Grief is Writer Fuel. It Sucks but It's True.
Heads up that in this newsletter I'm going to be talking about death and loss. Please take care of yourself and if you're also griefstricken, feel free to take a pass.
No Jaunty Hellos this time. Too Heavy.
My favorite relative died recently.
We grew up like sisters, spending summers together until I was 14. While we weren't as close anymore, she was still the family member I'd gravitate to, the one I thought of first, the one I'd want to share private things with, the only one I'd text just to say I was thinking of her.
And she's gone.
I spent the first night screaming into a pillow. At that point none of the family knew what had happened or why she’d died. The not knowing, the absence of any reason for the loss, gnawed at my gut like I'd swallowed a live piranha.
I spent most of the second day in a frenetic need to do something else, anything else, to make sure I wasn't thinking about why, why would this happen, why COULD this happen, to someone I loved so hard and fierce that when she called me "sweet sister" for the first time, last year, it made me cry for hours?
Amidst that not knowing, as I was trying to force myself to sleep, to let go of the whyhowwhatNO cycle in my head, an image came to me.
She was swimming, in the municipal pool at which we'd taken swim lessons for 6 yrs. She did a steady side stroke under a quietly stormy sky, clouds swirling into each other like milk into tea. She was alone in the pool, wearing an adult version of the blue bathing suit she'd worn until she was 10.
And as I watched this image, I realized she was saying something to me. Something about diving off the high dive together, like we used to, hand in hand arrowing down the ten feet to the green water. At 8 years old, when I hadn't yet hit 4 feet tall.
Not something children of that age would be allowed to do, anymore.
(She was so brave. Always so brave.)
I was trying to decipher the exact words she was saying to me when a voice spoke inside my head, like someone narrating a title sequence: MIRANDA* IS SWIMMING.
(Which was the same thing that happened after my dad died, when I first had the image that led to my writing In the Shelter of Ghosts.)
This image, of her swimming, is going to become a story. I'm not sure what the story is, or will be, but I know it, in my gut.
That made me realize how important grief, and other strong emotions, are to a writer's work. To my work. And I don't want it to be true! It seems so cruel for it to be true. Yet, almost all of my published work comes from a place of pain, and I have to admit, I'm proud of what I've sculpted from rage, from grief, from betrayal, from survival.
I can hear her voice now, saying of course you should be proud, what else are you gonna do with that shit?
Miranda* would be pissed if I didn't do something with my feelings about losing her - if I didn’t make some kind of art, like she used to make amazing art from old magazines and comics. Art from what others consider trash.
...So I share this to all the writers and creators out there. A reminder that your grief, your pain, your rage are all worth something, that they’re not something to be avoided. You can make them into something that speaks undreamed-of poetry. Something that bursts from its cocoon with new-grown wings, and goes on to pollinate other flowers, other stories, other minds. Or you can use them to fuel the engine that drives you over the border of your old self into a new style, a new voice.
If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the people you love. The way I did it for my dad. The way I’m going to do this for Miranda*.
I'm still grieving, and it's going to be a while before this story comes to fruition. (Shelter took 2.5 yrs & 15 significant edits before it was published.)
But it's coming. And I hope it'll be worthy of Miranda*'s memory.
* not her real name, of course.
Keeping a Promise
For those of you who have read so far, here’s a puppy. I took this photo on the second day of grieving because she was being so sweet and snuggly.
With love and weirdness,
~Risa