Angel on my Shoulder

When words fail, often a photograph can provide the perfect message.

I’m starting this blog entry with a couple of photos, to tee up the explanation of the message. I promise I will keep it light. I really don’t want readers of Walking Distance to think they are in for a downer every time they check in on my progress as I make my way to Dissertation Land.

So here I am, in Blog Nation, dragging you into my deep investigation of the ticking time bomb that is my research odyssey. Some of you have been candid enough to let me know that my vocabulary is already driving you crazy. (Sorry. Would it help if I offered you a copy of Webster’s latest edition? I would, except, clearly, I am still using it.)

All I can say is, deal with it. Or don’t. I’m going with the flow, so the least you can do is let me flow it my way. Besides, think of all the people you will impress at parties when you start injecting words into your conversations like, what was it, “onerous”?

Try it. “Sorry, boss, but I cannot do even one more task because the work load is simply too onerous.” There. You just said that your boss is working you too hard. Now go pick up the Want Ads and start looking for a new job.

It’s useful, this vocabulary stuff. Really. You’ll enjoy picking up all the new words.

If not, let me steer the convo back to the subject at hand. (See? Keeping it light, shooting off on tangents... this is how a dissertation is written.)

When I finished my last blog entry, I promised to reveal the source of my inspiration in identifying what in God’s name I am doing in Grad School at this point in my life. Why am I pursuing another diploma that may never be anything more than a personal accomplishment that adds another line to my resume but doesn’t jettison me to the heights of wealth, success, status, or whatever other “goal” might be the eventual desired fruit of my labor?

I’ll let you in on the probably not-so-secret “secret” about how I came to figure out what I am supposed to be researching and offering up to the world.

Inspiration, thy name is Joyce.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I had a beautiful younger sister who also was my closest friend and confidante up until the summer of 1984. For now, I won’t delve into details about why I use the past tense. Mostly because I have never gotten comfortable with speaking of Joyce in the past tense. Perhaps that is because for me, she will never be “the sister I had” but rather will always be my sister Joyce.

And this is the weirdest thing. Those last four sentences, that one chunky paragraph, is actually the crux of my dissertation topic.

[Sorry:

crux

noun

with whom Henry will be living is the crux of the situation: nub, heart, essence, central point, main point, core, center, nucleus, kernel; informal bottom line.] You get the idea.

This is what I am researching. This is the driving theme, the undercurrent, the simplistic explanation, of the nagging question that compels me to beat my head against a proverbial (but not yet literal) brick wall to write a dissertation.

I have been trying to write about Joyce for the better part of the last 25 years. Not consistently, of course, because what kind of idiot must I be that I have been unable to pen the story of the one person in my life to whom I was closest, and not be able to get it done in 25 years. I mean, I’ve had 25 years, for crying out loud.

It sounds so cliche but I’ll say it anyway: Joyce was “one of a kind” as an individual, and one of a kind in the relationship we had together. I mean irreplaceable.

We all know at least one person who fits that description in our lives. We cannot live without them, or so we think. (Sadly, I am proof that we can, but it is not easy, or acceptable to have to do so.)

Joyce has always been an easy “topic” for me, for most of my life. As a teenager, I was always referring to her in conversations with others, because she was the person with whom I spent most of my time. After she died, I would mention Joyce often, out of habit more than anything else, but also, of course, because I missed her. Something would inevitably remind me of her, and I just had to share the reference or the memory. She was a huge part of me, so to leave her out of the conversation would just be wrong.

But “The Story of Joyce” (by the way, not even the working title for the book I have yet to finish) has been developing in fits and starts for a quarter of a century. All I can say is, I have not been able to finish writing it for reasons that I am only now beginning to understand, thanks to my journey to dissertation. What’s bugging me, even moreso, however, is the “why.” Why am I driven to write about Joyce and what happened to her? Why does any writer feel the need to write about their lost loved one when doing so might mean revisiting potentially painful memories?

This is the question. This is what I need to know.

Authors do it all the time, pen these “grief memoirs” as I have begun to refer to them. And, as I have found in conducting the literature review for my dissertation, many authors do it exceptionally well.

I have found beautiful examples of memoirs but perhaps one of the most moving, for me, has been Paula, written by Isabel Allende. This memoir about Allende’s struggle to deal with the yearlong illness and coma of her 28-year-old daughter, Paula, opened up to readers an amazing story of Allende’s life growing up in Chile. As the cousin of Salvadore Allende, the assassinated Chilean President, Allende grew up in a dictatorship country where political unrest and a military coup were the backdrop to her early years.

Allende didn’t set out to write an amazing memoir. But as she painfully kept vigil, watching her beautiful daughter cling to life for that long year, Allende hoped that through her storytelling -- yes, her use of “story” -- she could will Paula back to life, and that one day, Paula would read the journal of stories she had written during those long hospital visits.

It takes guts to be a writer, but it takes [bleeps] of steel to be a memoir writer when your subject is a loved one who has died. That said, to do this remarkably well is the mark of a gifted writer. But it also is a gift, as in the kind of present that is given to someone to acknowledge a special occasion or milestone. What I am finding in my research is that this kind of “giving” brings healing, gathers “community,” and connects us in a very real and essential way as human beings trying to figure out what this life is all about.

Give this some thought, and in an upcoming blog, I’ll clue you in on some of the ways we all have been sharing our sorrows in creative word and expression. You may be surprised to find that you yourself have done it too. Writing about those we have lost is like tethering yourself to their spirit. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’ve opened the line of communication.