 This summer my son died. He was not well. It was suicide. What else is there to write? What else is there to tell?
That's how it is for me right now. I want to tell everyone he is gone and that's really all I want to talk about. I want to stand on the tallest mountain and scream it to the world, "My son is dead! Gone. He should be here." I want to tell it to the cashier in the grocery store, "My son was a Marine. Was. Because he's dead now." I want everyone, everywhere to know my sadness, my sorrow, my pain, but not everyone can and, seriously, it's awkward and quite honestly a buzz kill to shout stuff like that. Grief, I've been told, does what it wants and is unique for each one of us that it touches. Knowing that, I wonder if I'm the only one that's ever wanted to do that. To MAKE them know (who is them? All of them, the whole entire world) know a piece of my very existence is GONE from life for good. Am I the only one that randomly cries when grief throat punches me with a song, a thought, a photo and doesn't want anyone to see that while wanting them all to see exactly that... and care! Care that my world is irretrievably broken. Am I the only one who wants to sleep and sleep and sleep and hide away from all of life to make it all stop spinning... the world... the thoughts in my head... all of it? Am I the only one who saw it coming and yet didn't think this would ever really happen? Am I the only one? What I've found is, though I may grieve differently than anyone else, and that's my right because you get to grieve however you want, there are elements of sameness in each of us who grieves. We have all loved and lost and that similarity is enough to do things to humanity. This gives me comfort that maybe I'm not all alone. I am new to this journey and it's forced me to evaluate every part and parcel of my life. My writing hasn't escaped evaluation anymore than my job... Here's where grief meets my real life and whether I want to or not... I must go on, but where I go from here will forever be different... Things I know: 1) I MUST write. I know no other way to exist. Writing is as much a part of me as my curly hair. I MUST write. 2) I CAN’T write just for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy every one of my stories and books, they too are as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. I can honestly, probably arrogantly, read my stories and enjoy them as much now, for story’s sake as I did for creative sake when they were written. The thing is, though, I never wrote them for me. They’re for YOU… or... if not you, at least they’re for someone else other than me. Why would God put these stories in me if not to share? I MUST write. I CAN’T write just for myself. 3) I HATE marketing my books. Something about it drains my soul in the best of times. I can’t even think about it now. Right now, dealing with ultimate loss, the last thing I’ve wanted to do is market. Right now, I don’t know if I’ll ever market to try to get sales again. Right now, I write to soothe my soul and I kinda don’t care if another soul every reads my work again… but then again oh how I do! That’s all I know. When I look in the face of what really matters… marketing doesn’t, at least not right now. This may be the last newsletter. This may be just part of grief. I thank you all for indulging my silly dreams, but now I must go fight the demon of suicide and I don’t know if I’ll ever come back from this battle to muddle in marketing...
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