What We Write About When We Write About Death

 

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“How do I write kindly about someone who bullied me?”

 

This is the question that lingered in my mind this week, because that person recently passed away. This situation got me thinking about how we write about death, as well as the people who have passed away.

 

When I told someone about a book I have been writing in which I write poems in memory of people who have passed away, he wanted to know how it was possible for me to write these poems about people that I didn’t even know. That’s right; I have written poems honoring the memory of celebrities, public people, famous people, and important people – and they were all people I never knew or met. People like Michael Landon, Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and even Ozzy Osbourne. I never knew these people. Never met them. But their deaths affected me, so I wrote those poems.

 

When it comes to writing about death, however, that’s when extra care should be used. Death is such a delicate subject to write about. There is so much that we don’t know about death, about the great beyond. We don’t know what it’s like for a person breathing their very last unless we are the ones to do this. We don’t know what people see when they are about to die – though some people have told stories.

 

Death is a subject I have written extensively about, and not just in the scope of grieving the loss of a loved one. In a poetry book that will be released next month, I explore the topic of death as an object of fascination, the superstitions attached to it, the stigma associated with it, as well as how some people crave death so much that they live as though they are not living at all. I have met people who were so obsessed with death that they even pursued careers that had them handling corpses in some way. And a novel I have planned explores one such fascination with death that it drives someone to make it happen in a variety of ways just so he can witness it again and again.

 

Writers have taken other approaches when writing about death. In the novel The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, the story is narrated by Death. In Scythe by Neal Shusterman, Death is also a character, as well as a role in the story. Then there is the portrayal of Death in various movies and plays.

 

The big thing that tripped me up about writing about my former bully, though, was how others would feel after reading what I wrote about him in this poem. Especially his wife and his adult kids. This, too, is one aspect of writing about the death of someone that must be handled delicately. What words will we write about someone after they are gone? How does someone’s death affect us as a whole? Of course, how they lived will affect what we think of them after they have died. It will affect how we feel about them – if we feel anything at all.

 

Ultimately, however, it can depend on our own personal experience with that person. We can’t expect someone who was abused by their parent to write lovingly about that parent after they are gone. We can’t expect someone whose last encounter with a person being a painful one to reflect upon them fondly after they have died. To do so would be fake, and writers are doing a disservice to their readers when they are being fake with their writing.

 

Still, this person’s death was not about me. It was not about how I knew him, my experiences with him, or what I thought of him. I can keep this to myself, in private, but never in something that will last after I, too, must leave this mortal coil.

 

But here I was, presented with this task of writing about someone for my poetry book, and unsure of just how I should write about him, because my experience in knowing this person was more negative than positive. Never mind that he once gave me a ride on his motorcycle. Never mind that he once took me on a test drive when I was learning how to drive. Never mind that he helped me out with a couple of things I was stuck on with a book I was writing. His bullying was what stood out when I remembered him.

 

And that’s not what I wanted to affect the poem I had to write for this book. Because this book is not about me. It is not about how I knew someone. Ultimately, the poems in this book are meant to serve as a lasting testament to a life someone lived. And these poems do not include the bad things they have done while alive.

 

The key to writing about someone in a positive way when we were not close to them when they were alive is to find a method that works best for us. One way to do this is to change the narrative and record the lessons we learned from these people. Or we could change up how we see their death and write about it in a way that feels more comfortable for us. Alternatively, we could write about our very last positive encounter with this person, if there was one, or we could write about their qualities or personality that people liked about them.

 

There is a poem in this book that I wrote about someone who often physically assaulted me, but I did not mention this at all in the poem I wrote about him after he passed away. Other people knew him in different ways that did not include violence, so I kept the violence out of the poem and wrote about his good qualities that made him so likable.

 

Yes, I wrote kindly about a former bully after he passed away. And I know that if I can do that once, for someone I knew for a lesser period of time than my other former bully, then I can do that again.       

"You Didn't Even Know Him"

These words were said to me after I told someone that I wrote a poem in memory of a child who died from cancer. This person DID know the child, quite well, and I was hoping he would read the poem to let me know if I had got it “right.” This is something I do for people who knew or are related to a person who I wrote a memorial poem for. He has yet to read it.

 

When I ask the person to read the poem, I am not looking for praise or attention. I ask them to read it just to see if I wrote about the person the poem is about correctly. A friend of mine lost her mom, and after I wrote a poem in her memory, my friend read the poem and said it was spot on. I got the same response after a cousin I didn’t know had passed away (his sister read the poem and loved it). So it’s mainly to see if I got the information about the person right. I would also like to know if they are okay with this poem being written.

 

And in the case of the child who died from cancer, I would like to know from his mother if it’s okay for this poem to be written. I would also like their permission for this poem to be published, as all of these memorial poems that I write are for a book of poems I plan to submit for publication next year.

 

The task of writing memorial poems for people I didn’t know has been a challenge. I have written memorial poems for celebrities and public figures – Michael Landon, Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Michael Jackson and Paul Reubens – but in the writing of those poems, I wrote about what I knew of their lives and careers, their work, their influences and how they fared through tribulations. Research is also done to help gather information. But I have also written memorial poems for other people I didn’t know at all or very well – family or friends of friends or someone I heard about. In the case of the child who lost his battle with cancer, he was someone I heard about. I was so saddened by this news and so moved that I wrote the poem. It remains to be seen if I will be able to include it in the book.

 

The news of a child passing away because of cancer is very sad. It can affect everyone. It can especially affect anyone who has lost a family member or child to cancer themselves. It is a very sad, very heartbreaking thing.

 

In my case, not only was I saddened by this news but I was also angry. I was angry that cancer stole the life of yet another child. I was angry this child won’t have the chance to grow up. I was angry that this child was forced to endure a wretched disease at so young an age instead of enjoying being a child.

 

This whirlwind of emotions drove me to write the poem. I didn’t try to personalize it, because, it’s true; I didn’t know this child in any way at all. But his death moved me. His death drove me to write. So I just tried to make it a poem for all children who pass away because of cancer.

 

The inspiration for that poem came from his passing.

 

The thing of it is, though, that this comment hit me pretty hard. I have been conflicted about writing these poems. Those very words the person said to me could very well be the same words someone reading one of the poems might say after reading it (though they might substitute “him” with “her”). I have been struggling with this task. I write these poems not because I want attention or to interfere with someone’s grief. I write these poems because I felt compelled to write them. So many people pay tribute to others they don’t know in some form or another. For me, it’s with poetry. When my cousin died, I wrote a poem about him. When my friend broke down into tears over the news of his friend’s death, I wrote a memorial poem for the friend (and his mother later emailed me saying she loved the poem). Heck, there are even poems written in memory of dogs I have had.

 

Am I wrong to write these poems in memory of people I didn’t know? I have no clue. The people who DID know them might feel like their privacy has been violated. They might want to know who the hell I am to write such a poem about someone I didn’t even know.

 

And there are those who might feel that it’s impossible to write anything about someone you never knew in a way that captures who that person really was. (Authors of biographies of people from the past might beg to differ.)

 

But I felt compelled to write those poems. Their deaths moved me. I was saddened by their passing. So I wrote those poems.

 

I didn’t even plan to turn this into a book until much later. I mean, right now, there are 50 poems in that book so far, with more which I plan to write. I COULD just keep them to myself, but how would that honor the person who the poem is for? Some people might read the poem and feel moved or happy by the memories it evokes of that person. And some of the people I wrote about may never be known to others if it weren’t for getting a poem about them published in this book. One person I wrote a poem for had a LOUSY obituary written for him, so I wrote my poem in response to this, because I KNEW this person, and if he was to get a proper obituary, it would be that one. Another person I knew didn’t get an obituary in the paper at all. So I wrote the poem. And, anyway, he was my friend, and I was saddened by his passing. Gone too soon.

 

My collection of memorial poems does include poems in memory of people who I did know, but there are also poems written in the memory of people I didn’t. I only hope, for the poems that won’t be read before publication, that I get the poems about those people right, and that their loved ones might appreciate and be okay with what I wrote.