Sadness

My writing has taken a direct hit lately. Within the space of a year, I have lost 3 people in my immediate family and two family pets. The most difficult of these losses has been the recent loss of my only sibling, my brother. He succumbed to cancer after a hellish fight that lasted 7 months. He was never able to get his pain under control and at times, when I talked with him, he was almost hysterical with pain. I saw his body before his remains were cremated. I would like to forget that I did. The image of his emaciated remains haunt me.

My brother was military from the moment he graduated from college up until his retirement 18 months before he found out that he had bone marrow cancer. The list of career accomplishments that his obituary listed were  impressive.  I knew all of those things, of course, but to me he was just my dorky, older brother.

In order to ease the pain, I am finally writing about his death. Writing is very cathartic; if I talk about it, I talk way too much , so writing keeps my wordiness to a minimum. The details of his disease, suffering, death and funeral are best kept to myself. I constantly remind myself that a casual inquiry from a friend does not mean they want to hear it all!

Before I began writing in earnest, years ago, I enrolled in a local university and took all of the writing classes they had to offer. Each class required outside writing assignments which would then be submitted for group discussion, standard procedure. What a hard lesson it was to learn that a writer  must pick and choose what goes  into a story and what is best left unsaid. Surely my readers wanted to hear every tiny detail. It’s painful to find out they don’t.

I don’t think I will say much more about my brother, but I’m sure the experience will color my writing. That’s what life does. And yes- it’s still snowing.