Pat Bertram's Blog, page 299

Grief: Counting Down to the First Anniversary

In three days it will be a year since the death of my life mate — my soul mate. I've been counting down the days with tears. I would have thought I'd have finished my weeping months ago, and for the most part I have, but here it comes again. I've been keeping busy, not wanting to drown in sorrow. In fact, I'll be leaving in a few minutes to have lunch with friends. Like me, they lost their mates, and so their presence is a comfort. We'll laugh and talk, and that will keep the tears at bay, but when I get back to the house, I'll probably be sad again. And that's okay. I'm finding that now, after a wave of intense grief, there is a backwash of peace.

The anniversary itself was supposed to have been a good day for me, not a celebration so much as an acknowledgement that I survived the year. And perhaps it will be a good day despite the upsurge in sorrow. My latest book, Light Bringer — the last one he helped me research and edit, the last one I read to him as I was writing it — will be published on his death day as a memorial to him (though the book itself won't be available for another week or so). The book is his epitaph, his tombstone, the final resting place for our joint efforts. (There is one more book he influenced, but that book is only half finished, and I haven't had the heart to work on it.)

During all this year, I haven't been able to eat the foods we fixed together (with the exception of salads. Those I still can eat, though why, I don't know since salads were a major component of our meals). So I thought a good sign of my healing would be to fix one of those meals I haven't been able to eat. Today I am going to get the ingredients for his chili, and on the anniversary, I will cook a batch in his honor. I will probably watch a movie that he taped for us, which is what we always did on special occasions.

He would have enjoyed such a day. I wish with everything I have that he were here, but of course, if he were here, there would be no such anniversary to endure, to acknowledge, yes, even to celebrate.

Tagged: anniversary of death, celebration, chili, death, first anniversary of death, grief, healing grief, loss, sadness, salad

Grief and Remembrance

The problem with grief is that while the subject of the grief stays gone, grief comes again and again, sometimes when one is least expecting it. I'd been doing well handling my grief after the death of the man with whom I spent thirty-four years of my life, yet these past couple of days grief has come to revisit me, and my sorrow is as great as it was a year ago.

I mentioned before about the terrible anniversaries of my grief. I lived through the first anniversary of the day pain struck him with such force that he took to bed for the rest of his life. I lived through the first anniversary of the day we got the diagnosis: inoperable kidney cancer. I lived through the first anniversary of the day we signed up for hospice, of the day we signed the DNR (the do not resuscitate order).

I had a hiatus of a couple of weeks where I was mostly at peace, then yesterday I was so overcome with grief that I wanted to scream out in anguish. I couldn't figure out what hit me or why, but as it happens, the body remembers even when the mind doesn't, and my body remembered that yesterday was the first anniversary of the last time we hugged, the last time we kissed.

And today . . . today is the first anniversary of the last time we talked. The last time he spoke to me. The last time he knew who I was. Today is also the anniversary of the day we took him to the hospice care center to live out the remaining few days of his life.

I'd been looking forward to the anniversary of his death, supposing that after a year of grieving I would be mostly finished with the pain, that he would have receded from my thoughts. It was a realistic expectation — my focus on him has been diminishing, so much so that sometimes it feels as if our life together was a story I told myself long ago — but as always, grief has its own agenda.

The past year seems to have disappeared. I know I lived it, know what I accomplished (and what I didn't) yet the cliché is true — it passed in the blink of an eye. If I turn my head quickly, perhaps I will see him. He feels that close. If the world could turn back for just a second, I could catch him. Hang on to him. Never let him go.

But he is gone. And all the tears I shed this year will never bring him back.

Today was my grief support group day. I'd stopped going for a while. At the time, I wasn't in the same place as the other bereft, and I was afraid I was doing them a disservice by my dissociation. After a few weeks, I did go back to be there for a friend, and today she and the group were there for me. Since I hadn't had a memorial service for my mate, the facilitator asked me to say a eulogy, to make sense of his life, but I couldn't make sense of it — I don't understand the point of his having had to suffer so much. I could make sense of his life as pertains to me, though. I talked about how he accompanied and mentored me on my journey — my quest for truth and meaning — how he went with me as far as he could. Oddly, we'd used up our relationship, not in a bad way, but in a good way. We'd talked for hours on end, day after day, year after year. We read books and discussed them, studied films, researched various topics and shared information, tried to see the big picture and connect all the disparate parts of life.

I want so much to talk with him once more, to have one of those electric conversations where ideas were zinging back and forth, but the truth is, we said everything that was important. I have not come up with a single question for him this past year that he had not already answered. (Except for what he wants done with his ashes, but even that is an answer. If he cared, he would have told me.)

The last thing he ever said to me was, "Remember everything I told you."

And I do remember.

Tagged: coping with grief, dealing with sorrow, death, first anniversary of death, grief, kidney cancer, loss, loss of a mate, remembrance

What Do You Do With A Bad Review?

I've been getting mostly good reviews for my books, so it came as a shock when I noticed that one woman on Goodreads downrated them. She rated more than 100 books, giving all of them five stars except for a couple of 4-star ratings and three 3-star ratings. And guess whose books were all rated three stars? Mine. I couldn't understand it — first, because most people who have read my books like at least one of them, and second (and the point that really bothered me), if she didn't like my writing, why read all three? Why not stop after one or two?

I'd never met the woman, only know of her because we have an acquaintance  in common — someone I met because of my books, not a pre-publication friend. "I doubt she read the books," this acquaintance told me, "she couldn't possibly have read them and not liked them; your books are fabulous," which made the whole thing even more incomprehensible. 

Until . . .

I got a really bad 2-star review for A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which made those three stars seem benign:

Not a bad story…but but but. I love post-apocolyptic stories – but a common mistake authors fall into with it is to immediately lose the sense of horror – their characters hardly react to dead bodies piling up around them – Bertram did this from the get-go. And this book was so badly edited that it is astonishing. Someone made the author chop this up without any concern for the reader's ability to follow the story and understand the characters…fortunately, I didn't care enough about any of them to worry about it.
  
Made me doubt myself.  Did I lose the sense of horror? But I never intended there to be a sense of horror (or at least not a sense of ghoulish horror). Nor did I intend to write a postapocalyptic story, which shows you the danger of genre expectations. The whole point was the lack of  bodies. After the first dying, when people died in their cars causing a city-wide traffic jam, people stayed in their houses, so that is where they succumbed to the red death. The only way my characters knew of the continued dying were the orange fluorescent markings appearing on the doors of houses where people had died. To me, that was even more horrible than bodies piling up — just this one simple reminder that people were still dying. Even more horrific was the silent city with soldiers patrolling the streets. That would spook the hell out of me! And no, people would not continue to react to the horror. They would become inured to it. It would become the new normal. And how could the reviewer have missed the hellish scene when two of my characters discovered what was being done with the dead human bodies . . . and the bodies of beloved pets?

Besides, the story was seen through the eyes of a soul-dead nurse, a gung-ho reporter, a self-centered, world-famous actor, and a woman who had that star in her eyes. Would any of them have continued to react to the dying? I doubt it. Still, I did wonder. Should I have shown more bodies piling up?

Then . . .

I was out walking along a residential street yesterday, and there was not a single other person in sight. Not a single vehicle on the road. And I knew I was right. No one would see the bodies if all the people in those houses suddenly died. And maybe they had expired – I had no way of knowing.

So, what does one do with a bad review? Blog about it, of course!! 

See also: A Spark of Heavenly Fire book trailer
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Tagged: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, bad review, fiction, horror, postapocalytic story, review, the red death

Searching for a Blog Identity

The best blogs are those with a single focus, or so they say. At the beginning, I blogged about my efforts to get published. When my books were accepted for publishing and before they were released, I concentrated on having guest bloggers. After my books were published, I blogged about writing, promotion, and the progress of my current works (or rather the lack of progress). Then, about a year ago, my soul mate died, and this blog developed a dual personality — the almost dry articles about books and writing and the very wet and weepy articles about grief.

Now I need to decide where I want to go with this blog, to figure out what I want to say. Grief is still a part of my life and will be for some time to come, but I don't want to be that woman — the one who hugs her sorrow and doesn't seem to be able to move on. (To a great extent I have moved on. Only you and I know how much I still hurt.) Nor do I want to go back to focusing solely on writing and other literary matters. I'm not sure I have anything to say that hasn't been said a thousand times before by people far more literate (and interesting) than I.

Even more than having a single focus, the best blogs are written by those who have a unique slant on a subject, who write what only they can write, who chronicle life's journey in such a manner that the ordinary becomes extraordinary. But . . . it isn't necessary to be a great blogger to get the benefits of keeping a web log.

In the past couple of years I've developed an interest in photography. I have a separate blog for photos — Wayword Wind — and I joined 365 Project, committing to taking a photo every day for a year. This project has helped to turn my focus outward. While walking, I tend to let my mind wander, and it generally wanders to what (or rather who) I have lost, so searching for that special image each day makes me more alert to my surroundings, to what is rather than what is not.

In the same way, blogging helps concentrate my thoughts, makes me more alert to my inner surroundings. Sometimes it seems as if I'm too full of myself, my posts a bit too pedantic, and yet it's all part of my journey. Like this blog, I seem always to be in a state of flux, searching for some sort of identity . . .  or at least a focus.

I I ever find where I'm going, either with my life or with this blog, I'll let you know.

Tagged: 365 project, blog identity, blogging, focus, grief, photography, promotion, search for identity, web log, why blog, writing

On Writing: Rules of Magic

There are two rules for writing about magic:

1. It always has a price

2. It must have limits.

I don't know who wrote that, but it seems a good pair of rules when it comes to literary magic. As writers, we can do whatever we imagine, yet whatever we imagine must serve the story we are telling. Which means the magic must have a price and it must have limits. (If there are no limits, then there is no conflict and hence, no story. If there was no kryptonite, Superman would be just a ho-hum guy in a cape.)

Literary magic comes in vast array of guises – love, intelligence, beauty, skills, exotic worlds, wonder, wisdom. All have limits, all have a price and consequences. In the non-literary world, sometimes the ripples of such magic are small and unfelt by most people. Such as the magic of a smile. If you smile at someone, they might smile back, and that small exchange might make them feel good enough to smile at someone else. Other small matters might have dire consequences, such as an extra drink before getting on the highway. All lives impinge on others.

I read a story once, an anecdote, really. A guy found a spider swimming in his toilet. He decided to rescue the spider, took it out of the water, and set it on the floor. The next day, he found the spider in his toilet again, and again he took it out. A little later, he found the spider dead. Why, the storyteller asked, did the spider die? The answer: because one life impinged on another.

Whether that statement has validity in real life, it certainly fits with fiction. Everything in a novel should be connected to everything else, which means that small actions could have large consequences. Perhaps that is why fiction is so compelling — it enables us to notice such ramifications. We can't see far enough in real life to be aware of such connections and their impact, but I'm sure they are there. And isn't that what magic is? The manipulation of the real and ordinary?

None of my books are about magic as such, but all have an element of magic, even if it is just the magic of a quest, of love, of being different, of finding one's self. The most magical of my books is Light Bringer, but the magic of the main characters' harmonic resonance causes problems only because it shows that they are not exactly human. It has limits, since this particular magic doesn't bring them much happiness — at least not yet. The price they pay could be the fate of the entire world.

What is the magic of your book? What is its price? What are its limits?

Tagged: connections, consequences, limits of magic, literary magic, magic, price of magic, real life vs. fiction, Superman

Final Edits, Perhaps

I received the final edits for my novel Light Bringer, which will be published later this month. I had a couple of editors go over the book to look for any problems; when I get the proof copy, I want it to be strictly a copy-editing job — checking for typos, the letter I that mysteriously transforms itself into the numeral one, and other such exacting details. When I sent Donna B. Russell the manuscript to edit, I enclosed a message:

Donna, I hope you enjoy this book as much as you did Daughter Am I. Thirty years of research, about six years of writing from start to finish — it's my magnum opus, though it won't be so magnum if no one likes the opus.

When Donna sent the manuscript back with the edits, she replied, 

In your last e-mail, you said, "It's my magnum opus, though it won't be so magnum if no one likes the opus."  I don't think you have to worry about that because I'm sure Light Bringer is much closer to an "opus" than an "oops." *S*  You have a good beginning, building tension with Helen driving in the snowstorm and finding a baby on her doorstep, and a superb ending.  The double plot twist at the end was absolute genius — a kind of literary whiplash, but in a good sense.  Your vivid descriptions helped me "see" not only the people, but the scenery and locations.  You made them very real.  You made me care about the main characters, and developed both the good guys and the villains very well.

One of my favorite passages in the book didn't have to do with the main story, but with Hugh's father (p. 218):

"His father, who had endured years of agony while dying of pancreatic cancer, had once told him pain created its own reality. He said he could no longer remember what it felt like before the pain began, nor could he imagine what it would feel like when it ceased. Nothing else ever existed, or would ever exist, except the eternal pain."

You've captured exactly how many feel who live with chronic pain on a daily basis.

Below are the line edits and some suggestions.  I hope they are helpful.  I wish you all the best with Light Bringer. — Donna

How can you not feel like a real author when people are going around quoting you! Okay, just one person, but still . . .

Tagged: chronic pain, Donna B. Russell, editing, Light Bringer, literary whiplash

Going Along for the Ride

Life takes odd twists and turns. It seemed to me, when my life-mate — my soul mate — was dying of inoperable kidney cancer, that our lives would never change. He'd been sick for so many years, dying cell by cell, that it felt as if we were locked in a horror show of endless, predictable misery. Last year at this time, his disintegration suddenly speeded up, and he started dying organ by organ. And then he was gone.

I've made no secret of my grief, of the pain his "goneness" has caused me, but through it all, I've been getting on with my life, trying to open myself to new experiences, trying to hope for . . . what? That is the kicker. How do you know what to hope for if you can't even imagine where you are headed?

Today I sat in a restaurant, one thousand miles from our home, celebrating my birthday with new friends and acquaintances I'd met through a grief support group. Though all nine of us are trying to deal with the devastating loss of a loved one, we talked and laughed and had a good time. It showed me that there is life after death — we lived despite our loved ones' deaths. And it showed me something else. That for all of life's seeming predictability, it can still surprise. A year ago, when my life mate was a couple of weeks from death, there is no way I could ever have envisioned that restaurant scene.

Back then, I knew I'd have to leave our home, to find a temporary haven where I could deal with my grief, but I had no clear idea of where I wanted to go, and somehow I found myself in the desert. And, since I'd been a virtual hermit for years, I could never have guessed that I would make so many friends. Nor had I celebrated my birthday in . . . well, never mind how many years it's been. And yet, there I was, with new friends in a time and place I couldn't have even imagined a year ago.

So where am I going? How will I get there? Who will I be? Who will I be with?  There is no way of knowing. I'll just have to go along for the ride and hope that everything works out when I get there. Wherever "there" is.

Tagged: death, desert, grief, grief support group, hermit, hope, life, loss, new friends

Standing Tearfully on the Cusp of . . .

My fourth book, Light Bringer, is going to be released later this month. I thought this would be an auspicious time, a time of endings and new beginnings. March is the two-year anniversary of my being published, it's the anniversary of my birth, and it's the first anniversary of my soul mate's death. What I didn't take into consideration is how emotional this month would be. I mean, I've had almost a year to get used to his death. I should be over it by now, right? Apparently not.

After his death, I told myself, "If you can just get through the first month, you'll be fine." I wasn't. So then I told myself, "After the third month, you'll be fine." The months passed, and I still grieved, so I told myself, "After six months . . ." And, "after a year." I'm nearing that first anniversary, but I don't seem to be completely shedding my grief. Grief follows its own time. It will not, cannot be rushed. Even worse, I seem to be keyed into this same month last year — the final month of his life — and I feel as if I'm counting down to his death . . . again. The big difference is that last year I did not give in to emotion — at least not much and not until the end. His care was all that mattered. Well, I'm feeling now what I didn't feel then. And just like last year, nothing I do can make him well.

This will be my first birthday without him, and oddly, it saddens me. We didn't celebrate our birthdays. Sometimes we acknowledged them, sometimes we didn't, but they were no big deal, just a change of numbers, so I've been wondering why this birthday troubles me, and tonight I figured it out. This is one of one of the big 0 birthdays, the one where you can no longer fool yourself into thinking you are still young (even the actuarial tables acknowledge this one as a major change). And here's the kicker: my mate and I will not be growing old together. There will be no walking hand-in-hand in our twilight years, no reminiscing about our youth, no helping each other overcome the infirmities of age. "The end" has been written on our love story.

If that weren't enough trauma for one month, Light Bringer is his memorial – his funeral service, obituary, epitaph — all rolled into one. Perhaps I shouldn't imbue the book with such significance, but it is the culmination of two lifetimes of study — his and mine. It's the last book he helped me edit, the last one I read to him from beginning to end. Once the book has been launched, it no longer belongs to us — to him and me. It belongs to anyone who reads it. And so one more piece of him will be gone from my life.

I'd hoped to be able to give the book a good send-off, but it's hard to think of fun, innovative ways to promote when I'm constantly reminded that he won't be here to help me celebrate. And it is something to celebrate. (Heck, I'm even going to celebrate my birthday!) So, here I am, at the beginning of this auspicious month, standing tearfully on the cusp of . . . what? I don't know.

Tagged: anniversary of death, birthday, death of a soulmate, grief, growing old, loss, memorial

The Ferris Wheel of Life

Relationships, especially between long-term couples, change continuously, but we seldom notice those changes in the whirr and whirl of everyday life. Even our images of each other change to accommodate the passing years. We are always "us."

A day or two after my life mate died, I couldn't visualize him, so I looked at the only photo I have of us, and I wept because I did not recognize him. Fifteen years ago, when that photo was taken, it was an exact likeness of him, but during the years of illness, he lost the fullness in his face, first becoming distinguished looking, then gaunt. I have an idea/image of him in my mind, perhaps a composite of him through the years, perhaps what he actually looked like near the end, and that photo does not resemble the person I knew. One more thing to mourn.

That is the problem with grief, there is always one more thing to mourn.

It's not just our internal images of a person that changes to accommodate the vagaries of age; our internal image of the relationship itself changes to accommodate the vagaries of life. Most of the transformation of a relationship from youthful and passionate to aged and (perhaps) wise and companionable goes unnoticed. We are always who we are. We are always in the present.

The big events of life — starting a business or losing one, having children or losing them — we celebrate or grieve as the case may be, but other things disappear without acknowledgement. We used to walk together, ride bikes, play tennis, kick a soccer ball, but such activities were supplanted with other, more sedentary activities as his health deteriorated. But still, there we were, on the great Ferris wheel of our relationship — always current, always us. And then he died.

When one of a couple dies, the Ferris wheel comes to a halt. Those who have not experienced the loss of a long-time mate think that the Ferris wheel continues with the survivor, but that isn't true. It looms there, empty. The continually evolving, revolving living relationship is dead. All you have is what has already happened, and now you can see every transformation throughout all the years. You don't simply mourn the man he was at the end, you also mourn the man you met and the men he became during the subsequent years. And you grieve for all those little things that passed unnoticed during the course of your relationship. They didn't matter while you were together because you were together, but now they add to the overwhelming whole of grief.

Gradually, the survivor climbs aboard another Ferris wheel of her own, but the original one still haunts. If I live long enough, my grief will fade and perhaps disappear in the whirr and whirl of everyday life, but for now, newly recalled memories keep seeping into my life, and they have to be processed, mourned, dealt with. Sometimes these are minor issues, sometimes major. And all a surprise. How could so much have happened during those quiet years?

One recurring theme in our lives was vitamins and other food supplements. We met at his health food store. The first time we connected physically was when he handed me a bottle of vitamin A and our touch lingered. The first time our gazes locked was over his checkout counter. The supplement regimen he created for me changed as new research came out, but always, there were the supplements, a symbol of how much he cared for me. Now all that loss has to be dealt with somehow.

And that is just one aspect of our shared life. There were almost 34 years worth of good things and bad. 408 months. 1756 weeks. 12,296 days. When he was alive, all those days blended together, but now each exists separately, a thing in itself. A thing to be mourned. No wonder grief is such a major undertaking.

Tagged: changing relationships, dealing with loss, death, grief, grief survivor, loss, loss of a lifemate, mourning, relationships, surviving grief

The Joy of Lost Words

Bob's pomarious experience, his frutescent hair, and his squiriferous demeanor made him a popular oporopolist. The only problem was that he tended to be a philargyrist, and there wasn't a lot of money to be made in his chosen profession. Even worse, the sevidical tongue of his boss gave him ulcers. Luckily, his prandicles were both cheap and soothing and served to adimpleate him, and his wife's hints that he get a better job were too veteratiorian to affect his digestion. (He was a bit of a foppotee, you see.) He was unaware of her cibosities and her pamphagous proclivities, and since he had no interest in somandric issues, her gutturniformity never bothered him.

Ah, the joy of lost words!!

If you love words, you will enjoy this site: Save the Words. I found all these wonderful words there.

I wasn't going to tell you what these archaic words mean, but that wouldn't be fair, (and how can you help bring these words back into play if you don't know the definitions?) so here they are, in alphabetical order:

Adimpleate: to fill up

Cibosity: store of food

Foppotee: a simple-minded person

Frutescent: resembling a shrub

Gutturniformity: shaped like a water bottle

Oporopolist: fruit seller

Pamphagous: eating or consuming everything

Philargyrist: someone who loves money

Pomarious: of or belonging to a fruit orchard

Prandicles: small meal

Sevidical: speaking in a harsh or cruel manner

Somandric: relating to the human body

Squiriferous: having the characteristics of a gentleman

Veteratiorian: subtle

Tagged: adimpleate, cibosity, foppotee, frutescent, gutturniformity, lost words, oporopolist, pamphagous, philargyris, pomarious, prandicles, sevidical, somandric, squiriferous, veteratiorian