I'm Writing About Death But I'm Petrified Of It

How writing about assisted dying has made me more aware of my mortality.

Greetings!

Or, if you are on the clock app and you have had the pleasure of watching Hugo Hamlet then, BONJJJJ!

It’s been a while and that is mostly because life has been busy, but when isn’t it?

Currently, I am finishing off the overhaul of Cry For The Living which ended up being a 95-98% rewrite. I want to write about that at some point but first I want to talk about the content and topics of my novel and how it has impacted on my mental health.

Trigger Warning: This post talks about death, suicide, assisted death, anxiety and depression.

I started writing Cry For The Living the week before my 28th birthday, determined to write 10,000 words for the Women’s Prize Discoveries competition. I knew that if I wanted to submit anything to that year’s entry it had to be this book. A story about assisted dying or more specifically, in the case of my characters, assisted suicide.

This topic is something I have been passionate about for a long time and thought about more than most people, not because I have first hand or even second hand experience, I think on a human level we all think about our deaths, some more than others and some of us may even ask what we would do if we were terminally ill. I learned about euthanasia/assisted dying and Dignitas from an ongoing storyline in Holby City back in the 00s and it stuck with me ever since. My GCSE RE exam covered the topic and I wrote at length about the moral, personal and religious aspects of it. So writing about it seemed like the next step in my quest for understanding and exploring the subject.

So I did but rather than focus on the journey to an assisted death, I wanted to talk about the aftermath, the friends and family involved and left behind. What does the world look like to them after their loved one has snatched back just a little bit of control and attained the death they wanted. The novel is first person POV so I lived inside Sol’s head for not just 90,000 words but months of thought and exploring her history, the emotions tied to her memories, current events and her future.

Alongside this I thought endlessly about my own life and death.

When we’re young we always believe death is far away somewhere in our vast but definitive future. A natural conclusion to life and for some, a reward for living until we’re paper skinned and toothless. It dawned on me, writing about a character who dies at just 27 years old that really, death isn’t somewhere in the faraway future, over the hill yonder. It is whenever it wants to be and that idea has haunted me throughout the duration of writing, editing, querying, and rewriting this novel. But my fear isn’t so much the dying part because let’s face it, it happens to people of all ages every single day. It is the people I will leave behind, if I died at 28 or now at 31, I would leave behind my husband, my parents and siblings, my friends and most excruciatingly, my children. My youngest is three and a half and the thought of him not remembering me or knowing who I am breaks my heart. Thinking about my children not having their mom to turn to when they need me makes me ache.

It is the after I am gone that frightens me.

Since writing this book I have had some health issues, a diagnosis for Chiari Malformation I and last year I experienced a pulmonary embolism which I am still undergoing treatment for. The Chiari has given my a myriad of symptoms that sometimes make daily life difficult and the PE has lowered the quality of my lungs. I can’t run or walk for long periods of time or I’ll pay for it later in chest pain and fatigue. But the initial diagnosis itself was terrifying. An event that could have killed me if I had not seen the pains in my chest as more than a potential chest infection. Experiencing these things while writing about the afterlife of someone’s death has without a doubt increased my anxiety but I think that it is a worthy endeavour. It is exactly because I have (almost) come through the end of a life threatening health condition that I am more determined than ever to write this book and see it published.

Now I am coming to the end of this new first draft, I would love to say I am seeing the after death all in a new light. I don’t but I am booked to speak with a mental health provider about my health anxiety. A step I feel is important for my general mental health and in the after care of writing the novel. Writing a book isn’t a fix but it does enable me to sympathise with my main character and understand her goals, her wants and needs and actions. The rest of it, is for me to figure out.

Writing about death isn’t easy and reading about it isn’t for everyone. Writing about death is not only a way to deal with the topic itself but to branch into other themes and subjects that provoke conversations. For example, Katherine Mansfield’s short story The Garden Party deals with class by way of the death of a working class father, as the community gather for his funeral and to support his wife and children, up the lane the wealthy folk are throwing a garden party on their mansion grounds despite the suggestion they cancel the party by one of their daughter Laura. I’ve probably butchered the description but I highly recommend it as a short read with a tea or coffee.

Largely death is a topic most of us avoid because it’s upsetting, a confrontation we don’t want to have with others or ourselves but it is something that every single person on this planet has in common. A beginning. An end. Death is uncomfortable but we shouldn’t shy away from it, whether it’s the death of a loved one, a stranger, or the idea of our own, it connects us all in a way nothing else can. And that is reason enough to keep writing about it.

---

In another time and place, I would tell you there will be regular posts but my mind resembles cardboard left out in the rain at the moment. That said, it is my hope to up my posts this year and connect with more writers and authors or readers who enjoy literary fiction, poetry, essays and streams of consciousness. If that’s you, then howdy, nice to meet you. And if you aren’t new around here, thanks for sticking around, it means the world that you have.

Until next time,

Jordan