In writing about loss, one vexation, among many others, involves timing: when is it the right time to begin writing about what I have experienced? Obviously, the experience of loss is an important one to come to terms with. Writing about it can bring understanding and even help, for ourselves and others. But is there one right time to begin writing about it? What if I wait too long?
An easy answer, of course, is to begin right now, while still deeply in grief, by keeping a journal about it. I’ve been doing this. A journal has allowed me to freely capture the many conflicting images and emotions of losing our son, to jot down anything as it occurs to me, and to keep a record of many memories I am bound to forget. This last part has helped me to relax and let go a little, because I find as I process through my own grieving, I don’t want to forget. I don’t want the wound to heal. To forget, to heal, is in a real way to lose Michael twice.
The difficult answer to the question of timing really only surfaces if I want to write to others about him. Then, the question of when I should begin composing a memoir or a purposeful narrative becomes complicated. To write in a way that might be of interest to actual readers, different considerations suddenly come into play. What are my goals for writing about my experiences? How much should I tell? If my writing really is for others, then who are those others? Who is my audience? What tone will I strike? What do I want to convey that will help my potential readers?
As noted above, the question of timing is complex. I offer two examples here, one from my teaching and one from my writing. Both are meant only to illustrate something of what is going on in our writing about our own lives.
Grieving in Class
First, as a teacher I have found that timing is not easy to negotiate in a semester-long writing class, where less than fifteen weeks are usually in play once we get going. In working with students’ personal narratives, the rule-governed or three-step approach or five-step approach–or whatever approach–quickly frays and unravels when they are engaged in writing about a relationship to a sibling or the loss of someone important. My desire is always to affirm the importance of this writing at the same time that I want to respect their own progress in thinking and, sometimes, grieving.
Many years ago, back in the 1980s, a student in my first-year writing course found herself writing about a rift that had opened up between her and her older sister when her sister got married. At the time of writing in our class, this student was still conflicted about what her sister had done. She loved her, but she also felt both hurt and concerned for her. When we met in a few writing conferences to go over her draft, she explained her difficulty in terms of formal technique. She was just bad at writing conclusions, she said, and she saw our work in conference in terms of me helping her to write that last paragraph. Then she would be done.
The problem was deeper than this. The formal consideration she had in mind was covering the fact that she still hadn’t resolved her conflict in her own mind. She was still deeply conflicted and still a bit mad at what her sister had done. If she hadn’t yet found a resolution to this conflict, how could she write a conclusion to it? We talked about this problem, and she was resistant. She didn’t yet want to forgive her sister (I didn’t ask her to), and she also didn’t want to have to write an entirely new narrative. I learned then that this story, this relationship, deeply mattered to her.
The problem was timing. How was she to write about it as a finished product when she wasn’t finished living through it? She needed to resolve some of her feelings about it. In the remaining twelve weeks we had together in class, this did not happen. I still assumed that in writing about her sister, this student would eventually come to certain acceptable terms about her. I encouraged her to write about her experience as a work-in-progress, and I saw that as a value for her and even a way to think about the nature of writing about life. She didn’t yet fully understand this other theme–after all, writing to her was still mostly a formal matter–one of learning a few formal techniques.
Grieving out of Class
I mention this student mainly because I encountered the same issue she did, but for me it involved writing about my father. Right before he passed away, he told me some new things about his life that put many of the things I had experienced with and from him in a new light. Our relationship, like most meaningful relationships, had been complex. After he passed away, I began writing and grappling with this new information. I wrote several twenty page essays and one short story. None of it worked, and I knew it. Like my former student, I found that formal aspects in the writing didn’t quite come together. The reason behind all of this, I eventually came to understand, had to do with my own grieving. I found after he died that I wanted to honor his memory, and I resisted writing anything negative about him, even if it was honest.
Ten years later, I see now that this was blocking me from engaging honestly about the complexities in our relationship. And there were many.
Now, the timing seems right for me to finish writing the work that I feel quite strongly he himself gave me to do with the information he told me just three months before he died. Now, I am ready to engage in those complexities without them sounding bitter or getting him back in some way. I am ready to write about them as an act of fully appreciating my father and all he had to live through. But I had to live long enough to get past my natural desire to honor his memory.
These two examples don’t exhaust the subject of timing and personal writing. I hope merely that they illustrate the deep intertwining between our experiences and our perspective in writing about them. Certainly, our formal training in writing may be less than half the full story that we have to tell.
What has been your experience with writing about your experiences? I’d love to hear about them.