What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? I had the idea for Mothers of Angels around 2013 or 2014. Unfortunately, for several years all I did was talk about it and run ideas about in my mind. In 2017 I finally started putting some thoughts down on paper. But then I ran into an unexpected roadblock. I found out that that I couldn’t dig deep enough into the memories enough to fill an entire book. (Yes, I chickened out.) So, I put out the call to other mothers that lost children and in May 2018 published an anthology with my story in it, along with many other mothers of angels.
Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. Writing this story, I worked my first drafts – several of them – writing in pen on a legal pad in my car at lunch. (It has to be a pen – never a pencil – and preferably my favorite, a black PaperMate Ink Joy gel pen.) I have several mis-starts and ‘do-overs’ that I started working with first. I’d spend my 30 minutes eating my sandwich and starting to write what I wanted. Then a day or two later, I’d look at it again and decide it was all rubbish, so I’d start over again. And again. It took me a long time to clarify my thoughts enough to decide which direction I wanted to go with it.
Once I walked in the door at home, it was more difficult for me to get into ‘creative mode’. By then the cats are demanding their empty food dishes get refilled. It’s time to start thinking of dinner. Does a load of laundry need thrown in the washer? I found it was more difficult to sit down – even for a brief 30-minute stint – and be creative. So, I typically used my lunch time for original writing, and my home time for typing up and revising. Once things are typed and, on the computer, then I work totally on the keyboard – except for editing, which I always do by printing out the pages and working by hand on those.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? While writing my stepson, Mark’s, story, as I mentioned in the earlier question, I usually worked in my car at lunch. Once it was written and I was revising, it would have been on printouts at home, usually on the weekend.
I don’t write at any specific time of day. I didn’t then when I was working full time. Now that my hours are cut back to part time hours, I still don’t have any specific times to write.
Writing Mark’s story for Mothers of Angels, any accompanying food or drinks would have been my sandwich or my Vanilla Coke that I had for lunch. At home it’s simply a bottle of water as I work – no certain drinks or routines that ‘get me in the mood’. No music – ever. I can’t write with music in the background. Even instrumental songs with no lyrics distract me.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers or Chapter number as references. The one memory that was the most emotional was the time of Mark drawing his last breath. Twenty-three is too young to die. We were in the hospital on Mark’s last day on earth. His mother sat on one side, holding one hand. I sat on the other side, holding his other hand. His dad paced about the room. The only thing that kept me going through this moment was the thought – this is the last thing I can do for Mark.
My story ‘The Son of My Heart’ is on page 147 in Mothers of Angels.
In ‘The Son of My Heart’, I actually wrote very little about that specific moment.
Cancer is not a death sentence anymore. Many people survive and thrive and live to an old age after a cancer diagnosis. And many don’t. Mark was one of the statistics. In August he was a young man. By Christmas of that year, the family was taking turns spending time with him in the hospital, knowing he wouldn’t make it to the approaching New Year. Just barely after midnight on December 27th, Mark’s mom, his dad, and I sat around him holding his hands until his struggle was over, a month after his 23rd birthday. He fought for four months. The longest months – and the shortest months – of our lives.\
I ended up closing and wrapping up the story like this:
But yet, even with all the pain, tears, and grief, there were still a few who didn’t understand. “But he’s not your real son,” I heard more than once. A year later I refused to go to the work Christmas party, because the one year anniversary, marked by a major holiday, was just as painful as if we were experiencing this loss and death for the first time. And there were those few who still didn’t get it. I’d like to be mean and think ‘Wait until it happens to you. Then you’ll understand.’ But I can’t. I couldn’t wish this on anyone.
It was many years before I could find joy in Christmas again. Chris got a tattoo on his arm honoring Mark. After all his years of being the big brother, he finally got a big brother – and then he lost him.
In 2012, a friend went through her files of emails that she’d kept. She painstakingly cut her email address out the copies and returned the emails to her friends. In the stack she gave to me, I found a few emails that I’d sent her in 2004 as we were traveling this rocky path with Mark. It was interesting to see a lot of the details that I’d pushed out of my mind.
On December 22, 2004, I’d updated her on what was happening. I won’t share it all here. But on December 3rd, he’d finished another round of chemo. On December 8th, things took a turn for the worse. Back to the hospital we went. Another surgery. More transfusions. Then to isolation. Then to ICU.
With all this going on, we still had four other children to think of, my two sons and Dennis’ two daughters. They were devastated too, but as parents, you still try to make things ‘normal.’ At the end of the email I closed with:
“We did get a tree Monday afternoon, although it’s still sitting there undecorated. There are packages wrapped, but no holiday decorations other than my string of Christmas cards draped across the wall. It appears to be Christmas, and the calendar pages say that it will be here in three more days…but it just doesn’t seem to be Christmas. Regardless of all the “STUFF” (and you know I really meant another word) that we’re going through over here, we are thinking of you all and wishing you all the best. Thank you for your support over the past few months and we appreciate all those that have kept us in your prayers. It really has helped to have so many shoulders through all this.”
Life does go on, whether we want it to or not. At first, you don’t see how it’s possible. I remember the morning after my brother died at age 35. I remember waking up and seeing the sunshine and thinking, ‘How dare it! How dare the sun continues to shine on a day like today?’ But it does. And we go on. One step in front of the other. And now, it’s been 14 years since Mark’s soul left his earthly body.
Yet all it takes is one song, one television program, a COPS show, an unexpected rerun of Walker: Texas Ranger. I remember the passing gas and bathroom jokes he used to make in typical boyhood fashion. Or I hear a Fleetwood Mac song and remember the day when Mark walked in the house (early 2000-something) so excited about this ‘new’ band he’d just heard…and there I am – sent right back in time to the days before the unthinkable happened.
I lost my son. I didn’t carry him in my belly for nine months. I didn’t watch him learn to toddle around. I wasn’t there for his first day of kindergarten. But he was still my son, my third son that I got the easy way. He stole my heart and will have a piece of it for the rest of my life. Until I see you again one day, (singing along) you ‘bad boy…bad boy…’
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Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? Interestingly enough, as I go back and re-read this four years later, I see that my way of dealing with the pain and the emotion was simply to write around it. I didn’t really delve into the most painful moment at all.
Yes, as I mentioned earlier – I chickened out. I avoided having to dive too deep into this moment by opening up Mothers of Angels to other mothers to have them share their children’s lives and memories with us too. Maybe I thought there was safety in numbers. The shared comradery we had as we published this tale of many children lost too soon almost was a balm to my heart, knowing that many ended up benefiting in sharing their stories with the world, helping to keep many children’s memories alive.
I backed away from the most heart wrenching memories, especially that last shared moment as we held his hands as Mark transitioned from this world to the heavenly realm. I couldn’t go there.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? I’m sorry, but I don’t have any deletions I can share with you. I have MANY deletions, many handwritten false starts that I could reference. But they’re packed up in a notebook, stored in a tub deep in the shed. Truthfully, I’m not even sure which tub it’s in if I wanted to go digging for it.
I think in this case, I’ve done what I tend to do with many painful and unpleasant pieces of the past – I compartmentalize. I ‘pack it all up’ either in a physical manner, or in an mental/emotional manner and pack it all away and move on.
That’s possibly not the healthiest way to deal with less than happy moments from the earlier moments in time. This could probably keep a therapist in paychecks for a very long time if I wanted to address it and come up with a different coping mechanism.
But at this point, I figure it’s worked alright for me for over sixty years, so I’ll keep going along with this method. Besides, if I wanted to change – that may be a topic for a whole other memoir!
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