Writing Through Grief

"And then I’d wake up to reality and feel disoriented and breathless all over again."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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I’ve never been a fast writer. Nor am I the “write-every-day” kind. In the nine years that I’ve written and submitted flash fiction, there have been some good years and some slow ones. I’ve bagged about seven to ten publications including online literary magazines and print anthologies in a good year, but even during some slump years, I’ve managed about four to six publications. The pandemic years were some of my slowest, but 2023 deserves a special mention for slamming the brakes on my writing journey.

In September, I lost my day job (which also involved writing). It seemed like a terrible thing at that point, but the worst was to come. In October, I lost my sister after a brief illness. She was only 46, my best friend, keeper of my secrets, and the voice of reason in my head.

After typing those last few sentences, I had to take a few minutes to breathe, to reassemble myself. It doesn’t make sense sometimes--what am I saying? These words sound like a bunch of gibberish at times, but the truth, even though I cannot bring myself to say it, is that my sister is dead. The finality of it feels so implausible, absurd even.

In the time that immediately followed her passing, I dreamed of her a lot. In all of them, she appeared healthy, happy, and glowing. And then I’d wake up to reality and feel disoriented and breathless all over again. The dominant emotion then was anger--over the unfairness of it all. I wanted the world to stop and see what a tremendous tragedy had occurred--how could everyone keep going about their usual lives when mine got uprooted? And then there was anxiety over who would be next to leave me.

Six months later, not much has changed, except for my anger. I feel it softening around the edges, giving way to something that resembles acceptance. And a desire to live the way she would have wanted me to.

She would have wanted me to be happy. She would’ve wanted me to write. And she knew these two were interconnected.

After all, she is at the very source of my writing journey. Being the younger sibling, I copied everything she did. I started reading, only because she read. As kids, we’d walk to the second-hand bookstore, a rupee in her fist, which would get us three mildly damaged books. She’d go through ones I picked, making sure what I was reading was age-appropriate (even though she was only two and a half years older). Many years later when I was in the grips of postpartum depression, it was she who gently nudged me towards writing. “Write in your notebook, a blog, anything, just write through your feelings,” she’d said.

So, once again, I do what she’d do. Between lashings of grief, I try to write.

But what’s the point, I argue with myself. 

On my social media timelines, I’m met with grief and anger again. The world can be a dark place these days, but punctuated between posts about loss and grief, are islands of respite from my flash fiction community.

I love seeing celebratory posts--acceptances from dream journals, publications, awards, agent representation, and even plain good writing days. I follow some skilled writers and some of them have become good friends over the years. I’m happy for them, but I’m also aware of the tinge of jealousy I feel.

How I expect to be published when I’ve neither written anything new nor subbed any of my older pieces is something I don’t understand, but that’s where I’m at—adding to my own anxiety with questions like, if I’m not writing at all, can I even call myself a writer? Social media moves so fast--I’d be lying if I didn’t worry about being left behind, forgotten.

So, I put my feelings aside and try to write something publishable. Luckily, I’m part of Smokelong Quarterly’s yearlong flash workshop. I copy the prompts in a notebook. Somedays, it’s all the writing I do, on other days, a few sentences, and on some others, there’s nothing.

A couple of weeks ago, on my way to a nearby nature park, I came across a sign. A literal one—on the sidewalk. Probably meant for cyclists and e-scooters (we don’t have dedicated bicycle lanes in Singapore), in big uppercase letters, it said “SLOW.” I’d seen it many times before, but that day, it stood out. My sister was a big proponent of the slow life, single-tasking, and mindful living.

It made me realize how fast I was walking, how erratic my breathing was, and why? There was no rush. Why was I trying so hard? To get over my grief? To ignore my feelings? To write? To get back to normal, to feel normal?

A poem on my Instagram feed caught my attention. It’s titled “Taking Care” by Callista Buchen. The first few lines go: “I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings.”

Maybe this is what the sign meant? A message from my sister to slow down and first examine my grief. Sit with it.

I’ve been reading a lot about grief. Elizabeth Gilbert’s thoughts after the death of her partner, Rayya Elias, are revelatory. She writes in The Marginalian:

Grief… happens upon you, it’s bigger than you. There is a humility that you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself. And it will be done with you, eventually. And when it is done, it will leave. But to stiffen, to resist, and to fight it is to hurt yourself.

I understand this, but I also want to write. Because that’s who I am and what I do. So when I’m trying to write a flash piece and my imagination fails me, I stop. I doodle, sketch, write notes in my journal instead. Any form of writing is writing. I write to my sister, to my six-year-old niece, or just general journal entries. I copy prompts, I copy poems or interesting quotes I find online. I’ve been taking Korean language classes, and last week I wrote my sister a letter entirely in Korean. I felt the same sense of accomplishment I feel when I finish a flash piece.

Since her passing, I’ve shared a lot of my grief on social media. I’ve surprised myself, I didn’t think I would be a public griever, but turns out I am. Looking back over the last six months, I’m glad I did. The flash community is one of the most supportive groups I’m part of. I think I was able to get past the first couple of months when everything felt raw and sore, because of my conversations with some lovely and genuinely kind people who reached out to me and shared their experiences with grief.

I often mull over how similar writing and grief are. You have to give them both the devotion and attention they deserve. Running away from them is futile. Like with grief, you have to sit with your words, slow down, and spend some time with them, let them show up however they want to in the first draft, raw and unabashed. The editing stage can make sense of it all later.

To write emotionally resonant stories, I need to be in tune with my emotions first. I will write again at some point in the future, I know, I hope.

I’m nowhere near healed, and the void my sister has left in my life will never be filled. I go about life as usual, I even write a few words sometimes, but when grief comes knocking at my door, I’m learning to give it my undivided attention. To sit with it and feel it, without trying to make sense of it.

The words will wait.

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