Grief and Fiction

I am a freelance writer — I’ve published a number of magazine articles and personal essays, but when my son, the late Sargent Mateo Donaldson, took his life in February 2015, I could only stare at my computer screen.

About five months later, at a writer’s conference where I was leading a workshop, a friend asked, “How are you doing? Have you written about your son’s death?”

“No,” I shook my head. I couldn’t even form the words to tell him how I spent my writing time gazing out the window. Eight years later, I finally wrote an article for TAPS Magazine about the poppy field we plant each year to honor our late son.

When the Appalachian writer, Lee Smith’s son, died at age 33, she screamed her way through the next several months, until she finally talked to a psychiatrist. He listened to her rant until he held up his hand one day to signal that he had heard enough. The doctor gave her a prescription that read: “Write fiction for two hours a day.”

Smith struggled, but within four days, she settled down and wrote the novel, On Agate Hill.

Like Lee Smith, I discovered that writing fiction healed me. A group of writers asked me to write a Christmas story for a collection of romance novels. Thoughts tumbled into my mind. I would write about a woman whose husband had chosen suicide, and she would return to their cottage on Beaver Island, located in Northern Lake Michigan.

I transferred my pain — my “what ifs” and raging questions — into my character. As she walked the shoreline, gazing out at Lake Michigan, the ache inside her subsided. By the end of the novella, she embraces a new relationship with a gentleman.

When I wrote my newest novel about two grieving characters, one whose sister has died and the other’s fiancé has passed away, I drew not only upon my emotions, but from what I learned during my TAPS Peer Mentor training. As my characters released the last bits of grief, “like a tattered quilt,” they decided to honor the people they loved by serving their community and loving each other.

Often, counselors and organizations encourage grieving people to write about their thoughts and pain in a journal. I couldn’t do that, and perhaps you too have struggled with keeping a journal. If that’s the case, then consider writing a short story where a character is wading through the complex emotions of grief you experienced. Storytelling focuses on a person with a problem and how that person grows as he or she resolves the problem.

Story Ideas

If writing fiction, or writing of any kind, is new to you, here are a few story ideas to spark your creativity.

If you like nature, write about a woman who always longed to walk the Appalachian Trail, so she shoulders a pack and hikes off. On the journey, she experiences challenges that test her, but also help her work through her pain. Or, if you have joined one of many TAPS Outdoor adventures, show that experience through a character’s eyes.

Perhaps you are a city person, then send the character on a trip to Chicago. Think of possible hiccups your character might encounter in a large, unfamiliar city, such as getting off at the wrong subway stop, or losing a phone or credit card because grief has numbed your character’s mind. Lee Smith said, thanks to her grief, she left a trail of glasses, coats, and purses until she wrote her novel.

Think of a story as a vessel, perhaps a blue mason jar, that you can fill with the anger and ache in your heart. Then screw down the lid, place the jar on a shelf, and walk away.

There are still moments when a memory triggers heartache. I go for a walk on my farm and return to my computer to write my next story.

Joan Donaldson is the surviving mother of SGT Mateo Donaldson, U.S. Army

Photos: TAPS Archives