Writing From The Heart
By Cindy Reitzi,
Madison substitute teacher
November 1999
Earlier this year, my grandmother died. While she lay dying, my sister
became pregnant after many difficulties. We currently await this longed-for
child whose birth is linked with the memory of grandma’s death. From
the ashes, came a gift, it seemed.
At the time, I was trying to make peace with this paradox of birth and
death. Writing grandma’s eulogy with my siblings and sharing it at
her funeral helped me do that. I needed to remember her as the woman she
was: a loving grandmother, a strong farmer, a speaker of six languages,
not the woman she was in death: mute, with no last words to tell. I wanted
others to remember, too.
Writing that provokes deep emotion is not ‘safe,’ distant writing:
it is all too real. Writing that burns to be read shakes us out of complacency.
It often deals with life’s extremes, the human themes that force
us to rethink our place in the world: death and the threat of death. Our
status changes: when our parents die, we no longer have a living relationship
as ‘daughter’ or ‘son.’ We grieve and then must redefine
ourselves. Just as, conversely, new parents are redefined as ‘mother’
and ‘father’ by the birth of their first child.
Writing that has connective power in the world steps out of the narrow
confines of the classroom and onto ‘real world’ pavement. We
don’t always expect our students to brush with these life extremes.
They are ‘too young’ to think about death. Yet they are some
of the most powerful themes that young writers share with teachers or
peers.
• • •
A Hmong student poignantly described fleeing from his homeland in Southeast
Asia. Although he was very young, he remembered someone carried him across
the Mekong River at night, while bullets flew at them. He and his rescuer
survived, but he witnessed three family members shot to death.
Years later, he wrote this story for his teacher in the United States.
Twelve years later, when his teacher recalls his powerful narrative, it
still makes him cry.
• • •
I thought Clare (not her real name) was an ‘average’ writer
in my English class until she wrote about her best friend and read it
to the class. Her best friend, Heather, was being tested for cervical
cancer one day. Clare got paged to come to the main office for a phone
call. She wrote about walking down to the school office to get the call
from Heather, telling her whether she had cancer or not. Clare described
‘the longest walk’ of her life down a short corridor between
her classroom and the main office, and all the numbness she felt and the
very personal thoughts she had on the way.
Her classmates were stunned and sympathetic.
“Wow! That’s so real. I’d feel the same way if I thought
my friend had cancer.”
“You got guts for reading that to the class. You really put yourself
out there.”
“I’m so glad she didn’t have cancer.”
• • •
Some images provoke strong emotions, years after you first imagined them.
One of my students described an image of her grandmother, now dead. When
she was a child, she was short enough to stand next to the refrigerator
while her grandmother opened the freezer door above her head. Now that
she’s tall enough to open the door herself, her grandmother is gone.
I read this piece aloud to her class. The power of this simple, beautiful
image knocked the wind out of me and my eyes filled with tears. I paused
to collect myself and finished reading. The usual classroom rustling froze
and the room became reverently silent.
For some people, religion helps them make sense of death, illness, and
loss; for others, writing does. Some write to say thank you and good-bye
to loved ones; others write to pay tribute. Still others write to bear
witness to tragedy and injustice. Whatever our reasons, words that can
heal or bring others together in common purpose or feeling should not
be left in privately written seclusion.
In death, my grandmother taught me one last lesson: to appreciate and
share what’s meaningful in everyday life. It’s a lesson I pass
on to students every chance I get.
Writing, I tell them, is not a thing apart from our lives, but is a part
of how we live and die and interpret our lives.
Posted November 3, 1999