The snow streaked in the night like falling stars around my feet, suddenly lit by the oncoming headlights of a car.
I am going to die.
I panicked. I jumped from the road, landed on ice, and sprained a ligament in my leg.
I’ve walked in pain ever since.
***
As I get older, the thought I am going to die keeps popping up, in the least likely places.
When my husband and I are playing with our golden retriever, when the joy lights the air as this golden fluffball zooms around, the sadness seeps in.
This won’t last.
I don’t want to think about it, so I don’t think about it as I limp along from distraction to distraction.
***
Writers often don’t want to admit that a published book is usually, at best, a sustained moment in time for the publishing marketplace, but a moment nonetheless.
The book comes, it ripples the pond like a stone dropped, and then the book goes, and the pond becomes still.
Some books may seem timeless, but they are married to time and context so remarkably for their meaning and impact, that the words do not ripple the pond the same way, with the same intensity, as they did when they were first dropped.
My words are going to die, like me.
The thought is unbearable, and my thoughts jump away from the fact, squarely onto the stinging ice of bitterness.
I injure myself, not knowing what else to do—filling myself with the numbing of emotional eating. But I cannot eat Death away.
***
Some people might say: live it up until you die. Have the most fun you can as a writer. Be the biggest, best ripple in the pond. Work hard to write the most timeless book ever, to show them you matter.
To quote Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
What else can you do when the car of Death is barreling down the road at you, and you just want to live? But perhaps there is another way.
***
I have been caring for my sprained ligament for some time now. It has not fully healed, though it was a year ago when the fall happened. I may take it to my grave.
There is no quick fix, no new leg I can find that will magically snap onto my hip, that will work just like it used to.
There is no magic wand—no special idea, agent, publisher, marketing tactic— I can wave to make my book speak to everyone, everywhere, at all times.
But I have found I feel most human when I admit my limits, and my words’ limits. When I acknowledge I will not walk the same again after this injury, at least for some time. My words have a lifespan. Death is at my door, at some point in my life. And I cannot change that.
I am small and needing help, like a child, in a universe made of serious, grown up things.
***
I still remember the feeling of being a small child. One memory surfaces among the rest: the feeling of strong arms coming under my legs and back, lifting me from my car seat, and transporting me to my bedroom after a long night of travel. I had pretended to be sleeping so my father would carry me from the car to my bedroom.
Helen Keller once said, “Death is no more than passing from one room into another.”
I may not walk the same way ever again; in fact, there will come a time when I cannot walk (or write) at all, but this remains: I can still be carried with love into the next room.
Author’s Note:
One of the most encouraging short stories for writers I have ever read is “Leaf by Niggle” by J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien wrote it when he despaired that he might never finish The Lord of the Rings in his lifetime. One of the greatest writers of all time has grappled with mortality as an artist, and it is stirring beyond words. I don’t want to give away the ending, but it is well worth the read at the link below. You will be better for it.