Writing Again, Naturally…

“What are you doing?”

David often asked this question of the wife that retreated into her head with an alarming frequency. Reading or writing intently, I became oblivious to the world around me, something other avid readers or writers might recognize in themselves. I once attempted to explain the running commentary I’d been carrying on inside my head since I was the bored little girl walking a mile to parochial school every day.

“I narrate my life in my head,” I said, and David cocked his head slightly, his eyes looking at me quizzically. For a non-writer and a casual reader, he was extremely understanding of my writing foibles. In a valiant attempt to share my passions, he would ask me to tell him about the book I was reading or the article or essay I was working on. My dear husband wanted to get inside my head right along with me.

“Be still.” “Do nothing.” “Listen.”  The quiet urgings of my heart have not been comfortable for me these past four weeks. While I have continued writing my weekly column and blog postings, I have not written anything else, nor have I known what to do next. In my wildest dreams I’d never imagined that God might ask me to stop writing for a period of time. For the last six years, since David’s cancer treatment, I have written daily. Each and every day for six years, and then writing like a mad woman for three months after David’s death. I wasn’t sure where God was leading me, but silently waiting did not come natural to me. I have kept busy; reading books on grief, preparing for an upcoming workshop and blogging now and then. I started this same blog posting several times, repeatedly abandoning it:

I can’t do this. This hurts too much. I feel like I might go stark-raving made with the grief. This. Hurts. Too. Much. How do people do this?

Recent e-mails let me know that more than one widow was reading my blog, and at least one of them just a month or two behind me in the grieving journey. If I wrote the truth, would these women abandon all hope? Would I scare them? I felt a sense of responsibility not to.

“Tell the truth,” I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. That was the sage advice my husband had always given me. “Just tell the truth.”

Really? Tell the truth, that at 20 weeks after my husband’s death, it hurts more some days? That the reality of my loss has hit home, and the pain cuts even deeper? Does any widow just beginning her journey really need to hear that?

Tell the truth.

“I’m not sure I can do this. It hurts too much. I never imagined this kind of pain. I want it to go away. I want to feel joy, to be happy again. I’m a horrible mess of a mother who smiles and laughs, but rarely does either reach her eyes. I don’t want to cook because he isn’t there to cook for so my biggest accomplishment is a Sunday meatloaf. I forget things. I’ve dropped the ball so many times on so many things, in so many ways, letting others down. My eyes well up with tears at odd moments and at the most inopportune times; in the aisle of the grocery store, in the parking lot, at the library when I see the history magazine David loved so much, riding my bike because he rode with me, when I see a movie preview, when certain songs play on the radio, hanging out the laundry because he came out to talk to me while I did it, driving alone when he was usually with me. At night, when I lay down and my head hits the pillow, it wells up inside me and a single sob escapes. It hurts so much. I miss him so much. I am desolate. I want to be happy again.”

And yet.

Tell the truth.

I continue to do my couponing and writing workshops and feel excited, nearly jubilant, when presenting them. I revel in my public speaking engagements. I continue to enjoy writing the weekly newspaper column my husband was so proud of me obtaining. I haven’t missed a week. I have laughed, uproariously, while watching a movie with my children, and did not fail to notice their surprised, but pleased, glances in my direction. I have enjoyed a cup of coffee or lunch with a sister or friend. I have relished the newfound relationship with a son who now reaches out to hug me after each visit and a tween who occasionally grabs my hand on the way into church. I’ve started bicycling again. Sometimes, even now without David, I experience true moments of joy, an increased appreciation for life, and an awe of the beauty of nature. I am eager to grow and hone my craft by attending writer’s conferences and a monthly writer’s group, things David would want me to continue.

On the way to a writer’s group early Saturday morning I had the radio blaring, tuned into a Christian radio station that is now my favorite. And then I remembered the fifteen minutes of “doing nothing,” and the admonition of “Be still,” that began this strange odyssey of very little writing. I turned off the radio, and the silence was deafening. Driving, I had very little room to squirm, and no opportunity for escape. I couldn’t go make a cup of coffee or start a load of laundry. I was all alone. I had to sit and be silent; to listen inside my head. Initially, my thoughts bounced around all over the place.

Be still.

As I expected, as soon as I calmed my racing thoughts, the pain hit, and it hit hard. Sobs racked my shoulders, a little moan escaped, and tears poured down my cheeks. But just as suddenly as it had hit, it stopped. I was pleasantly surprised by the short duration.

Why can’t I write?

You are writing. You blog. You do your weekly couponing column.

I wrote essays and pieces for publication for three solid months. I wrote two pages of a book I felt led to begin. Why can’t I write more? What am I supposed to be writing? Why can’t I get past those two pages?

There was no answer, and I felt a brief moment of fear. What if I can never write anything more than blog postings and a weekly column ever again?

I worked this possibility around in my mind a little. I love writing. I have a book being pitched by my agent and another one two pages in. In the next instance I remembered the recent surge of public speaking engagements; four scheduled just in the last week alone. Every Saturday and Monday in September was now filled with workshops or speeches. Clearly, these workshops and speeches were something I could do, even if I never wrote another essay or worked on another book again. I conceded that, while my plans had always included much more writing in my future, maybe that was not the direction I was being led. I dreaded the morning’s upcoming writing exercise at writer’s group, knowing I would be unable to participate. Maybe the others at the meeting could reassure me this had happened to them at some point.

Sue began the group with a morning devotional and the warm-up exercise of writing down the names of all the friends we could think of quickly. I easily wrote the names of twenty people, including my siblings. Of course this exercise also reminded me I no longer had my best friend.

“Now I want you to write about who you would most want to go on a car trip with.” It was as if she had punched me. I felt the air whoosh from my chest and I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Without thinking, I began writing.

And writing.

Oblivious to everyone else, I filled three pages relating a memory involving David and me in the car on the way to this very same writing group in early March. When Sue asked if we were done with our assignment, I held up a single finger to indicate I had just one sentence to add; “I would give anything to take just one more trip in the car with David.” As I read it out loud, my voice breaking toward the end, and tears flowing freely, my friend Kristi handed me a tissue from a box on the table.

Even amid the pain, I felt a tiny flame of something burning inside me. It was joy! I’d written! I’d written!

Halfway home from the meeting, I took an exit that I knew would lead me to a library. Pulling into the parking lot, I fumbled for the notebook I always carry with me in my purse. I didn’t even bother to go inside; I just scribbled wildly as thoughts started pouring out of me.

No wonder I hadn’t been able to get past those two pages, I marveled as I made a rough outline. This isn’t the book I thought I’d be writing. I’d thought I knew best and that I’d be fitting my old manuscript into the new manuscript, after those two introductory pages. But as I jotted down notes, I realized very little of the old manuscript would be incorporated. This was going to be a whole new book! That realization didn’t daunt me a bit, I was so glad to be writing again.

“What are you doing, Mary? What are you doing so intently that you barely look up from your computer?”

“I’m writing again. And right now I’m happy.”