Plans Gone Awry and Beginnings

Did you ever have one  of those weeks where nothing went as planned? Yeah, one of those. My week has been busy but I haven't really completed one project. I did very little writing and none on the things I planned to write on. In fact, I started a "new" project.

Actually, an old project that I attempted a couple of times. I've had several people suggest I write a book about  grief. The suggestions started coming about two years after my husband died from people who were reading my blog posts. In December 2010, twenty-three months after his death, I made an attempt to pull those post down and sort them out but it was too close. I simply couldn't deal with it. Re-reading my own nightmare was beyond my abilities. I tried again probably another two years later and actually made a start but once again, I could not cope with the issue. 

I've left it alone for the most part, the flitting through my mind like dark winged birds that made me shy away. My opinion was that it would never happen. I'd never be able to revisit those days with any clarity or control. 

This week an urge stronger than I could resist made me think I might be better able now to handle the material. So, I sat down and began to write what I "heard". Fifteen hundred words later, I realized it was still going to be hard, but now I really wanted to write it. 

Here is the opening paragraph to Journey through a Dark Valley

My husband died. Suddenly, on a cold, dark night wrapped in ice, on a dead-end road, in our bed. I thought, before that night, that my life was planned and despite the bumps in the road, the detours, and derailments, it was going according to plan. But you can’t plan for life. There is no road map, no compass, no GPS. You just start walking, telling yourself that where you’re going is just up ahead and all you have to do is keep moving and you’ll get there. It isn’t true.