Red Room Where the Writers Are

"Dead people seem to inspire you," he said to me. I'd not thought about it that way before, but he was right. Although I have spent the past ten years writing, writing, and writing some more, the two books I have to show for it are my tributes to dead people that I loved.

Grief, sadness, anger, all push me somehow. I moved beyond my lethargy and procrastination into action. A book gives me comfort and helps keep that person close to me, helps them to live on in more than just my memory.

The first book came to me when my daughter was stillborn 12 years ago. It had been my second pregnancy loss in less than a year. Although I was nearly 40 at the time, I never thought I would be childless, and now, with Reba's death, the realization choked me.

I had begun my writing practice during my pregnancy. I guess my maternal creativity opened up some long-lost access to other types, and I hummed along happily. Thank God. When Reba died, writing was what I had left. Writing gave me a life raft to cling to, a place where I was always safe. And when my mother was unable to find a book of comfort for grandparents, I knew then that I had found my calling, my meaning to tragedy, my way to say good-bye to the little girl I never knew.

Yet as I said good-bye, not only to her but to the person I was before her death, she became more real to me. As I spoke to people about the book, I spoke about her...about my love for her, about my fight to keep her alive, about the strong spirit I felt from her as I carried her. Maybe I made her up, but I made up a pretty good kid! I had stopped saying good-bye. We said hello to each other in a different, profound way. She has been with me, sharing my journey in my heart, ever since.

This past December, when my mother-in-law died, I felt a different type of loss. Here was a kindred spirit and close friend, someone who, as an artist herself, understood my ups and downs. At first I didn't think about a book...until I found her journals.

The first one appeared the day after her death, complete with the perfect reading for her funeral. Over the next several weeks, we found more and more. We created several stacks in the living room, and I began to read. I read about her life in the Great Depression, about an immigrant mother and grandmother who raged and screamed at her and at each other, about her father who was too sick to work, and how in spite of all of this she found her way out of poverty, out of the South Bronx, through the power of art and culture.

In the power of her words, I found comfort. I knew her more deeply than I had in life. In saying good-bye I was actually saying hello to her as a person. I learned what mattered, what hurt, what drove her. I gained a glimpse into aging and death. She had lifted a veil, and let me see.