A Lesson in Loss

Loss : the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had.

The vast majority of my writing comes from my own inability to deal with loss.  From Asylum Lake to the projects I currently have banging around in my brain, the characters I create and pour myself into have an equally difficult time navigating through loss.

I was 10 when my parents divorced. That, as Ellis Arkema so perfectly stated in Asylum Lake "was my first lesson in loss".  I have spent the last 30 years trying to find that part of me – the 10 year old boy suddenly without a father; not that he was physically absent – merely emotionally. I was fortunate enough to briefly discover my father again shortly before his death. Those few precious months I had with him as the cancer ate him from the inside out, although truly a gift, can never replace the time I had lost.

I have a son who is 9 (and two daughters even younger) and history seems to be repeating itself.  My wife and I recently separated and I foresee a multitude of losses on the horizon.  The loss of physical items is trivial; things can be replaced, but the emotional loss is something I am already mourning.

It seems my lessons in loss continue. Perhaps it will fuel my writing even more…perhaps not.  If nothing else, loss continues to provide me a reason to keep searching — for happiness, for answers, and for all the unseen things that haunt the shadows of my mind.