The first story in the Caffrey Conversation series took me through a wide array of emotions. I started writing it six months after Mom’s mastectomy; the doctors said she was doing great and they’d found no more signs of cancer, and we were ecstatic. Three months later I was almost done writing the story, and we learned the cancer had spread to her brain and she had only weeks to live.
Warning for big spoilers for the stories in the Caffrey Conversation AU.
It’s only recently that I’ve realized how much my grief affected the original ending of the story. I’ve always told myself I chose that ending because I felt a need to return the characters to their state in the pilot of White Collar. But it was more than that driving me. The story had been going in a positive direction, with Neal about to get a big break that would turn his life around, and suddenly – through no fault of his own – it’s snatched away. That reflected my overwhelming sense of loss. On top of that, a corrupt FBI agent beats Neal up, just as I felt beaten up by circumstances I couldn’t control.
I wrote Choirboy Caffrey – the second story in the series – in December of 2013. As Christmas approached, I couldn’t face my usual routine. Diving into writing a story about a Christmas concert helped me find a new way to observe a holiday that brought so many bittersweet memories of my mother. It’s become my new tradition; heading into this last Christmas I was writing another holiday story, Caffrey Aloha.
As I wrote Choirboy, I was also pulling together ideas for By the Book, Caffrey Flashback and Caffrey Disclosure, which I considered to be a trilogy. The ideas behind the cases had been in my head for a couple of years, as stories I spun for myself when White Collar was airing. My goal was to show Neal working through three phases as he worked on those cases. First he would be in denial about his repressed memories. In the next phase he would finally acknowledge and deal with those issues. And in the last phase he would be recovered and ready to give back by helping someone else who was in pain – his cousin Henry. It’s not a big leap to say I was outlining my own path of moving from numbness to accepting my grief and then returning to a new normal.
One of the most frightening aspects of writing the trilogy was the fact that I’d introduced Byron Ellington at the end of Choirboy, knowing that I would need to draw on my recent experiences with his story arc. I knew it would be painful, but also knew I needed to express my feelings. So in By the Book Neal and June have to accept Byron’s failing health. In Flashback they must face Byron’s death and funeral. And in Disclosure they start to move on, but still feel sad.
In the months after my mother’s death, I sought out books about grief. Several authors noted that we tend to be mentally and emotionally unprepared to face the death of loved ones, even though it’s an inevitable aspect of life. From the time I learned Mom’s prognosis through the first months after her death, I felt helpless, useless, and stupid. Nearly three years later I still have moments of regret, wishing I’d done or said things differently even though I still don’t know what I could or should have done. I wish I’d been more prepared or known what to expect, and I thought that at the very least I might share my experiences through my stories in the hope that it could help others know what to expect when they lose someone, or to help validate their feelings if they were already experiencing grief.
I posted the scenes with trepidation, wondering what kind of reaction I would get to exposing my pain. Would readers be annoyed? Confused? I’m pleased to report that the feedback from readers about the Byron storyline are some of the most moving comments I’ve received.
To offset the pain of what I was writing about, I created a character to comfort and guide Neal. With Noelle I was indulging in some wish fulfillment. How nice it would have been to have an expert devoted to talking me through my emotions, offering me validation and understanding and sound advice. Eventually Silbrith asked if Noelle was based on my mom. After a moment of shock, I had to admit that on some level I was writing the person who could best comfort me. Unlike Noelle, my mother was not a psychologist or a professor or the daughter of an ambassador or a twin. However, she was good at caring about people, at listening and advising in a calm way with an emphasis on logic over emotion, while at the same time having a very soft heart. I think I cried when I first acknowledged that part of Noelle was indeed based on Mom, and I’m sniffling again now.
Yes, I’m still sad. The grief won’t ever go away. However, I think I’m doing better at accepting it and moving on with my life because of writing scenes based on my experiences.
If you want to read more about grieving, I found On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler to be particularly helpful. I liked their insights and the many examples of real people who were going through the same thing I was.
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