Self-Reflection

I turned away from the keyboard to consider my options. In taking my wife’s half-finished manuscript, I wanted to carry out one final collaboration with her, to infuse her words with my own. I wanted to do this to feel closer to her. I thought I would feel that way, especially since the main characters in the story were obvious stand-ins for the two of us. In a way, it was already her own love letter to the two of us.

To do that, though, I had to wrestle with my own priorities, my own interests, and above all, my own viewpoint. I had to find my own way of looking at it. For instance, I was thinking that instead of writing it in third person as she had been doing it, I would write it in first person as Jack, my stand-in. Or maybe I should write it in alternating viewpoints, as Jack and also as Kate?

The one would require a good deal of self-reflection. The other would be…simply beyond my ability, I was sure. I was married to her for longer than I had been not-married to her, but I hadn’t been married to her for longer than she had been not-married to me. I had raised four children with her, but she had raised five children without me.

Besides that, though, another purpose of finishing The Lodge was to learn more about myself, as Kathe’s husband and as myself. I must learn more about myself as a being apart from Kathe, since that is who and what I am and shall be from now on. After more than a year of widowhood, I am still learning how to do it, how to be a widower, how to live my own life.

I saw a therapist for over a year. She was so good. I wish I were seeing one now. I talk with one occasionally, but we don’t connect as well. I’m not going to blame her, but we don’t make the kind of connections that I did with my previous counselor. So, I shall have to rely primarily upon my own reflections on my thoughts.

And finish The Lodge.

And finish Frankenstein’s World and post it for sale.

And get started on An American Victory.

And when I’m done with that, get started on The Black Coast.

I really do have a lot to do.

 

The Blue Nightgown by Toi Dericotte https://poets.org/poem/blue-nightgown