Bertram's Blog

Creating the Fictional Town of Chalcedony

September 18, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I needed a special setting for my latest novel Light Bringer. It needed to be part of the world but isolated, a place where people were free to be themselves without ridicule, where UFOs sightings could have had a major impact, where a secret government-sanctioned project could be hidden. Luckily, I had to look no further than out my living room window.

At the time, I was living in the shadow of the Grand Mesa, in ranching country, and much of that terrain formed the backdrop of my story. Chalcedony is the name of a fictional county sandwiched between Mesa County and Delta County. It is a beautiful place with mountains and valleys, wide-open spaces, cattle and horses, new buildings and old.

But beneath the mountains in this peaceful fictional world, unpeaceful things are happening.

Grand Mesa (The view from my living room window)

~~~

Calcedony County

~~~

Road Into Chalcedony

~~~

Mountain View

~~~

Another view of Grand Mesa

~~~

Chalcedony County

~~~

Luke’s Ranch

~~~

Pasture Gate

~~~

Ranch House in Chacedony

~~~

What lurks beneath these mountains? Read Light Bringer, and find out!

~~~

Light Bringer: Becka Johnson had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?

Click here to read the first chapter of: Light Bringer

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, writing. Tags: conspiracy, fiction, Grand Mesa, mounains, mystery, novel, thriller, UFOs. 5 Comments »

Grief: Losing Your Grip

September 17, 2013 — Pat Bertram

There are so many facets and phases to profound grief that even now — three and a half years after the death of my life mate/soul mate — I am still bewildered by some of the symptoms I experienced.

I always assumed “losing your grip” was merely a euphemism for losing your ability to deal with life, but shortly after the onset of grief, I lost my grip. My real grip, not my euphemistic grip. (Well, I lost both, but the second went with the territory.)

I dropped silverware, glasses, cups, plates — just about everything slipped through my fingers. I didn’t particularly notice it at first — I have been known to drop things — but after I moved to a house with hard tile floors, the loss of my grip became explosively apparent. My first night here, I dropped a glass, and it shattered on the hard floor. It sounded like a shot, scaring both me and my 96-year-old father. When the same thing happened a few days later — a mug this time — I realized I had to be careful or I’d give him (and me!) a heart attack. For over a year, I had to make sure of my grip before I lifted something so that it wouldn’t slip from my fingers. My grip gradually tightened, and after two years, I noticed I no longer had to pay attention to how I held something — I was automatically getting a grip.

Obviously, the phrase “lost my grip,” meaning losing your ability to handle a situation, had to come from somewhere, and I have a hunch that it came from the very thing I experienced.

I spent the past couple of hours researching this subject but never found a clinical reason for losing my grip. The weak hands didn’t come from any sort of illness. Not lupus, carpal tunnel syndrome, multiple sclerosis or any of the other 57 medical conditions where people can lose their grip. Nor was it an effect of aging or poor muscle control since the loss of grip came on so rapidly and gradually disappeared without any change of circumstances except the onset and gradual waning of grief.

It’s possible low blood sugar caused the loss of grip in the beginning because I wasn’t eating much, but as the year progressed, I ate more normally and the symptom persisted. Or maybe losing one’s grip is a symptom of emotional shock (rather than physical shock). Or maybe it represented a general enervation from from all the stress. The loss of a mate ranks as one of the most stressful conditions a person can suffer, which is why the death rate for those in the first year of profound grief is so high. Or it could be a physical manifestation of the metaphoric state — grief certainly makes you feel as if you’re losing your grip. In my case, It also seemed to be a reflection of my ability to connect, as if when I lost the connection with him, I lost the ability to connect with anything.

Well, now that I’m nearing what I call the half-life of grief, I’ve regained both my grip (my ability to grasp things) and my grip (my ability to handle life). I’ve also regained my ability to connect — with things and people.

And so grief continues to wane.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: can't get a grip, death, getting a grip on grief, losing my grip, losing your grip, loss, why do you lose your grip. 4 Comments »

Rubicon Ranch: Secrets — My Newest Chapter

September 16, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the fictional desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing.

In the current story, the body of a local realtor is found beneath the wheels of an inflatable figure of a Santa on a motorcycle. The realtor took great delight in ferreting out secrets, and everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Could she have discovered a secret someone would kill to protect? There will be suspects galore, including a psychic, a con man, a woman trying to set up an online call-girl service, and the philandering sheriff himself. Not only is the victim someone he had an affair with, but he will also have to contend with an ex-wife who has moved back in with him and a jilted lover, both with their own reasons for wanting the realtor dead.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end! If you don’t want to miss further chapters, please go to the blog and click on “sign me up” on the right sidebar to get notifications of new chapters.

(If the Christmas theme seems unseasonal, well . . . considering how long it takes to write a book at the rate of a chapter a week, in a few months, the season will catch up to us!)

Chapter 15: Lydia Gavin
by Pat Bertram

Sunday, December 23, 5:25pm

Seth sat tall behind the desk in his tidy office, like a king receiving a subject. “What are you doing here?”

Lydia Galvin leaned back in the uncomfortable metal chair and gave the sheriff a serene smile, surprised to find that she felt no fear at facing him. “Your deputies brought me here.”

Seth glowered. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“You want the whole story? I needed to get some groceries, so I walked up Delano Road to where I’d parked my car, and apparently your deputies found it and staked it out, because even before I could unlock the door, they jumped out of their vehicle, arrested me, and brought me here.”

“They didn’t arrest you. They just offered you a ride. I wanted to talk to you.” Seth gave Lydia one of his oh-so-familiar looks, the one that said she meant no more to him than an annoying insect.

“How did you know I was in the area?” Lydia kept her voice neutral, not wanting to seem confrontational. No point in arousing the beast in him until absolutely necessary.

“We checked out the bystanders’ videos of the burning crime scene, and there you were.” He drew in a quick breath as if upset with himself for responding. “But you’re supposed to be answering my questions. What are you doing in Rubicon Ranch?”

“Having fun. It’s quite a spectacle out there, you know.” Lydia crossed her legs, and felt a flash of satisfaction when he cut a glance at her thighs. All that running since she’d been fired had paid off—she now had the body she’d always wished for.

He remained calm, but his thinned lips and tensed shoulders told her how much that unruffled air cost him. “Why did you come to Rubicon Ranch?”

“Why do you think I came? To see what other lives you were ruining, of course. I had no intention of staying, I just wanted to check out Melanie Gray—according to the newspapers you two were quite a team—but then I met Nancy and when she let slip that you and she were sleeping together, I thought I’d hang around to see how you got out of that affair when it turned against you.” Lydia made a show of inspecting a fingernail. “I guess I’m lucky. You only ruined my career. Poor Nancy ended up in the morgue.”

“You think I killed Nancy?” Seth cocked his head like an eagle and stared at Lydia for a moment. Then he nodded. “I see. You think that by accusing me, I will assume that you’re innocent, because if you believed I killed her, then you couldn’t have.”

“Did you kill her?” Lydia waited for an answer that didn’t come. “She would have ruined you. She loved nothing but herself and power and money. She loved secrets, too, of course, but only because the secrets gave her power over people and were a source of great income. She said she used to be an actress and a model, but once when we had a few drinks, she admitted that was a front. She’d really worked as a call girl. I figured she gave up the life when she realized how much more lucrative secrets were than her body.”

Seth rose to his feet and paced the office. “You say she would have ruined me. Like you ruined me?”

Lydia forced out a small laugh. “I ruined you? No. You manipulated me. You began by treating me as if I were the most important woman in the world. You flattered me, paid attention to me, offered me words of love and the endearments I hungered for. When I was hooked, you stepped back, left me feeling bereft. And every time I spoke of leaving you, you’d pay attention to me again.” She felt tears beginning to gather behind her eyes. He doesn’t matter. Think of fire. Flames. Heat.

She drew in a deep breath, surprised Seth didn’t jump in to defend himself. He kept pacing the office as if she weren’t even there, which made it easier for her to confess. “You were my grand passion. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s the truth. I never expected you to leave your wife. I just wanted you to notice me. To put me first once in a while.”

Seth stood over her, his eyes icy as they locked onto hers. “But you turned me into the department. Said I misused my authority.”

“You did abuse your authority. I never wanted an affair with you. I had enough trouble with my husband. I didn’t need another abusive man in my life. You never knew about my husband, did you?” Lydia didn’t even try to modulate her bitter tone. “The great detective never noticed that his girlfriend had a husband who beat her. I wouldn’t have told your wife about us. Even though I threatened to tell her, I couldn’t have made our affair public. My husband would have beat me when he found out. And after you dragged your wife to my house so she could confront me, my husband did beat me. I had to go to the emergency room that time. But oh, no, everything that happened was my fault.”

“Good story,” Seth said. “Too bad none of it is true.”

“The all-wise Seth Bryan says it isn’t true, so that means it isn’t true?” Lydia shook her head sadly. “The law might be about what you can prove, but life isn’t like that. Some things are true no matter how much we don’t want to believe them.” Things like her husband’s abuse. Things like Seth’s disregard. Things like death and fire. “You men are all so blind you can’t see what’s in front of your eyes. I loved you but you threw me away, calling me a vituperative bitch. Yet Nancy, who didn’t love you at all and who truly was a vituperative bitch, you kept. But I’m through with all of you now.”

Seth sneered. “Turning into a lesbian?”

“That’s beneath even you, Seth, my love.”

“True. Perhaps the only true thing you’ve said today.” The phone rang. Seth took two long strides to the desk, and grabbed the receiver. “Yes?” A pause, then, “She’s home now? Stay there. Make sure she doesn’t leave. I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

He hung up the phone, and turned to face Lydia.

She quirked her lips in an unamused smile. “Still on your wife’s leash? I’m surprised you haven’t killed her, too.”

“Just go,” he said wearily. “Keep my office informed of your whereabouts. We still have lots to talk about.”

Lydia rose, straightened her skirt, and settled the strap of her purse firmly on her shoulder. “There’s nothing left to say but good-bye. I didn’t kill Nancy. You did. But don’t worry, I won’t testify against you.

***

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: mystery series collaboration, online novel, Rubicon Ranch, Rubicon Ranch Necropieces, Rubicon Ranch: Secrets, Second Wind Publishing. Leave a Comment »

Life is a Matter of Habit

September 15, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Life is often a matter of habit. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Actually, the whole quote is “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” But this is an article about habits, not excellence.

Most of our lives are repetitive. We do the same things in the same way, eat the same foods, go to the same restaurants, see the same people, watch the same shows. It’s easy to create a habit. If we do the same thing — good or bad — often enough, the synaptic pathways in our brains get rutted, and it’s almost impossible to completely eradicate the ruts if we want to change our habits.

Recently It was easy for me to fall into the habit of playing computer solitaire for hours on end, but now it’s almost impossible to break the habit, though I did it once, so I can do it again. (After the death of my life mate/soul mate, I mindlessly played game after game just to get through another minute, another hour of grief. A couple of years ago I broke the habit of playing games, but in a fit of restlessness a few months ago, I started in again, and now I have to rebreak myself of the habit.) The secret is to do what I need to do on the computer and then get off. Oddly, some habits are easy to break. I’m in the habit of writing a blog every day, and I keep doing it because I know if I skip a day, I’ll skip another and another, until I lose the habit of writing habitually and will only post sporadically.

Sometimes a change of circumstances, such as a move, forces us to change our habits. When people tell me they have a hard time getting used to a new town, I suggest they go to the same place or do the same thing everyday to help themselves get acclimated. One woman who took this advice went to the same coffee shop every day, another took a walk ever day. And gradually, new comfortable ruts were built into their brains.

One of the collateral problems with grief is the instant loss of habits. In my case, we (my life mate/soul mate and I) had done most things together for decades — watched the same movies, ate the same foods, ran errands, watered the hundred or so trees we planted. As he got sicker, we put one foot in front of the other and kept on going the best we could out of habit. His death catapulted me out of the habits of my life. I still had the ruts of togetherness in my brain without someone to be together with. I also had to move from our home where we’d lived for decades to come look after my now 96-year-old father, so I didn’t even have the habits of living in the same house.

I felt as if the ground had been yanked from beneath me. When I tried to put one foot in front of the other, I became disoriented, as if I were falling into nothingness. I felt like such a baby, since all I could do was crawl in my alien world of no mate, no habits, nothing to connect me to the past but painful memories.

During the ensuing years of grief (in approximately two weeks, it will be three and a half years since he died) people who have been through the same sorrow have told me that grief makes a change around the four-year anniversary. That’s when many people find some sort of renewal, such as a new commitment to life.

I call this four-year mark the half-life of grief. Our cells are continuously dying and being renewed. If it takes seven years for all the cells in one’s body to be renewed, then by four years, less than half our cells will bear the imprint of our mates. And so our physical grief fades. (By physical grief, I mean the physical pain and symptoms of grief as opposed to the emotional pain.) At the same time, the ruts from the habits of our old life have evened out, and we have developed new patterns of living, new habits, new ruts. And as we repeatedly do new things alone, we become persons who can survive — and even thrive — without our mates because in the end, despite love and grief, learning and yearning, life is a matter of habit.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: addicted to games, Aristotle, creating habits, four years of grief, life is habit, loss of a soul mate, three and a half years of grief. 4 Comments »

Things Your Mother Should Have Told You

September 14, 2013 — Pat Bertram

There is a post going around on Facebook, “Things your mother should have told you,” and I can’t get it out of my head. From the title of the post, I expected advice such as how to get bullies to stop picking on you, how to be strong and graceful, and how to figure out what you want and go after it while keeping your compassion and consideration for others. Instead, it was a list of silly household tips such as how to clean a toilet using Alka-Seltzer, how to soften hard brown sugar, and how to get glossy piecrusts. Really? These are the things our mothers should have told us? Why?

Perhaps in a nineteen-sixties television show where mother is always home, always perfectly dressed and coifed, always cool tempered with a wry smile for the shenanigans of her family, always ready with the perfect solution to any household problem, then of course, these mothers should have told their children such things because it was all they knew. But who lived like that? No mother I’ve ever known has had the time to pass down such inanities, especially nowadays when mothers are more apt to be heading corporations or running their own businesses than staying home and having passels of children. (And the stay-at-home moms have plenty of work to do without worrying about passing on such inane tips.)

Besides, today we have Google. If you want to find out how to keep an ice cream cone from dripping, you don’t have to get the information handed down to you from your mother or from a list of things she should have told you — you can Google it, though I can’t imagine why anyone would want to. (Apparently, dripping ice cream cones is a hot issue. I just Googled “how to keep an ice cream cone from dripping” and got 220,000 results.)

Perhaps the list of things your mother should have told you is a leftover from the nineteen-sixties television show era — some of the tips are rather outdated. For example, one of the things she should have told you is that if you want to see if an egg is fresh, drop it in a pan of cool salted water. If it sinks to the bottom, it’s fresh. Frankly, if I want to see if an egg is fresh, I simply look on the egg carton for the expiration date. The few times I have bought eggs fresh from the farm, I had to trust the person selling me the eggs since at the time I wasn’t carrying around a pot of cool salted water.

I think what bothered me most about the list is that it assumed a mother’s place is only in the home, collecting such tips. Can you see Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, or Hilary Clinton giving their children such tips? Can you see them caring enough about a little leftover wine to freeze it and use it later, let alone take time out from running a country or a constituency to tell their children about it? Can you see them carrying around a bit of raw potato to remove unsightly food stains from their manicured hands? Or worrying about removing burnt-on food from a pan?

There are many important things our mothers should have told us, but using air freshener to clean mirrors is not one of them.

***

Posted in culture, How to, life. Tags: dripping ice cream cone, Hilary Clinton, how to tell if an egg is fresh, Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, things your mother should have told you. 7 Comments »

Being Comfortable With Who I Was And Who I Am

September 13, 2013 — Pat Bertram

During all these years of pouring my heart out online, I’ve never known anyone offline who checked out my online writings except for an occasional glance by a sibling. Lately, I’ve been meeting people offline, and when the conversation gets around to my telling them about my published books, they come online to check me out.

It’s one thing to meet people because of my grief blogs and grief book, but these people knew me before reading my emotional outpourings. When a couple of these new friends bought Grief: the Great Yearning, I thought I’d find it awkward for them to know so much about me — until the death of my life mate/soul mate, I was reticent about putting myself on display — but oddly, it hasn’t been a problem. Perhaps I’m so used to living wholeheartedly online that being so upfront has become a habit. Perhaps psychologically, I know longer see a difference between online and offline — the two are melding together so that often after an exchange of emails with an online friend, I feel as if we have visited for real. Or perhaps it’s that the woman in the book is no longer me.

When I post excerpts from the book on this blog, sometimes I find myself crying for the woman who had to deal with such trauma, as if the person who wrote the passages were a stranger. And she is a stranger. I’ve come a long way since I wrote those entries — from coupled to uncoupled, from a deep connection to another human being to a solitary connection with the world around me, from a woman who’d lost her identity to someone who is coming to a new realization of who she is.

At the beginning of my grief, I used to bemoan that despite all the trauma, I was always just me, and it’s true — I am always just me. But that “me” has progressed (or at least sidestepped) into a different way of seeing, a different way of being. I used to feel as if everything were over, but now I sometimes feel as if everything is still to come. (Since in many ways I am starting over from scratch, by definition, everything is still to come, though at times it’s hard to maintain such a belief considering that I’m not young anymore.) I can feel the ebb and flow of life a bit better, accept the losses and even the joys that come my way. I still hope for more, of course (though I don’t know what that “more” might be — an even greater wisdom or openness perhaps), but at the moment I am comfortable being me.

And in the end, that’s probably the real reason I’m not uncomfortable with people knowing the truth of me — because I am comfortable with who I was and who I am.

***

Posted in being me, grief, life. Tags: comfortable being me, Grief: The Great Yearning, just me, loss of identity, online vs offline friends, who I am. 3 Comments »

Grief and the Loss of Identity

September 12, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I don’t feel disempowered as a women, perhaps because I seldom define myself by gender, religion, nationality, age, or any other consideration. I am simply . . . a being in flux. I have felt powerless at times, but not because of being a woman. The powerlessness came from being in situations greater than my abilities to cope. Sometimes I developed the necessary abilities, such as when I decided to be a writer, other times I simply endured, such as when grief slammed into me after the death of my life mate/soul mate. Either way, I managed to move beyond the powerlessness and regain my equilibrium.

This is not the way things always were, of course. When I was very young, many limitations were imposed on me because I was “just a girl.” (How I hated those words!) Luckily, the early limitations were offset by my experiences at the all-girl high school I attended. In a school where everyone is female, there is no gender bias — all activities are done by and all offices, honors, and awards are won by young women.

It’s no wonder then, that when I fell in love, it was with an unbiased man. For thirty-four years, we lived in gender harmony. We played no roles, set no rules, followed no conventions. Never once in all those years did he tell me I couldn’t do something. Never once did I refuse to let him do something he wanted. Never once did he make me do a chore. Never once did I remind him of a task he promised to do. If one of us saw a job that needed to be done, we simply did it. Usually, though, we worked together. Some of my fondest memories are of us fixing meals together — he washing vegetables for a salad, me cutting them up. He reading seasonings off a recipe card, me tossing the herbs into the pot. (Or vice versa. What made it especially rewarding is that we’d created those recipes together.)

During the last few years of his life, I did many things by myself in preparation for the time when I would be alone. I took long solitary ambles, went on trips, learned to use a computer and the internet. This became our life — he dying, me struggling to live.

Somehow I thought this would always be our life, but then he died, and “our” life ended.

My grief was so profound I felt as if part of me had been amputated. The pain, the angst, the loneliness were unbearable, but the worst trauma was the sudden and shocking loss of my identity. Being with him had allowed me to be myself, to be comfortable with both my good points and my bad points. Since I wasn’t in thrall to him (though I did often follow his wishes because I didn’t care what we did or what we ate as long as we were together), it never occurred to me there would be a problem when once again I became single. But I’d grown so used to being with him, that nothing, not even something as simple as watching a movie, seemed important when I did it alone. He’d been the focus of my life for so many years that without him I felt lost, felt as if my life had no meaning. Felt silly for unknowingly letting my identity get so caught up in “us” that when he died, I no longer knew who I was.

The truth is that even for those of us who have a strong identity and know almost everything there is to know about ourselves, a trauma such as the loss of a soul mate shakes our self-concept. Our psyches are like nesting dolls or boxes within boxes or doors within doors (choose your cliché). We never see the doors, so we think we know who we are, but a great emotional upheaval can cause a door to open, letting us see more of ourselves and what we are capable of, revealing a part of our identity that might have been hidden from us until that moment. We get to know who we now are, adding to or changing our idea of ourselves, rethinking the past in light of this new awareness. We might even get comfortable with this revised self-concept until a new trauma opens another door.

And so it is with me. It’s been three and a half years since his death, and until a new trauma comes along, I again know who I am — a being in flux, still strong, still developing my abilities, still learning to empower myself as a person.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: defining myself, gender bias, grief and loss of identity, just a girl, self-concept, self-empowerment. 6 Comments »

Salad Days

September 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

One staple of meals with my life mate/soul mate were salads. During our decades together, we always tried to eat plenty of raw vegetables, so our salads weren’t puny affairs with a few bits of vegetables and lots of iceberg lettuce. We used as many colors as we could — red tomatoes, purple cabbage, yellow squash, orange carrots, white cauliflower, green leaf lettuce. Since the salads were a time-consuming affair, we usually worked together, he washing the vegetables, me cutting them up.

I don’t remember much of the last year of his life (except for the last six weeks — those I remember). After he died I was in too much pain to recall that year, and now it’s too far in the past to recover the details.

But I do remember a time when I came in late from my walk, and he’d already fixed a salad for us. This was shortly before he got too sick to do anything but try to stay ahead of the pain. I don’t understand where he got the energy to fix the salad — his poor body was so ridden with metastases, it must have taken everything he had to do the simplest task, and yet, the salad was waiting for me when I got in.

Yesterday I mentioned how I carelessly let that last year slip by, how I didn’t hang on to his every word, but I was careful that day and took a photo of the salad, perhaps the last one he ever made for me. I wanted the picture because the plate was beautiful, not as a memory of him, but still, it showed I was paying attention to the good things in our shared life.

It seems impossible that he’s been gone for almost three and a half years. Seems impossible that our salad days are over and all that remains is this simple photo.

(Incidentally, “salad days” comes from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. At the end of Act I, Cleopatra says, “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment.”)

***

Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: colorful vegetables, death and loss, making salads, raw vegetables, salad days. 3 Comments »

How Careless of Me to Have Lost Him

September 10, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I don’t usually say I “lost” my life mate/soul mate. I just come right out and say that he died, but for some reason I used the word “lost” when explaining my situation to a new acquaintance. She said, “Whenever people tell me they lost someone, I want to say ‘how careless of you.’”

I didn’t take offense. She didn’t directly tell me I was careless, just said that was her inclination, and besides, I too have railed against the word “lost.” I didn’t misplace him. He died. But her words struck a chord with me. I do feel at times as if it were careless of me to have lost him. I should have loved him more, cherished him more, held him so tightly that death could not have wrested him from me.

And yet, I did love him that much for most of our shared life. About twenty years ago, he almost died, and afterward I gave thanks for every day I had with him, cherished every moment knowing how fleeting life could be. For many years he endured ups and downs with his health, and finally there were only downs. During those last few years, I did more things by myself in preparation for the time when I would be alone. I took long ambles, went on trips, found new solitary interests. And this became our life — he dying, me struggling to live.

During those final years, and especially the last one, he turned into a stranger, and I didn’t know how to handle it when he pushed me away except to keep my distance. He was unable to hold thoughts in his head long enough to carry on a conversation, so instead of dialogue, I got only repetitious monologues from him. I bristled at his words, sometimes even clenched my fists to keep from venting my frustration. I didn’t know what was happening to him, to us, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

Now, of course, I know what happened (inoperable kidney cancer that spread to his spleen, to his lungs, to his bones, to his brain), and I think how careless of me to have let one of those final words slip past unappreciated, to have let one moment of our togetherness pass unnoticed.

I was lucky, though. During his last weeks, we reconnected, and I remembered why I had loved him all those years. Once again I cherished every moment we had together, but when he took his final breath, I let him go. He’d been in pain for such a long time, and even if it had been in my power, I would not have kept him here to suffer more.

I’ve worked through my guilt and regrets. I even understand the dynamics of our last years together and realize we both did the best we could in an untenable situation, but still I wish I could go back and capture every one of those words I so carelessly let slip away.

***

Posted in writing. Tags: loss and death, love and death. 3 Comments »

For Love of the Story

September 9, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I watched For Love of the Game last night, but a different version than the one that was released in theaters or on tape or DVD.

My deceased life mate/soul mate was sick for many years, and one way kept himself busy when he hadn’t the strength to do much else was to tape movies. He started with our favorites, then went on to taping good parts of bad movies, and finally edited movies that we didn’t like. (It’s rather amusing — he turned a few dreadful serial killer movies into sweet romances by ending the movie before the charming killer showed his evil side.)

The problem we both had with For Love of the Game was the constant intrusion of the backstory. Billy Chapel is pitching the last game of his career and he keeps stopping to reflect on his past — detailed flashbacks that would take up more than a few seconds between his pitches. Would fans in the stands really care that he was pitching a perfect game if he spent most of his time on the mound staring glassy-eyed into the past? Would he really be able to “clear the mechanism” so easily if his mind wasn’t on the game?

My version is told in chronological order, from the meeting of the girl in the beginning to the remeeting at the end. When Chapel is pitching, then, his pauses are short, and seem more evidence of exhaustion than anything else.

So why am I mentioning this? I’ve been working sporadically on my novel about a grieving woman. A few years ago I wrote many scenes or parts of scenes, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to arrange the scenes and tell the story. As it stands right now, the story begins when the funeral people deliver the urn with her husband’s ashes, which is a good place to begin. (In a classic beginning, either a stranger knocks on the door or the character goes on a trip.) The only trouble is, there is a vast backstory that needs to be told, which is okay because it is about a woman grieving, after all, and much of grief is about unwinding the backstory, figuring out who you are, where you are, and how you got to that point.

Sometimes — most times, actually — stories need to be told in chronological order. It might serve my story better if I began when the husband got sick. It would show her dealing with his illness and would explain how she ended up in love with someone else while her husband was dying. This way, there would need to be only a few mentions of the past, such as when the met, what happened to her parents, etc, and not the constant intrusions into the past that are required if I were to start with the knock on the door.

But . . . a gun plays a role in the story. Finding the gun and eventually discovering the significance of the gun makes the grieving woman realize that she put so much of herself into the marriage, and if she doesn’t know who her husband is, then how can she know who she is? If I told the story chronologically, the gun wouldn’t show up until the middle of the book, and it would lose its significance.

I suppose the best thing for me to do is to forget about the chronology and just type up the scenes. Afterward, if necessary, I can edit the book and put everything in chronological order. Either way, it’s all for love of the story.

***