Guest column by Lisa C. Taylor

Lisa C. Taylor is no stranger to writing emotional and thought-provoking pieces. She has several poetry, fiction, and nonfiction publications in domestic and international journals, each with a gripping narrative that pulls at our heartstrings as we watch each character rise and fall like the tide. Taylor’s debut novel, The Shape of What Remains, follows Tess, a character she originally created for one of her short stories, on her journey to find her life again after a devastating loss.

How does one develop resilience and move to a stage of acceptance after an unfathomable loss? There is no timetable, but writing is one avenue in helping to build resilience. Although my debut novel with a theme of long grief is Tess Calvano’s story, not mine, I have used writing to deal with the challenges of life—including the death and long illnesses of friends and family members. Humans don’t just move on; they carry grief as a part of themselves. In a sense, it is a tribute to the indefatigable human spirit. It is also a way of insuring that we don’t erase those we love.

As writers, we are continuously charged with the task of rendering human emotion on the page. If our writing feels authentic, readers will cry, cheer, grow indignant, and hope along with our characters. In a novel with a theme of grief, one need not have lost a child to empathize with the magnitude of such a loss. Reading can make a reader grateful they haven’t directly experienced that suffering but it can also testify to the human quality of resilience, motivating people to get up and face another day after earth-shattering losses and disappointments.

I didn’t set out to write a novel about grief. As a “pantser”, I have always let the characters come to me. The short story, Monuments, was my first dip into this world. It appeared in my short story collection, Growing a New Tail (Arlen House/Syracuse University Press, 2015). The main character Tess and her snarky, intelligent voice continued to haunt me after the short story was published. In 2015, I was working full-time and teaching creative writing at a university at night. There was no time to write a novel. A year or two later, Tess’ voice came to me again and I began to work on the novel on weekends and vacations. The pandemic afforded me more time since teaching went online and we moved to a remote mountain town. By then, Teresa, or Tess, was a fully formed character, complete with favorite foods (anything with basil), a passionate for Chaucer, Janis Joplin, and a book group.

Both the short story and the novel begin ten years after Tess lost her only daughter, six-year-old Serena to a hit-and-run accident while waiting for the school bus. When Tess turned to greet her neighbor, her daughter inexplicably darted into the road. The guilt and grief weighed heavily on her, impacting her work as a professor, her marriage, and her relationship with her college age son.

Years ago, I worked in the field of counseling in schools, day treatment programs, and youth services agencies. At one point, I worked in a school where many children had lost a parent and I started a grieving group with a social worker. Part of my responsibility was to educate teachers and staff who didn’t understand why Megan or Joey hadn’t completed their math homework when a parent was dying of cancer. There was an assumption that distraction would be useful to those who grieve. For Tess, the loss of her young daughter permeated every corner of her life. She saw the truck that hit her daughter everywhere and thus even routine tasks became challenging. Grief has no timetable. Couple that with guilt that my character might have prevented this tragedy and it became a roadblock to her forward motion in her professional and personal life.

I’m a believer in research and I consulted with experts and the organization Compassionate Friends during the years I worked on this book. Compassionate Friends specifically offers support to parents who have lost children. During my years working in the field of counseling I had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who developed five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I revisited her book, On Death and Dying. Acceptance proves elusive for Tess, and the book opens with her stuck in depression for years.

My book is not without levity, as Tess navigates her broken marriage, her husband’s sabbatical in Oxford, England, their son’s first love, and other events. Her unique path forward is all of our paths forward after trauma. Those first steps are hesitant and fraught with mistakes. The writing process is also filled with detours, distractions, and missteps. Writers have the skill to show vulnerability in their characters. In a first-person story about grief, Tess can spill all of her trepidation, insecurity, and assumptions on the page. It is my hope that writers who read this book will be encouraged to write about grief, in all its myriad manifestations. Two books that helped me in my journey to better articulate the complicated emotions of my main character were: I Hold a Wolf by the Ears by Lauren van den Berg, a short story collection that features women broken by death and loss, and The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood, a novel featuring a highly intelligent woman who tries to make sense of a world where random tragedies happen. In a sense, that is what writers try to do at some level: create stories with situations that cannot be easily dismissed or explained. It is one way writers can offer both solace and escape.

The Shape of What Remains by Lisa C. Taylor

The worst day of Teresa’s life was the day she lost her daughter. Only six years old, Serena died struck by a car while waiting for the school bus. Now, Tess is falling apart, her grief putting a strain on every other relationship in her life. Her husband is distant, her college-aged son feels forgotten, and her friends are disappointed in her inability to rejoin life. She spends her days in therapy, listening to Janis Joplin, and reading books, each one a tiny step in what will surely be a life long struggle to return to normalcy after experiencing the most tragic event of any parents’ life.

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