The Long and Faraway Gone

I was reading a great book last week, The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney, when my father-in-law unexpectedly died.

It was a good book to be in the middle of, when hit with grief, as that is its subtext. The story flips between two characters consumed by loss and survivor's guilt. One is Wyatt, now a PI, who survived a bloody robbery that while avenged, was never fully solved. Why was he left alive?

And Julianne, whose older teenage sister disappeared at the county fair twenty six years ago, never to be seen again. Julianne was left eating cotton candy, a few years her junior, and the loss has defined her life.

Berney crafts a solid story around these tragedies from 1986 that does not wallow in nostalgia, but shows the wounds of unresolved grief in realistic ways. Julianne and Wyatt are both self-destructive in ways that they don't fully understand. She is consumed with solving the mystery, while Wyatt has run away from it, until a job he needs forces him back to his home city to confront his past.

We get enough to be satisfied without an unrealistic, tidily tied up story. Which is all we can hope for in closure. I have not survived a brutal murder spree or had a loved one vanish, but like many, I've dealt with tragedy; twenty years ago, my father committed suicide. You can never really know another person, but I've tried to understand what was on his mind that day for a long time. You never get a neat answer tied in a bow, so perhaps that's why endings with varying levels of ambiguity appeal to me. A favorite is Tana French's In the Woods, which infuriates some readers, but it ends the way it should.

And so does Berney's excellent The Long and Faraway Gone.

My father-in-law's story is less a mystery, more a tragedy. He died too young, a year after retirement, after a life of service to his school district, his wife and children, and his many, many, friends. He was a fine man and a great role model, and I am better for having known him, as the world is lesser for having lost him. His wife was at his side to the end, so there is no mystery, but is there ever closure?

No, I don't think so. Unlike stories, lives often end abruptly, without meaning, with unfinished business, leaving us to fill in the blanks. Perhaps that's why we like a neatly tied bow on the end of a story, sometimes. Because it's the only way we'll get one.

Life intrusions

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Writing takes discipline. You have to put your butt in the seat and fill the pages with words. If you don’t do it, no one else will. And since more often than not a writer is self-employed, there isn’t a boss looking over your shoulder threatening to make you work late if you don’t get that day’s job done. Writing requires a personality that can sit down, self-motivate and type day after day until the story is done.

When I’m writing, I always set a daily goal. Sometimes I hit the goal. Some days I miss it. But regardless of whether I hit the goal or not, I make sure that each and every day I write.

Unfortunately, sometimes no matter how disciplined the writer or how dedicated one is to the project at hand life intrudes. This week life intruded for me. Monday night, I got a call from my mother telling me that a man who watched me grow from my childhood self into an adult woman died unexpectedly. Not that death is ever expected, but still. This man wasn’t sick. He showed no signs of being anything other than vital and healthy and strong. One minute he was laughing with his family. The next he was gone leaving a whole in our hearts that can never be filled.

So this week, despite the desire to sit down and write I found myself unable to put words on the page. I cried with his family. I looked through pictures. I attended his wake and his funeral and shared the memory and impact of his life with those who loved him.

Some times life intrudes on our desire to be productive. We might not like it, but it is important for us to recognize when we can and cannot write. This week, life kicked me and this man’s friends and family in the ass. We all fell down, got up and did what we had to do to get through. The road in front of his family is long and hard. I know what they feel and will take as much time as needed away from my own work to make sure they have the support they need to survive. And tomorrow I will start writing again because it is what I do—what I have to do—what he was so proud of me for. And while the holidays will take time away from the work we all want to do, I cannot stress enough that we should all give life permission to intrude. Our families, our friends and the memories we make every day are the reasons we all can do what we do.