Memorial Day thoughts

Somewhat to my surprise, we haven't written a post featuring Memorial Day. I suspect the reason is that this weekend falls close to my mother's birthday. The onslaught of memories and the focus on loss often hits me hard. And yet, exploring that grief has been important to me in the Caffrey Conversation series.

Warning for spoilers for the Caffrey Conversation series

My primary goal in writing the stories was to entertain others with the stories that had been hanging around in my head. A secondary goal was to help others be more prepared than I was to face grief. That played out first in the Byron plot line, as he and his loved ones prepared for his death. Since then, other characters have experienced or remembered losses they have suffered. In fact, Silbrith reminded me that Neal's break up with Fiona occurred over Memorial Day weekend.

Does a break up really belong in a post about grief? I'd argue that it does. To explain, let's go back a few years.

Even though we'd been warned that Mom had only a few weeks to live, I still wasn't prepared. There was always that spark of hope that she'd recover. It wasn't until the day after she died that it started to seem real. Waves of grief hit at the funeral, and once I returned home my usual routine seemed pointless. Wondering if these feelings were normal, I sought out books about grief. It was such a relief to read about others who had experienced the same thing. I wished I'd read those books earlier -- when Mom shared her diagnosis, or even as part of my school curriculum. In addition to reading about coping mechanisms, I was also learning that Western society doesn't like to think/talk about death. It leaves people unprepared. If I'd been informed and ready to deal with my own grief, how much more might I have been able to do for Mom, to comfort her? That question has haunted me for years.

I also learned that grief goes beyond missing a person. Often you're mourning a future you had envisioned. Mom and I had plans for vacations, for doing projects around my home, for all sorts of things that are never going to happen the way we had imagined. Acknowledging my sadness and letting go of those plans involved another round of emotional pain.

That taught me that we can mourn things that aren't directly related to the death of a person. For a long time I'd harbored pain and resentment over a planned career progression that my manager periodically waved in front of me but didn't deliver. Once I had come to grips with my grief over Mom, I applied that same process to my career. I faced my anger toward the boss, and toward myself for continuing to believe that this time he'd really pull through for me. I stopped denying that my career was... well, if not dead, certainly not thriving. Working through that relieved an emotional burden and helped me move on. The first step was acknowledging that I could mourn a future career that wasn't going to happen -- or at least wasn't going to happen the way I'd envisioned.

Out of my own wish that I'd been better informed about grief, I set a goal of including examples of it in my stories. The result is that the main characters grow through successes and losses. They acknowledge that it takes time to get over losing someone, and they have different experiences in dealing with their grief.

Examples include Byron's death and funeral, seeing how Neal's aunt struggles after her husband's death, and how Henry finally breaks down after Robert's death. Noelle leads the family in reflection about losses over the holidays and they share memories of people who aren't with them due to death, divorce, or other circumstances. We've just touched on what Ellen went through planning Neal's funeral after he ran away. If I had to pick the example I'm most proud of, it would be the vignette Wish on a Star, where a terminally-ill mother tries to have one last fun day with her children, and Peter reflects on how his aunt's death affected his family when he was a teenager. And these are only examples of things I wrote. Silbrith added more layers when Neal sees a friend die, resulting in issues such as PTSD that persist across multiple stories. The story she's posting now, Time Crystals, shows the Arkham Files version of Neal as a child dealing with the loss of family members.

And then there's my in-progress futuristic novel, which includes flashbacks to a memorial service for the main character's father. I hope someday that story will serve readers in the same way as the Caffrey Conversation, offering both entertainment and insight.