My first creative non-fiction piece was published online last year in the Centre for Stories ‘Journal’. I don’t usually write so directly about myself and my life experiences, preferring to universalise them, or at least, attempt to! However, 2020 was a difficult year for me personally. It began with the rapid decline of my mother’s health and her passing, the funeral and the house clearing, sibling tensions exacerbated by grief, and then the pandemic…
As with any death, a reckoning always follows; a processing of what life is now that this person is no longer there. I wrote my piece too soon to answer all the questions that are still sitting quietly at the back of my mind; too soon to answer the big questions that have challenged philosophers forever. I will most likely never really understand the question, let alone the answer. As I continue to try to process how life has changed for me, some insights will find their way into my other writing, the poems, prose and plays that I can’t help but keep creating.
This piece is a small glimpse into this time in my life. Please take from it what you will, but I hope you enjoy the read.
Vivienne Glance 