Silence Writes... about death, and what it means to those left behind.
How the death of my mother is causing me to revisit my books, Genuine Magic and its sequel Genuine Myth, and offer them for a read to anyone who is interested or might be facing a similar situation in their lives.
The recent passing of my mother has been very difficult for me, and in trying to decide whether to give myself a break in writing for a while or to push ahead in some way, it occurred to me that maybe others out there might benefit from something I wrote a long time ago. Life has kept me from publishing two other completed novels that I have not had the time to properly edit and format, but I have two published already that I felt compelled to mention, particularly the first one. I wrote them more than a decade ago and admittedly, they are not my best work. I have improved much since I wrote them. But, the first book especially is perhaps more relevant to me now than even when I first wrote it.
Genuine Magic is, at its core, a story about a dying character and the people around him who attempt to help him fulfill his dying wish. Originally, I wrote this story to “fix” something that bothered me in another book by my favorite author. My favorite character in that book was executed by fire after being tortured. It was very difficult to read, but his actual death was not what made me put the book down with a turned stomach. It was the fact that his wife, a woman who up until then had been nothing but devoted and loving to him, abandoned him during his hour of need. He was a sorcerer and was able to create a mental link between them. As he is already in pain from the torture, unable to see or speak anymore, and burning alive during his execution, he asks her to stay with him mentally, to occupy his mind, to tell him a story... anything... to distract him from the pain. But she decided it was too much for her to bear, and she closed her mind to him. He died alone. A selfless, kind, gentle healer... died alone... abandoned by his own wife after she promised she would not leave him. WTF.
It was one of the most upsetting things I had ever read, and I felt compelled to “fix” it. Genuine Magic started out as a fix-it story but it grew into its own thing quite well. What I had not realized until now, until I went through the process of losing my mother, staying with her as she died, and honoring her final wishes, that what I had written about and how I had handled her death was all because of things she had taught me. It was all because she instilled in my the importance of two things:
It is important to stay with a dying person, if at all possible, no matter how sad, afraid, or angry at the process of death you might be. The dying person needs you, and turning away from them is what produces the kind of guilt and lack of closure that people then try to fill later with elaborate funerals, memorials etc. The time to honor the person is while they live and as they die. After they are dead, whatever else is done is done for the living, not for the dead. That which is done for the person while they are alive is what matters most.
The dying person’s wishes aren’t about you, it’s about them. Out of love, respect, honor, what have you for the dying person, you should not only promise to honor their dying wish (so long as it is feasible and it does not harm anyone), but then carry it out to the best of your ability. What they wanted is what matters, not what you or anybody else wants after that. People can mourn however they choose, of course, but honoring the wishes of the dead starts even before they die with a simple promise to try your best and an indication that their wishes are important to you.
Maybe you don’t agree, or maybe you do. As I said, everyone is different. But these things are important to me because my mother taught me that they were, and I saw her carrying out these things as she aided various members of my family through their cancer journeys. My father and I did our very best to give her the same courtesy during hers.
I found myself re-reading Genuine Magic (even though I’m somewhat embarrassed at how poorly it is written, the simplicity of the story, and the really stupid typo where I wrote the wrong person’s name in the very last paragraph of the book that the publisher won’t permit me to change... haha) recently, and it is helping me a little to revisit these ideas surrounding the terminally ill and the process of death that I have because of what my mother taught me. She was a nurse who, as I said before, helped many family members with their illnesses, and so death and dying didn’t have this horror or mystique about it for her, it was just another stage of a person’s life, and perhaps a transition to another.
Until she died, I never realized how much she had majorly influenced my writing of Genuine Magic and even its sequel, Genuine Myth, in more minor ways. She loved both of these books, and so I will leave the information about them (the first book in particular is about the process of dying) here for anyone interested in reading them (the first one is free and the second one is only $0.99), or perhaps for anyone who is facing the death of a loved one. Maybe it will help some of you, or maybe you will at least enjoy the stories.
They are available through lulu.com, barnesandnoble.com, goodreads.com, iTunes, and the Google Play store, but I will link to the Barnes & Noble information only because their site is quite nice and you can read the summaries and whatnot. I will even include the books’ “theme songs,” which basically were the songs that set the mood for the books and helped me get into the mood to write them. (They are by Ryann, an amazing YouTube artist.) The songs to this day make me instantly think of each book, so they are forever associated with them for me. =) Just click on the links and you’ll be taken to the books and the songs. (Lulu.com has a downloadable eReader for MAC or PC if you need one.)
Genuine Magic (Book 1); Theme song: Ryann - Sound of Falling Rain Genuine Myth (Book 2); Theme song: Ryann - Sound of Falling Rain II
All I ask in return for anyone who reads either book is to comment somehow. Tell me what you liked/didn’t like about them. Criticize the writing if you wish, I am always looking to grow. Tell me if something I wrote spoke to you in a certain way. Anything you want to say. I love to get feedback.
More than anything, I just wanted to share these books again, especially the first one, since my mother loved them and apparently unbeknownst to me had a hand in shaping how I wrote them. =)
