Grief and Creative Writing

Creative writing and expression for people who have experienced loss is often powerfully transformative and cathartic.  Sometimes people are resistant to "committing" their thoughts and inner most self to paper, fearing exposure and vulnerability.  However, with encouragement and compassion, many people have discovered the written word to be a great ally in their journey with loss.

Writing can help:

• find or make meaning out of loss and tragedy
• say things that haven't been said or that we are afraid to say out loud
• us to remember details and not forget
• offer hope

Here is a writing example. It is a letter written by a Beacon Hospice "Living with Loss" support group member. The letter addresses the writer's eyes and their failing vision.  It is reprinted with permisson. A thank you and kudos go out to the writer's bravery in sharing.

20106-23

Dennis Memorial Library
Dennis, MA 02638

Dear Eyes,


Thank you for all the beautiful, informative and extraordinary sights that you have allowed me to see over these many years. Seeing the paintings of Rembrandt, the cathedals of Paris, the catacombs and ruins of ancient Rome, the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Carthage, and so much more. Thank you for all the books, pictures, designs and patterns that you have allowed me to incorporate into my exceptional visual memory. If not for the knowledge that I would be losing my vision, I might not have attempted and completed my doctorate, achieving my own personal distinction I will always have a well furnished mind to help me when the world becomes dark.


You, my rods and cones, my peripheral and now my central vision are now failing in significant ways. I can no longer see the faces of my beloved friends and family; I am losing my sense of place, a sense of which I was proud and which helped me to feel centered. I can no longer write notes to myself and others nor follow a new recipe. Sometimes, too often, I am overwhelmed by the losses. You, my eyes, have been my most appealing and definitive feature, first when my dad looked at me for the first time and called me "Buttons", because my eyes were so large and round and wide open. As I became a young woman, a friend of my husband asked the group which we thought was our most definitve feature. I said, "my coloring", as I felt that I was simply "ordinary brown". When she told me that my eyes were my most compelling feature, I felt I had received a great compliment, the eyes being "the window to the soul".

As I grew older, I began to appreciate and be shy of the power of you, my eyes. I would not look people in the eye, except briefly; I would watch their mouths instead. Now, having only little central vision, I always look straight into others eyes. Though I don't see much, strangers do not believe that I am blind. They often ask whaat service function my guide dog Riah fulfills for me.



Eyes, I have been lucky to have your help, beauty and your discernment. As your cells die, I will grieve. I will grieve, but I will always embrace my visual memories as I will always try to appreciate the vision I still have and find humor and delight in the new colors, shapes, and, yes, hallucinations. I will find new ways to help those I love and ways to share my inner vision and insight, though these aspects of my darkening world will never be able to substitute for the wide focus and clear views that I once had with you, my dear eyes.


Still, in the end, I will never notice the oncoming tidal wave, the yellow sulfuric volcanic cloud when Yellowstone blows its top! This lopsided humor is meant to convey to my mind and to my inner emotional self that none of us can know the time or place or means of our own bodily death, so live for the moment, seize the day!

CARPE DIEM!

Photo by Sarah Potter