Characters in fiction can be inspired by people that do exist, people we hope might exist, or people we pray don’t exist. We bring them to life and give them an existence forged from our known realities or from one of the many might have been realities of our lives.
When reading fiction, might have been moments are often most important. Those moments allow us to dream. We travel outside ourselves into a world created by the writer. Conversely, when writing fiction, we create a might have been for someone else.
Knowledge of the Is and the Was helps create the Could Be. And in that could be…
Sometimes there are monsters.
My first wife, Laura Ellen, died in January 2014 from complications related to H1N1 influenza. We’d been together 32 years. Some of those years were good, some were not.
Three days before she died, she awoke from a propofol sedation and began begging the nurse to see me. The nurse told her I’m there at every visitation, but, as Laura was crying out, saying she had to see me and wouldn’t relax, the nurse put her under again. I was less than fifty steps away through the double doors of isolation, waiting in the hallway; I'm sure the nurses knew this, as my routine never changed.
The nurse told me what happened an hour later, at the scheduled visitation, but it was too late. Laura would never wake again. I could have been angry, but what purpose would it serve? Anger could have lessened that nurse’s desire to care for Laura’s needs. I’ve seen it in action. Nursing is very stressful. An irate family member can turn a doting nurse into one who will meet basic needs then hurry out without affording any extra considerations.
I still sometimes wonder what Laura wanted to say. Did she know she was about to die and wanted to say goodbye? Did she want to say she loved me? She obviously wanted to tell me something, or to at least see me.
I believe I understand the feelings of those who watched helplessly as the twin towers fell with their loved ones inside. I believe I understand the scenes in movies where a loved one is a hair breadth beyond a saving grasp, only to plummet or drown. I was fifty steps away, and in those fifty steps, I sometimes feel my failure. I wasn’t there when I was needed the most.
Ask any survivor of a traumatic event. Sometimes there are monsters.
When I write victims or villains, I use moments from my past. I can’t begin to imagine the full extent of terror and anxiety Laura felt. I only know what I felt and that is enough.
But…
Sometimes there are angels.
I have a wonderful life now. Several months after Laura died, I met Kelly again for the first time in thirty-six years. Our connection was immediate and now I’m married to this wonderful woman. With Kelly I have the now and the future, but I also have the might have been.
We are similar in so many ways, it is easy to imagine us having been together through all of these years. If we both hadn’t been painfully shy at a young age that might have happened.
She has great kids, both adults now. I feel a sense of pride in them, although I had no hand in making them the men they are. But it is easy for me to imagine Kelly and I first starting out, buying our first house, and raising our sons. I can see us having grandchildren. They would sit on my lap and I would read them stories and poems, just as my grandmother did for me.
But that isn’t real, or maybe, in some ways, it is. I can see Kelly as the woman who has always been meant for me.
I’ve begun a new project titled, “All Our Realities”. It deals with just this: What is, What was, What might have been. In one of my realities, Kelly and I have been married all along and tonight I will be reading stories to our grandchildren.
When I write love and possibilities, I think of Kelly and our might have been moments. Ask anyone who has found love. Sometimes there are angels.
If there is one thing I want to convey in all of this, it would be: Allow yourself to feel the pain. Allow yourself to imagine the might have been. Write well, but write with passion.
One final note, after losing her daughter to leukemia, Anne Rice turned a short story she’d written into an immensely popular and lucrative series of novels. She allowed the pain to have purpose in her writing. If you haven’t read The Vampire Chronicles, it is well worth the investment of time.
No matter what you write, allow it to become real. And no matter what else, keep writing.
My Click Here To Read button provides pages from The Box Collector, a Southern narrative short story. To set up the pages, the narrator has found the body of a hummingbird he used to watch as it visited his feeders.. He sets about to do the right thing and bury the bird, choosing a proper box and recalling moments from his past as he does.
I hope you enjoy.