Untelling

Just before my mom died unexpectedly two months ago, I was about to begin revisions on my second book. As I understood it then, it was a book about queer, non-gestational motherhood. About what it means to become a mother in the absence of the traditional trappings of motherhood. And what it looks like to capture the vivid, fragmented nature of early mothering brain and lay it bare on the page. 

When my mom died, some words gave me comfort. Writing her obituary, writing her eulogy, putting those tributes into the world–it was a thing I could do. A thing I controlled in a moment where literally nothing else felt like it was in my control. Not my mother’s failing lungs. Not the callous doctor who proclaimed she wouldn’t make it through the week. Not my nascent toddler, who I left for two weeks to be at my mother’s bedside, and then her farewell. 

And when I came back to Boston from Austin, I thought I was supposed to keep writing. I thought that I needed to re-enter my draft, excavate all evidence of my mother within its pages, and take each of those stories and bring it to completion. My mother had died just as I was coming into my own understanding of mothering. In fact, in caring for her during those last days, in singing to her and reading to her and rubbing lotion on her body and tending to her hair, in mothering her the same way that I mother my daughter, it felt like this whole new version of self had emerged from my body. And I thought I needed that identity, the scars left behind by its creation, to be made visible, in the book. 

But every time I tried to open my draft, I couldn’t see the words on the page. It was all fog. 

I emailed Geeta, one of my writing aunties. Asked her if she thought I should give the draft to an editor to work on while I am incapable of working on it. So that it continues to move forward, even as I am paralyzed by grief. 

She called me. “Give the book to me,” she told me. “Send it to me and stop working on it. It’s with me. I’m taking care of it. You can write other things, you can write nothing. But you absolutely should not work on this book while you are in deep grief.” 

That phone call has been the source of profound comfort during this period of mourning. Someone has my book. Someone is taking care of it. And I can just focus on taking care of me, and my family, and know that when the time comes, my book will be there waiting, and my revisions will take the form that makes sense, not the form of my fresh grief. 

When Melissa asked me to write this “Untelling,” my first answer was, “Later.” I told her that I couldn’t see through the fog well enough to write. And as Melissa is wont to do, she pushed, just a little. Offered that perhaps this window into my grief, and my stasis, might offer a mirror to others. To the many of us who are grieving in this moment. Grieving our country. Grieving our burning and flooding world. Grieving the harm being rendered onto our bodies and to those of our loved ones by self-serving politicians and broligarchs. 

Perhaps, you, too, are unable to see through the fog to write right now. Perhaps you, too, are unable to navigate the pace of publishing relative to the pace of your mourning. And if that is the case, then I offer you what Geeta offered me: find a person to send your words to. Someone who you know will hold them and keep them safe. You don’t have to stifle your grief, or force your words. The words will be there, waiting, whenever you are ready.