving. There’s nothing sneaky about them. Whether you’re working on a book or hurting in the aftermath of a death, the unnecessary will hover. The unnecessary is patient. A constant. There’s nothing quite like losing someone to help you filter through what’s important and what’s not.

This is why I love fellow writers. We’re not what I would call shallow people. We go deep. We dare to be vulnerable. Sure, sometimes we can be a little intense or caught up in our own imaginary worlds, but it’s so much fun leading you into those worlds with us.

My friend Kim Hooper’s book TINY releases this week. I’ve read her work before and she has a way of depicting characters in such an honest and compelling manner. I cannot wait to read this one! I hope you’ll check it out. Kim is a seriously gifted author.

A Book Is Born—THE AFTER GLIMPSE

At book clubs I’m often asked where my ideas come from. The concept for THE AFTER GLIMPSE (available now) was first sparked in an ice cream shop in Wethersfield, Connecticut years ago. The owner takes pictures of her patrons and hangs the Polaroid photographs all over the shop, so even the ceiling is covered. I knew somewhere inside that shop existed a picture from when my mom had visited the ice cream shop with us years earlier. When my family went back to the same store years after my mom’s visit, I spent time hunting among the hundreds of pictures for the one the owner took of my mom and my girls. Suddenly, I was overcome with a stab of nostalgia, thinking how cool it’d be if I found the photograph, and my dad, who’d passed away years before my mom visited, somehow materialized in the picture next to my mom.

I found the picture. My dad wasn’t in it.

…and so a book was born.

In the process of writing this book, and now releasing it, I understand how this book is about grief, but it’s also about so much more.

Our lives—every relationship—every interaction counts for something and as one endorser so profoundly put it . . . “maybe there’s more going on around us than we know.”

The After Glimpse is available in paperback and ebook formats—TODAY.

*If you read & enjoy, please consider writing a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Five Years Gone

Here's my mini-dedication. . .

 

No more watching you stare out over the water, face frozen in a reflective gaze.

No laughing as you dance around like The Lion King’s Rafiki. Back hunched. Elbows jutting out. Wise pout pushing out your lips.

No one to direct conversations with an invisible baton.

No one to listen to the birds with me.

No blasting “Life is a Highway” with the windows down.

No deep conversations I always doubted you remembered the next day.

No dad to tell me how tall my girls have grown.

Or to give me that big frog smile with your thumb up and the words “I’m proud of you” rolling off your tongue.

No more worrying about you falling in the night or that you’ll say something you’ll regret.

No more sharing a love for the outdoors.  

You’re five years gone. And the world feels a little less full. A little less erratic. 

You were a rush of wind blowing through an open door. A hurricane and a sinking stone.

You were something to me. 

Miss you, Dad.

 

 

***

#delicatelove

 

 

The Thing about Breathing

There’s a thing about breathing. We forget to do it. Or we go through the motion of it so mechanically we’re startled the second our lungs make a false start. Over the past few weeks, I’ve woken in bed with my chest rattling, wondering how to enter into the next blessed sleepy moment. Don’t waste time speculating what has me riddled with breathlessness. I’ll come right out with it. Among other stressors, the grief over losing my dog is walloping me. Yes, all the non-dog people of the world, now is the time to have a good laugh.

But the dog lovers. Those who’ve also loved and lost (or can’t imagine when that day comes). Well, I know you get it.

I had to teach myself to breathe again while restless in bed the other night. Training air to enter in through my nostrils and pour out through my mouth. And when I forced the inhaling and exhaling, concentrating until the act of breathing grew more natural, I eventually fell asleep.

Why am I sharing this?

Because a few times over the course of the last few days I’ve thought about the movie Sleepless in Seattle when Tom Hanks is sitting in his Seattle home opening up to his son about missing the boy’s mom, his deceased wife. Hanks talks about this breathing thing.

Then, as I’m only pages from reaching the end of a great book club read (The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty) earlier today, I hit upon this line. “She hadn’t  realized she was holding her breath. This kept happening too. She had to remember to breathe.”

As convoluted as we humans can be, there really are universal strings that will always tie us together.

When we grieve and experience loss there will be moments we forget to breathe.

Which brings me to one of my favorite openings of all time. “From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and the air to fill them with—given circumstances, you might presume for an American baby of the twentieth century. Think about your own first gasp: a shocking wind roweling so easily down your throat, and you still slipping around in the doctor’s hands. How you yowled! Not a thing on your mind but breakfast, and that was on the way.” ~ Peace Like a River

I’ve decided it’s in the trusting—the trusting that the next breath will come that I’ll push through this. And in the slowing down and feeling, no matter how painful the emotions may be.

With confidence and somewhat bashfully, I’ll admit I loved our dog more than I have loved most people. It makes sense to me my breath would stop on occasion, tripped up like ornery bike gears.

Stumbling upon lines in great books like those listed above regarding conscious breathing and remembering Hanks talking to his kid, I’m reassured I’m not alone in this. Sometimes we need to go back to the basics. 

It’s here as we experience the raw art of breathing that we are able to humbly identify how vulnerable we all are.

Here in the inhale and exhale of grief.

Not As It Will Be

On Friday night, my youngest asked if she could sleep on the floor next to my bed. She was fighting the flu her older sister had passed down. I fluffed up down comforters and soft, thick blankets, layering her bedding. I piled pillows high so her cough wouldn’t bother her throat too much.  I checked to make sure she was surrounded by tissues, a water bottle, and her favorite stuffed animals. We prayed. Then I asked what book she wanted me to read.

Her older sister had thought of her and had taken out a book from the school library earlier that day.

Pete the Cat: Rockingin My School Shoes.

This is the book my kindergartener asked me to read.

Enter the moment.

Though my eyes sting, I open the colorful pages and begin to read, my voice quivery, my heart a ragged, suffering thing inside my chest.

“Here comes Pete strolling down the street, rocking red shoes on his four furry feet. Pete is going to school, and he sings this song…”

Sandy Hook. 20 children dead. 6 adults. My home state. Another school shooting branding permanent images in my brain, my soul. 

The crushing losses.

Pages later my voice catches but I continue to read.

“Pete has never been to the library before! Does Pete worry? Goodness, no! He finds his favorite book and sings his song…”

I kiss my daughter’s feverish head. She knows little, next to nothing about what media networks will be highlighting for weeks.

Then I get to this…

“Pete and his friends are playing outside on a green, grassy field with swings and tall slides. Where is Pete? The playground! Kids are running in every direction! Does Pete worry? Goodness, no!”

I sniffle and hold the flood of emotions I’m feeling at bay concerned I’ve already let her see me cry enough for one day.

I make it through to the end of the book.

“When school is done, Pete rides the bus home.”

I’m slammed with the memory of rushing earlier in the day to embrace my older two girls as they bounded off the bus.

“Pete’s mom asks him, ‘What did you do at school today?’ And Pete says… ‘I was rocking in my school shoes…And I will do it again tomorrow! Because it’s all good!’”

My resolve crumbles into a thousand pieces because it so isn’t all good. This world is nothing as it will be.

I tuck the covers up to my daughter’s neck, then I collapse over her wishing I could be a barrier, shielding her from everything out there. We’d already encountered a glimpse of how unsafe this world can be in another form earlier in the year. Now this…

I want her to rock in her school shoes.

I crave heaven.

I turn off the light and thank God for Christmas.

I thank God hope came to earth as a baby. And still lives today.

*My email has been down for days. I apologize if you’ve been trying to reach me and you haven’t heard back. The system seems like it’s almost fully restored.

**I will be posting this Friday.