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Writing Empathy, Influenced by Loss

How a Time of Loss & Regret Improved My Writing

By Summer RainPublished 6 years ago 14 min read
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To write a character, you must empathize.

Warning: May be hard to read if you've lost a loved one. It was certainly hard to write.

Before I start, I want to mention a song: "Lithium," by Evanescence. It's not really fitting to what I want to talk about, but... it's a song that means a lot to me, for a lot of reasons. As I may write about someday, my mother and some other members of my family struggle with addiction, which is one reason why the song holds a lot of weight with me. It also makes me think of depression, which is another subject I believe I have a good understanding of. And, in truth, my favorite character ever written suffered from manic depression. But this song is also one that I listen to when I'm in my darkest spots. I listen to it when I'm feeling rejected... I listen to it when I feel low. And I listened to it, for a very long time, when my grandfather died.

That's what has been on my mind lately. My grandparents raised me, and my grandpa, who I called papa, was the best man I've ever known. February is always a tough month for me, because my papa's birthday was February 3. He was an Aquarius, and I've tried to visit his grave every year on his birthday but for the last few years I was unable to. That hit me pretty hard. I've been wanting to write this for a while now, because I feel like my papa, and what I went through with him, is something that impacts my writing. It's something that was a very big part of my life, and I feel like it's relatable for a lot of writers, or maybe just people in general.

My papa was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994, five years before I was born. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2002, when I was two. And he lived with it, until he died in March of 2011, when I was 11. It was 17 years since from the time he was diagnosed with cancer to the time he died, and I just turned 18 years old. The man I knew was not the man he was. I won't go on forever about him, but Charles — as was his name — was a 20-year veteran of the US Airforce and an engineer that worked for a company called Space Microwave (I kid you not), and later a company called EG&G, which I'm sure none of you will know anything about, but... he did important work and I am proud of that.

He was once a strong man — the kind of man who did everything himself, kept his demons to himself, so he never had to burden another person. But the man I knew was broken. When I was really little, he would ride bikes with me, and he taught me how to use a computer — one he had built himself. But as I got older, he got sicker. At first, it was moments of anger. Like any terminally ill person, there were times when he would snap. I remember one occasion in which he called me a bitch — I was six. He had meant to call me a brat, and the wrong word slipped out.

Then there were the adjustments. Getting a hospital bed for our dining room, a lift chair for our stairs, a new shower that didn't have doors, that he could just be wheeled into. Then there were the hospitals, care places, and nurses. I spent a lot of time in those kinds of places, with medical professionals. Some treated him well. Others didn't. There was one place that my gran and I went to every single day for a whole summer. The people wouldn't help a lot of the patients eat, so my gran would bring food every day to feed my papa, among other issues. If you’ve ever had someone you love in a long-term care facility, you know the feeling of entrusting them to people that, some of the time, just don’t care enough.

Going through watching someone die — when you've never had anyone die before — is... hard. It leaves a lot of regrets when you're a kid. Feelings of being a burden because your gran has both a sick person and a kid to take care of, for instance. Or when... your papa asks you to play chess with him, and you keep saying "Another time" because you don't really care for chess, and then that other time comes and it's too late. Years later, I would do anything for that other time. But then there's my biggest regret.

When my papa reached the place that he was going to die in, I... sat outside the hospital room. I wouldn't go in. I couldn't be near him, or hold his hand, or look at him. I would sit outside, with my laptop, and I would write. Writing, and the internet, was my coping mechanism. He would ask for me, sometimes. And I would go in, and give awkward smiles, and then immediately want to leave his side again.

You see, Parkinsons is a hard disease. It's hard to explain, but it was like his joints froze up. His hands gnarled, fingers curled, shaking. I can still picture him sitting in his hospital bed, and he'd try to move and his whole body would just shake. It was terrifying, probably more for him than for me. He didn't have it as badly as some, but I'll never get the picture out of my head. What made it worse, was that we were told that if he hadn't had the Parkinson's, he may have been able to get rid of the cancer. However, because he had the Parkinson's, his body couldn't fight off the cancer enough. It did, a little, just enough to prolong his painful way of life. But it wasn't enough to get rid of it. It just... made him more miserable.

I didn't say goodbye. That's my biggest regret. I was so terrified of going into that room, so unwilling to see him so sick. He wanted more time with me and I thought I had time, so I stayed away.

There was a point where he wasn't getting enough oxygen, and he had pretty much gone unconscious. And they said his oxygen was so low that it was very likely he was brain dead. And I remember the one time I saw him like that, he had an oxygen mask on, and I remember thinking, "He would want to die," because my grandpa valued intelligence over anything. If his brain had stopped working, if there was any damage — he'd be done. Shortly after, my aunt discovered his body had relaxed. His gnarled, shaking hands? They could be pulled out straight. His fingers could be moved, and he wasn't shaking... and his hands were cold. That was maybe three days before he died.

I remember that in the weeks leading up to his death, I prayed for him to die. I thought, for a long time, that it made me a bad person. Maybe it did. Maybe I was selfish for wanting him gone — for wanting the hospital visits over, for wanting my grandmother to be able to take care of herself again, for wanting him to just… either be healthy, or die. I don’t really remember what my reasons really were for praying for him to die. I like to think it’s because I didn’t want him to suffer anymore, or for my grandmother to have to watch him getting worse. Part of me wonders if I was just a selfish, dark-minded child. And then I think about how sick he was, and how much regret I had after he died, and I feel like it wasn’t bad of me to wish for him to no longer suffer.

There was a point where I did want to spend time with him. It was after this point, but I wanted to be there. I begged to be there. But, for the first time ever, my gran sent me home. She was not in her right mindset, and I was 11 and couldn't defend myself, and my aunt — who had never been around but now was throwing herself into my grandpa's last days — forced me to go home with my other aunt.

The next morning, he woke up, briefly. And he gave his last smile. He looked at my gran, and he smiled. And she asked him if he loved her, and he nodded. And she told him it was okay to go. If I had been there, that would have been my chance to say goodbye, but I wasn't, and I couldn't. He went unconscious again.

It was that night, that I couldn't sleep. My aunt and I were laying in my gran's bed, at 3 AM, and we couldn't sleep. I was staring at the clock when the phone rang. My aunt answered, and she burst into tears not even a minute later — and I knew he was gone.

There's a lot of regrets with my grandpa's death. The most of which being that if it happened all over again, I'm not sure if I would be strong enough to have it go any differently. I just couldn't deal.

But my papa is not the reason I wanted to write this. I wanted to talk about writing, and how death impacts it. Someone recently said to me, "Someone who's only ever been happy throughout their life won't be able to write poetry." And I agree.

I have met many writers, and the majority of them have this in common. Some of the best writers I know struggle with issues like depression. Others, Bipolar Disorder. Some have bad situations in life. Some don't see much good in themselves. And some have merely gone through something, like a near-death experience via car crash, a complicated romantic situation that leaves them uncertain, or... the death of a loved one.

I think that to write, you have to have empathy. You have to look at life, and understand its working. You have to understand:

Anger.

Passion.

Depression.

Grief.

Happiness.

Love.

And so many more emotions. Some come easier in writing than others, and some writers are more comfortable with certain aspects of writing. And I think that is because they know how it feels. They can sympathize with their characters and call on that time in their life when they felt that emotion.

I have never been a depressed person. I've never really been in a truly dark place. I've never been in a rage. I've never been suicidal. But I have an understanding of it, because I've seen it in my life, and in things people I love have gone through.

My mom, grandmother, and one of my aunts have all dealt with depression.

My papa, aunts, grandmother, mom, they've all dealt with anger that I have witnessed — even physical anger. Luckily, it was never directed at myself.

My mom, aunt, papa, and grandmother have all been suicidal at one point.

In fact, my mother tried to commit suicide. As did my aunt, twice. And my papa... by the end, he welcomed death.

My point is, is that these experiences change you. They change who you are, who you will be. And, they change your writing. My grandpa dying was the birth of my writing. I had liked writing before then, but it wasn't an escape until he was dying. It became my way to deal, to block out everything. To block out... hospitals, and a sick, angry old man that I didn't want to watch die, and my own personal problems. And it became something I love. My writing began with fanfictions, like many teenagers, and then went to roleplays and short stories. My first roleplay was in 2011, when I was 11, and right around the time my grandpa died.

And it doesn't get easier. They say it does but I'll be real — it doesn't.

I didn't cry at my grandpa dying. My aunt sat on that bed when we got the news, and she cried for a good hour. I held her — at eleven years old — while she cried, and I didn't shed a tear. I felt nothing. And then, at his funeral... my best friend at the time was there because her mother was one of papa's nurses, and we had been friends since I was six. And we... goofed off. We laughed. We hung out while the funeral went on around us, and I didn't cry. I got shaky when I had to give a speech, but I didn't shed a tear.

It wasn't until two months later that it hit me. I had gone to bed, and I was laying there, and I started to pray. Now, I'm not a religious person. But I talked to my papa... and I burst into tears. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, I was shaking with how upset I was. And it happened again, and again. For months, I would just get so emotional at the drop of a hat.

It took a long time until that stopped. And even still, I cry about him sometimes. I cried on his birthday this year. I’ll probably cry next year. I cried while writing this. It hits me, all the time. I still feel the guilt, and the regret, and I still miss him. I can still see him, sitting in his wheelchair in front of the tv. Or sitting in his hospital bed, watching the morning news, and I would come downstairs, or in the afternoon, I'd run in and tell him about my day at school.

I don't know if any of you have ever seen the American news program: The Today Show, but in the early morning, they have this guy on from Smucker's jelly. And on the jar, he shows pictures and names of people who have lived over 100 or so, and celebrated their birthdays at Smucker's farms. And my grandpa and I used to watch it, every morning. Never failed.

Now I can't watch it. I watch The Today Show but the second that Smucker's jar comes onscreen, I change the channel. There were other things, too, that are harder now. For a while, I couldn't eat the ice cream cones from McDonald's because I would get one after school sometimes when my gran would pick me up, and I'd always finish it before we got home, and my papa would tease me about not leaving him any ice cream (though we always brought him his own). For months after he died, we didn't go to McDonald's at all, because of the ritual of going there after school and bringing food home to papa.

And I've had to deal with the fact that he won't be here. He won't be here when I graduate college. He won't be able to approve of the guy or girl I marry. He won't be able to attend my wedding, or see if I have kids. He won't be here for my first job, or my first promotion, or to tell me if I'm doing the right thing in life.

And that's hard.

My writing helps. Just like it did when he died, it helps me. Whenever I miss him, I write. And that's why it's such a relief to write this. It took me a while, because it's really hard to talk about. I haven't talked about him in... a year, probably. Or two. It's hard to believe it's been almost seven years.

But he makes my writing better. Losing my grandpa, going through the many years he was sick, has made me a better writer. A better person, even. I am not a religious person... but I believe you are given lessons in life. I failed mine — and I learned from it.

It's not an easy or pleasant lesson. But I'm glad I learned it. And I am glad I can come to the internet, and I can write out any emotion, and tap into these memories, and it affects me. I can make any character feel real emotion — on written page, I can make them real, because of what I've experienced.

Because writing requires empathy.

grief
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About the Creator

Summer Rain

Hello! I am an eighteen year old writer. I have two cats, two best friends, and I live with my grandmother. I've enjoyed writing since Kindergarten, and I don't think I'll ever stop loving it.

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