Resurrection Monday

I am currently grieving.

Sorry to put a downer on you on a Monday (it's bad enough it is Monday, right?), but I'm convicted enough in what I am about to convey that it needs to be said. I am grieving for my brother, whom I most recently lost, though I am still grieving for my father and other brother as well. I feel our grieving never fully goes away if we continue to miss those whom we have lost.

On September 17th, 2015 at 6pm, my brother went cycling with a group of friends as was their custom to go out on a Thursday evening ride. He and another rider never came home. I am not going to go into details, or whose fault it was (it wasn't the rider's or the driver's; it was just unfortunate circumstances), because it is not the point of this post and it is still too painful to recount. The point is he was taken from my life and I miss him dearly.

But I can bring him back.

Well, technically, I can't actually bring him back. No black magic, no incantations, and definitely no flying around the world backwards to turn back time (suck it, Superman). But I'm a writer. I am told I am a good one too. So I've decided to include aspects of my brothers and my father in personalities of the characters I create and immortalize in the pages I write, just as they live in the memories in my heart.

One character can be sarcastic with the driest humor this side of the Atlantic with a love for hiking. Another character can have a brilliant affinity for wordplay and a superior bowler. And another character could have a green thumb with a wild heart. These are all various abilities or characteristics of those whom I lost. And this list goes on, and is abundantly complex in its amazing array of the human condition.

By writing those characteristics into the people I create, I can keep my brothers and father alive. Perhaps indefinitely. In a sense, then, I can, indeed, bring them back. I can talk with them through dialog. Look at them again in the scenes I conceive. Play with them as I weave a plot around who they are and what they want. If I continue to add them to my stories, my hope is I won't miss them so much. And maybe it won't hurt as much when I have no one to lean on for brotherly or fatherly advice.

So the next time you read one of my best-selling, award-winning stories (I can dream, can't I?), your favorite characters may just share some qualities of some of my family. I hope you like them. They were special guys. Damn, I miss them.