1. What Dramatic Throughline should I use?
5 – the reader creates a goal
2. What type of Conflict works best for my story?
1 – Relational conflict
3. Which Genre should I select?
5- Creative non-fiction
4. What Structure Model works best?
4 Fate
5. How many Situations will I use?
18 – The Healing Journey
I last saw him alive with his back to me as he paused at the end of the driveway and heard my son say “Go, Daddy, go!”
I last saw him in the rented coffin, his long hair shaved off and a bandanna around his head, his eyes closed and that little shit-eating grin on his face, the black leather jacket with pins and the ring, the gold ring that was returned to me bent and twisted.
I named my blog “Torn Asunder” which was initially for me versus cancer, which happened that same year, merely four months earlier. My kidney was full of third stage cancer and had to come out immediately.
He was there, every night (almost) except when he had a really bad cold and didn’t want to come in, afraid of getting me sick.
Two months later, they had a fundraiser for me, and I made about $300 which I spent in six months worth of doctor’s bills. I have a picture somewhere of the three of us, but I couldn’t find it in time for the funeral.
I still have the pictures from my inlaws. After the funeral, I hardly saw them again. This happens with me.
For four years, I put myself and my son away. My son grew up with the sense that the world was just us. My family realized that I wanted nothing to do with anyone, so they dropped knowing us. I can’t remember the last time I went to a birthday party. Or a wedding.
Funerals? Yes. Funerals I go to. Funerals, strangely enough, I enjoy. I think it’s because of its sadness, that I’m used to that. Its quiet contemplation of the person’s life – and to see extended and old family in a place and time that is solemn and serious, so that we can pay attention to each other, and to look at the life that passed us.
I could sit in a funeral for hours if I was allowed. I could watch the actions and reactions and think of what the person felt toward not only the person who passed, but the people who gathered around as kin of the person. How many people come in to give true condolences to the people versus how many people come in to contemplate the life passed?
Are funerals both?
Torn Asunder is how my life felt, not at that moment when the cancer was expunged, and not at the moment when they took me away from my husband’s coffin. But two years later, when I suddenly felt adrift, things were strange and I thought a whole year had gone by without my knowing. I thought that he had died an extra year ago, and I have to consciously remember the date and year, because otherwise I say “five years” in conversation. It’s always been “five years” when, in reality, it would be four years come July 11.
My life had been torn asunder then, and a year later when Rusty went down, and I was denied promotion, and the world was ending.
I was contemplating my own funeral. Who would come? Would my father last longer than I expected? Would he be relieved? How would he feel about my son?
And what would happen to me? The big empty void or “What Dreams May Come”? A sense of self that continues in this world temporarily, but moves on eventually?
What stopped me was the fact that I knew, I just knew, my father wouldn’t take care of my son. My father’s wife would, but my father would treat him like he had treated me, and he would grow up with the same thing that I did – an uncaring and neglectful parent.
I’m often accused of it myself. Referring to the isolation of myself – yes, I continue to isolate, but I’m getting better. I want to go out into the world, but I can’t go out for long. I don’t like shopping. I don’t like waiting. I especially don’t like people. I really, and truly, don’t like people.
They call it schizoid, but that’s a person who intentionally hurts others in order to be alone. I used to do that; not anymore. I know people who don’t understand how I think, how I can think like a psychopath or a schizophrenic or a separate character in stories and role-playing; think like this:
You can change how you are, different moments of the day. You can change how you look at the way someone says something to you. Negative labels are taken in. Positive labels are excluded.
Try it sometime. You’ll see how I see the world.