You have only to wait and the same end comes for all of us.
Not to sound in too morbid a frame of mind, (although what could be more morbid than the line of reasoning i am about to embark on?), you do have only to wait and the fact that we all die is an inevitable outcome of that train of thought.
But that is where I am this morning as i reply to this prompt…..i wish it could be otherwise, otherwise , im sorry if my train of thought is too sad for you to bear this time around, dear partner.
I wish we had only to wait for our prince to come….i wish we had only to wait for that return of eternal life that Spring promises..i wish we had only to wait for all things fine and beautiful to reward us for all the good living we have done….i wish…i wish….
But having lost my father when i was 16, and recently having lost my dear first husband to an all too ravaging lung cancer (it took him painfully and swiftly), i am in a frame of mind where all i think about is death.
That’s just the way it is.
The fact that i just had a good crying session with my four-times-a week therapist, whom i worship and adore…ive been with her for 8 years!…..i feel equipped to write about death without breaking down and
collapsing my day into chaos….
i awoke this morning thinking about what it would be like to actually be in the moment of my death…what would it feel like? Would i know i was dying? Would i be conscious enough to want to write a prompt about it?
Funny, the idea that I would want to write about my own death, but I’d be dead so how could i write about it?
The idea of not writing anymore…because I’d be dead… i think, despite my being dead, i would miss writing the daily prompt! This makes me smile and finally laugh. It speaks to how vital my writing has become to me.
I would miss writing….when i am dead, maybe i can keep writing…maybe there is an office up in some supposed Heaven where there are plenty of keyboards and all the dead people, looking fit and fine, are finally getting to write the novel they always dreamed of writing! And as soon as they finish writing it, there is a long line of agents and publishers ready to not only accept the newly completed novel in whatever form it’s in, but have the window display at all the heavenly bookstores designed and ready to rock! A writers’ Heaven….now there’s notion.
I like the idea of a Heavenly Writers’ Room.
Where anyone who’s ever sat at a laptop in a San Francisco coffee shop composing their thoughts into language unique to them, get to sit and write all heavenly day! And there is success at the end of it: they get published, sold, and they make it to the top of the Heavenly NY Times Best seller list.
Which brings me to the subject of Rob Delaney and his recent memoir about the death of his two year old son Henry from brain cancer,a book called A HEART THAT WORKS….Rob was a student of mine at NYU, when he first began to pursue his acting career…and since then has gone on to Twitter comedy stardom, and the stardom also in a British sit com called CATASTROPHE! He turns out to be an eloquent writer, and the chronicle of the nightmare of seeing to his son’s demise is heartbreaking, tear inducing, and laughter producing.
I don’t know how or why, but he makes you laugh at times at the same time you are crying for the death of his tender little child.
Get this book.
Rob makes me proud to have been his acting teacher. And very proud to know him.
Very proud indeed.
He blesses the very memory of Henry, his dear son, with this book A HEART THAT WORKS.
xx