Thank you for your suggestions. Cliches are so easy to fall into; I’ll take your comments to heart.
Non-fiction / The Gift of a Broken Heart (Version 2)
Joan Didion’s memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking” was on the top of my Christmas list that year. A recounting of what she experienced , psychologically and emotionally, in the year following her husband’s death, it was right up my alley. I’ve always been interested in knowing how people cope, or don’t, when life throws lightning bolts their way. But how could I have known, as I absorbed the pain she so eloquently described, that within a few short months I, too, would be shaken to my very foundations when my own beloved husband of thirty years died?
I don’t know how we ever “connected,” so different did we seem on the surface. He was the plumber; I, the artist. He had a bit of the daredevil about him, and he flew through life by the seat of his pants. I, on the other hand, was much more cautious and deliberate. No doubt being so opposite of each other was part of the attraction, but for me, it was more than that. Gene possessed an inner peace, a serenity, that I longed for in my own life. Living was so easy for him, though he’d had anything but an easy life. Nothing was ever a problem for him, only a situation to be dealt with. He was even-tempered and had a smile that lit up every corner of the room…how could I not be attracted to him?
We were also both very independent and very serious about having the freedom to pursue our own interests. Gene loved to be out and about, playing golf and going to auctions and flea markets in search of tools and gadgets he could put to use in the various projects he was always working on around the house. I preferred to be at home, because all of my interests were there: my weaving and sculpting and painting, and my garden, all of which were, and are, very important to me. But our core values were identical, and very simple: we both believed that life was meant to be enjoyed. And we were able to accommodate our differences because the respect we had for each other kept them in perspective, and we freely gave each other room to grow independently. As Gene liked to say, we were ”attached at the heart, not at the hip.” Our love was not because; it just was.
Our life together was blissfully ordinary, and we cherished its ordinariness with all its small rituals: coffee shared unexpectedly at one or the other’s prompting, short breaks to walk around the garden together or relax on the gazebo, weekly excursions to the farmers’ market where Gene purchased enough tiny eclairs to keep him going for the week, jumping into the van on a frosty, pre-dawn morning to go for breakfast, then home again and back to our individual pursuits. But not a day passed that we did not spontaneously acknowledge to each other how fortunate we were to have a life that we loved. So when Gene succumbed to recurrent, debilitating bouts of pneumonia, brought on and compounded by falls resulting in broken ribs and a broken shoulder, the character of that life changed radically. That is, we could no longer enjoy most of those simple pleasures we’d cherished. In fact, the whole dynamic of our relationship shifted. Gene, who’d seldom needed help, was now almost completely dependent upon me. I was suddenly caretaker of the man who’d take care of me in so many ways over the years. It was a role I more than willingly dedicated myself to; it was an opportunity to give to Gene, whom I’d always seen as the “giver” in our relationship, and I was determined not to let him down.
I well remember the thought that became my mantra as his health deteriorated: “I’m going to get this right.” I didn’t really know, intellectually, what I meant by that, but I believe my heart did. I believe my heart recognized it as a truly spontaneous, deeply felt prayer. As Gene’s condition clearly became life-threatening, and the time needed for his care escalated, everything in my own busy, engaged life, simply dropped away, replaced by a singleness of focus that enabled me to stay the course. Even though his bed was mere steps away from my studio, where promised work waited to be completed and deadlines beckoned,.I was blind to the call, My heart no longer lay there. In this new,, uncharted universe, my heart, not my mind, had become my compass, and my heart allowed no room for distractions. Nor did it judge the situation. It never asked the question, “Why?” or “Why me?’ or “How can I?.” Acceptance supplanted fear and panic. I simply lived the situation, the good with the bad, moment by moment, never looking ahead or behind. And I got through it.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t suddenly become a tower of strength, a paragon of perfect, self-sacrificing devotion. I knew only that I wanted to take care of Gene at that point more than I wanted to do anything else. Although that decision was easy to make, I did became, by turns, frustrated and impatient and exhausted, mostly the result of having to deal with the bureaucratic convolutions of the healthcare system. As for Gene’s care, the nights were predictably the worst, because he was most restless then, and I was most tired. Any “falls from grace” were simply human responses to a time of great stress, not reasons for self-recrimination. I knew my heart was in the right place, and I knew Gene knew that, too.
My mantra, my pledge to “get things right,” seemed to fade in the light of the grief I experienced when Gene passed. It was a pain so deep and so acute that the thought, “my heart is being torn apart” was my initial reaction with each onslaught. Seeming to come out of nowhere, the pain would suddenly surprise me with an almost paralyzing intensity. Then, a Sufi teaching I chanced upon (can such a thing be mere chance?), helped me to change my perspective. It offered the idea that grief does not “break” the heart, as if to injure it; instead, it “cracks it open” in order to reveal inherent depths of love and compassion, peace and joy, that can be experienced if one is willing to walk through the pain of grief to the other side. The teaching made sense to me because I had already discovered that each time I was ambushed by grief, if I stayed with it, if I accepted it, if I let it engulf me, and when it did, if I then tracked it back to it’s source, I always discovered that it sprang from love, from the love my husband and I had shared. And so I allowed the grief into my life. I let it sweep over me with all the pain and anguish it brought with it, because I knew it couldn’t last, as long as I didn’t fight it, as long as I didn’t give way to self-pity, as long as I just let it be.
I discovered that that pain and my journey through it always brought me to joy, and, in time, to a much richer and more abundant existence. In time, I have come to see that journey as the last, greatest gift my husband gave me, for with his death, he offered me the opportunity to experience incredibly richer dimensions of life. Today, fear has become a stranger in my world, replaced by a sense of peace born of a new self-confidence. Spontaneity has replaced second-guessing, resulting in unexpected delight; and compassion has multiplied my talents as I’ve sought more and better ways to express my feelings. Now, I let my heart lead the way, because I know it’s far more wise than my mind, filling my days with peace and joy and gratitude beyond measure, and re-affirming the belief Gene and I always held, that life was meant to be enjoyed…indeed, even in the face of death.
Do I still feel the grief? Of course I do. I have “lump in the throat” moments every day, sometimes several times a day. They may be prompted by stumbling across an old Eddie Arnold tape he played in his van, or discovering an out-dated calendar in his shop, turned by his hand, to the month before he died, or watching a pair of bluebirds setting up housekeeping in one of the birdhouses he made.. Most often they occur in the course of living my life in a home in which he invested so much of himself, and where so many memories of our life together remain. By now, though, they’ve become like comfortable, old friends, reminding me of wonderful times and a love I will treasure forever. But they also remind me of the gift of a broken heart, a heart cracked open so as to allow the best of being human to be exposed.
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scottsta reviewed Version 2 -
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quette123 reviewed Version 2 -
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very good piece i was very touched and in awe of your storytelling abilities this is one of the best pieces that i have read. your ability to convey such human emotion is uncanny. there should not be alot of tinkering with a already great story. i know that this piece should be on a publisher’s desk somewhere. keeping shoping it around someone with some sense wil pick it up.keep writig don’t deny the world your voice and terriffic storytelling.
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Squigglesy reviewed Version 2 -
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‘I don’t know how we ever “connected,”’; this is a quote, not direct speech. Therefore you should use quotation marks and not speech marks. You also over-use commas; for example, ‘that within a few short months I, too, would’: the commas around ‘too’ are unneccessary and complicate the sentence. Also be aware of the length of your sentences. Shortening sentences does not mean that you have to omit ideas; you have to rearrange them to fit less ideas into one sentence unit. Of course, vary between shorter and longer sentences, but beyond a certain length the reader’s concentration will be stretched.
You need to think about this: in what kind of publication would you like this to appear? The experience you relate does have relevance to many people, but the format in which it appears will determine how many of those people will see your work.
benjaminlear reviewed Version 2 -
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This is a very endearing piece about a woman’s journey during after her husband’s declining years. The author was so honest and candid with her emotions and words. She spoke a language of the heart, which resonated deeply within me. I felt grateful to read about a woman with such a sweet, yet dead-on right attitude about the passing of her husband, and what she must take from the experience. This is the kind of grandmother I would wish to have.
My only criticism is that, at times, the “follow my heart” and “enjoy life” passages felt a little cliche. I know the meaning behind those words is so sincere, but maybe using different language or imagery could help the message transcend those cliches that I have heard so many times.
All and all, though, I think this is a beautiful piece that could really serve to help anyone through their loss.
GypsyBlood reviewed Version 2 -
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I think that this is a great start. There are a few slight errors with tense of words, but overall i think the story tells itself quite well. It is a great topic to be discussed as i have seen my mother go through the same with my father and my brother who lost a son. I think that you can also dig deeper and add in those tiny moments that only you and you husband truely understood, but people will experience great happiness in reading. I’m not sure if you would like to publish this as an article or expand on it to make a full book, but the romance you speak of could be very novel-esc. Good luck to you.
Pavel reviewed Version 2 -
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I very nearly backed out from reading this a line or two into it, because the subject is so intense. I haven’t had to go through this yet; maybe I never will. Maybe I’ll be like Joan Didion’s husband and just drop over dead in some unexpected instant. Or maybe my wife will (we’ll be 32 years married in a few days, so I do know what that feels like). Who knows? I’m old enough now to know that the surest way to get God to laugh is to tell him my plans.
I’ve read that the most important thing in good writing is to tell the truth. This was truth overflowing: every detail, from the perfect line, “Our life together was blissfully ordinary, and we cherished its ordinariness with all its small rituals”; to the acknowledgement of your own occasional impatience in the face of this enormous undertaking; to how you surrendered yourself to letting your heart, not your head, be your guide in all this – how you behaved in a saintly fashion not by some peculiar virtue, but by putting one foot in front of the other, and deciding (as a prayer) to “get this right.” And the Sufi teaching: well, that’s just wonderful, and feels exactly true. I loved The Year of Magical Thinking, but Didion had a couple hundred pages to work with. You’ve captured your own experience just as powerfully in a thousand words. You’re my first 10 on this site.
This is absolutely publishable. The writing needs a tiny bit of technical work, but it’s nothing that detracts from the value of this piece, and will be fixed with a decent editor.
falconviews reviewed Version 2 -
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Hey, it made for nice, smooth reading. Is getting difficult to find reasonably coherent, well-written pieces like this on this site. But I would suggest you don’t keep more than four criteria of rating, otherwise it becomes a chore for the reviewers. You have six now, and all of them related to publishing. Now how do I rate for “to be seen by agents” or “to get professional advice”? I don’t know what you expect of a reviewer when you put in these criteria. Anyway, coming to the article, let me go through some trouble spots. There is no mention or hint of around which year this was, or how old you were, you only mention you had been married for 30 years, so if you married at twenty, this could be a tale of twenty years ago. Just if you give some details like this, readers will be spared from being distracted by trying to guess, because they would like to get a little solid picture. Place names, some such facts can help give your article more grounding.
husband’s death, it was right up my alley – (a dash after death, not comma)
I don’t know how we ever “connected,” – this doesn’t make much sense in the light of what you explain in much details in the following paragraphs, how well you could connect and for what reasons. This sentence seems to be your attempt to a little mystery, but sounds artificial. You could say something a little toned down like “It is a little odd how we could connect so well because outwardly we were quite opposite to each other.”
flew through the life by the seat of his pants – I checked out this idiom, it means “to do something difficult without the necessary experience or ability.” This may apply to some particular task, but I don’t understand how it applies to life. completely wrong usage.
”attached at the heart, not at the hip.” Our love was not because; it just was. – this attached at the hip gives rise to a very repulsive image. Though Gene used to say it, it is better to avoid it, no one is connected at the hip, except for siamese twins, and all loving couples are attached at heart, there is nothing special about you. The next because/was sentence doesn’t make much sentence to me. Is it any expression? However, if you get too effusive about how divine your love was, it tends to put off many readers.
who’d take care of me in so many ways – taken care of me
beckoned,.I was blind to the call, My heart no longer lay there. – two punctuational mistakes
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t suddenly become a tower of strength – well, “don’t get me wrong” sounds a little awkward, since we don’t know that phase when you were not a tower strength. You can simply say, “Well, it’s not that I suddenly became..”
I did became, by turns, – did become
Gene passed. – passed away.
In fact I have many more comments, but unfortunately no space. But this is a rather a fine piece.
jweeble reviewed Version 2 -
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Your story is well-written, engaging, and memorable. Overall, your writing flows and is easy to read, which is definitely a bonus. You have a few grammatical errors to be fixed, and some sentence structure that could be improved upon.
You tend to use appositives to impart information, such as your opinions and such, which could be built into the sentences to make them easier to read. Especially “I, .. ”
This sentence “each time I was ambushed by grief, if I stayed . . . ” needs rewritten. You could either make it into several sentences, or take out the if I . . . it, and the piece would be stronger.
I really like the ending. Overall – a lovely read.
teaddub reviewed Version 2 -
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First let me tell you that I think you are a very strong and courageous person to be willing to put something this personal out there. I also think you are right about your message. Thank you.
Your grasp of the conventions of written English is good, though you need some work with the use of punctuation with parenthetic notation. You seem to have some difficulty with the HTML format of this website also, and many of your commas and periods are doubled up. The basics of spelling and grammar, however, are well done, and the few mistakes will be taken care of by your editor.
The idea, the basis of your text, is a good one, and as you said, this may be helpful to a lot of people. Before that can happen, you will have to be published, and I wish you the best in this endeavor, so I have a few suggestions to help you with this noble goal.
First, take a look a Joan Didion’s writing. You will see that she uses a lot of descriptive writing to make her point. Her first paragraph almost always puts the reader in a scene, including an appeal to more than one of the five senses. Your piece has not one description, not of Gene, or of his birdhouses, or even of your house and the things he added to it over the years.
This piece lends itself to multiple opportunities for such description, maybe you could describe the scene at the table in the early afternoon with an impromptu cup of coffee, the smell of the coffee, the afternoon sun slanting in through the window, the sheen of an almost five o’clock shadow on his face, the way he holds the cup, the feel of the warm cup in your own hand. This is only one place of the many opportunities you have to put your reader into your life, and therefore into your heart and feelings. This is what is called “showing, not telling.” The power of your piece increases the more your reader relates. We honestly don’t relate to words, but through words we relate to each other’s senses.
Second, you just lay your theme out, like a lecture. Look again at the greats, like Didion. The theme of the piece is often more of an undercurrent, the story constructed around it to lead the reader to make his or her own conclusions, but those conclusions having been guided by the experience of the writer. The way you have written this leaves no room for misinterpretation, but you also don’t leave room for the reader to learn for him or her self. Mark Twain once said “Human beings are unique in our ability to learn from the mistakes of others, we are also remarkable for our disinclination to do so.” The lesson here is that if you can lead your reader to make personal conclusions about your experience, you will have allowed us to learn for ourselves. This, once again, increases the power of this piece to reach those who may be in need of your message.
Once again, this is a great idea, and an important one. Many people would benefit from the lessons you have to teach here. Look at the published authors of creative nonfiction, and learn from their examples how to present it so others will read it for fun, and walk away with your very cool message. Thank you again for this piece, and good skill and the grace of God go with you.
KenH1957 reviewed Version 2 -
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“Our love was not because; it just was.” A very eloquent phrase. I really it.
“I well remember the thought that became my mantra as his health deteriorated: “I’m going to get this right.” I didn’t really know, intellectually, what I meant by that, but I believe my heart did. I believe my heart recognized it as a truly spontaneous, deeply felt prayer.” This is an incredibly inspirational phrase. It really sells the entire piece.
This is a really nice piece of work. It’s a pleasure to read something written through the eyes of experience and maturity, all stated in such an eloquent way. Well Done!
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