I’ve been working on a short story tentatively titled “13 Ways of Looking at Dying, Just Before, or the Moment After.” It’s based on a blog post I wrote here last November. I’m re-blogging now to allow me more time to work on the story. I consider it one of my finer posts. Both the post and the story owe something to Stevens:
From Wallace Steven’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling Or just after.
The deer fleeing for its life turns to look at me with my mother’s eyes. Dark fierce eyes, bitter-bright, locking onto mine. Not letting go. She’s not looking for help or pity or comfort. Or escape. She knows there’s no escape. That dark gaze locked onto mine wants but one thing. A witness to its passing, its inevitable and terrifying end.
I never actually saw the deer that night. It was too dark. I only heard its pounding hooves passing behind our home, its terrified scream splitting the night. But I “see” it nonetheless. For days, weeks, afterwards, even now, I see it. Screaming past me with my mother’s eyes. I’d watched her passing too. Her inevitable and terrifying end.
It came quickly. Late June she was diagnosed with cancer. By October she was gone.
I was her caretaker during those last brief months. I watched her flesh waste away, her…
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I remember this post so well! I LOVED it! It was incredibly stimulating. Definitely worth a re-blog 🙂
Thank you, Katie!
wow inspiring writing 🙂
So happy you liked it! Makes me smile.
Wonderful writing, Deborah. Thank you so much for reposting it!
Thank you!
It is wonderful. I was wondering how you felt/feel going back and creating a story from this piece? Just a writer curiosity.
Thanks Brenda. The story really just picks up the pieces about my mom, and brings in other scenes from caring for her during last couple of months, and how the deer’s scream kind of pulled it altogether. It was hard to write, but good too because so many mixed emotions are swirling about and the story was a way to further process the whole experience.
I know this post isn’t easy to read for some because the death of loved ones is never easy, and the story is probably even more difficult, because my mom was a difficult woman and we sparred a lot–so the love’s there, but the anger too, and the hurt, and resentment, and the grief. It’s overwhelming at times.
But so many caretakers go through this and it seemed to need to be written. So I kept it as “light” as possible by writing it in 13 brief scenes. It’s very short. But potent–at least that’s what I was aiming for.
Thanks for asking about the process.