That raw honest thing I wrote when I didn't write what I thought that I was going to write

I’m sharing something different today. Audio of a prose poem/ letter that I wrote to/about my dad this week. I recently joined the

Foster

writing group (hat tip to

Sara Campbell

for letting me know about it) which meant I had the opportunity all month to connect with other writers and tap into my own writing in a different way. I started out thinking that I would write my feelings about my upcoming thesis to pave the way for writing the thesis. But in the way that honest thoughts and writing usually do, what came out was totally different.

It was this piece, a short letter to my dad who passed away 18 months ago. In the first month or two, I did a lot of writing responding to his journal entries, and then suddenly I couldn’t do that anymore, and now all of this time has passed and suddenyl this week all the grief hit me in a new weird way. That’s what grief does. So, I thought I’d share. And I think it’s a piece that requires reading out loud so I’m trying this audio thing for the first time here.

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Dear Dad,

You’d die if you heard the kids in my classes debate at this high intellectual level about the most mundane things.

You’d die.

You died.

It is eighteen months later and the numb disbelief that I thought had faded into acceptance has transmuted into a roiling mess of confused thoughts and feelings that are so disconnected from the five stages of grief that I don’t know how to describe them. I don’t have words.

You and I would collect ugly words and laugh together each time we discovered a new one. Moist. We rolled in hilarious tears repeating the word moist.

Moist.

Moist.

Moist.

Now my eyes are moist.

You and I, especially you, would collect beautiful, interesting words and celebrate them.

Insouciant.

Conflagration.

Ultracrepedarian.

You loved to tell people you were … what was that word meaning “amenable to flattery?” You used it all of the time. I can’t remember. And I know it’s in your journal and I could go look but there are so many words in your journal and I’ll get lost in there if I try to read all of the words.

I have your journals. I have all of your words. And if I start to read them, I’ll reach the end of them, and there won’t be any more words. There aren’t enough words. I have no words.

You loved to tell people that you were … what was that word?!

You loved to tell people.

You loved.

I love you.

I loved you?

I still love you.

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Learn more about Foster from the

CoAuthored

Substack. Shout out to

Minnow Park

for the kind support around sharing this. (And to all of the others in the writing group who held space for me. Writers are pretty amazing special people.

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