Dear Dr. Journal - Thoughts on Therapeutic Writing

Truthfully, with the events of this week, not a lot of reading or fiction writing is happening. But that doesn't mean no writing is happening.

I've been writing my father's obituary instead.

Man, if that isn't a job that drags you to the edge of mortality to stare out into the abyss! Containing a human being's entire life in 1-2 pages of text.

Especially the human being who came right before you did.

I work with obituaries for a living, and I've seen a lot of people who didn't know anyone who wrote, and got literally nothing. A name and a blank picture window on the funeral website, and that's it. I wanted better than that for the man who raised me.

So he got the world-class treatment, because his daughter is a writer. The kind of obituary you have to pay hundreds of dollars to get from a professional. And I was glad to do it. If I ever get the nerve together, I'll have to write my own and make sure it's good as well.

***

At the same time, I couldn't be completely objective, writing about my father. There's a little bit of a discrepancy between my experience with my father and some of the other kids' and in-law's experiences in the family.

Some of them got Dad, Version 2.0 and 3.0, when he was kind and accepting and mellow and all good things. Being an older child, I got Dad, Version 1.0, the one with all the bugs, at a time when I really wanted (no, needed) a later version instead.

I started to tell my kids about Dad, Version 1.0, thinking that might help me, but then I thought better of it. He didn't die in that version, and I wanted them to hear the good stuff too. But I had to somehow honor my inner child somehow, who was pretty dang angry at the treatment she got, having broken him in for the rest of the world.

A good friend of mine, who'd lost a daughter many years ago, had suggested keeping a journal as a way of talking out what I was feeling to the deceased, as if they could hear, and peeling the emotional onion as I needed to do. So I took this to heart. I wrote a letter to my father.

It was not a love letter, to say the least. It was angry, and vengeful, and as nasty as Version 1.0 deserved, with no filter.

Once that was gone, I felt safe to acknowledge that he'd made upgrades since Version 1.0, and I just hadn't been there to see it. I knew there was love somewhere under all that anger and regret. Just have to keep digging as I need to.

I went to bed, and woke up the next morning completely rested and clear. It was like magic.

It's not just published writings that have value - something I've definitely learned over the years. Journals have saved my mental and emotional life. Writing is a great service to render, to others and to myself, and I thank God I can do it.