How does one write a story that doesn’t end well? People don’t want the ending that’s real…the truth. People want the happy ending where everyone lives happily ever after…the lie. They want the lie even if they know it’s a lie. The reader is the customer. The writer is supposed to give the customer what he wants because he has paid real money for what he wants…and reality is not it. Reality is painful. My opinion is that people don’t want what they already have in abundance…pain…disappointment. I for one don’t want my entertainment to be real. I want the blissful naïveté of make believe where all ends well. I’m not particularly interested or concerned about the trials and difficulties of others. I have those things too. Why would I concern myself with the problems of others? I can’t fix or manage my own. I don’t care about the difficulties of others and they don’t care about mine. I’m satisfied with that arrangement. Everyone minds their business and everyone carries their own weight. I’m sure a wiser person will see the obvious flaws in my reasoning…attitude…my world view. I am not advocating that anyone bury their heads in the sand of their own difficulties. But sometimes it seems…it feels like difficulty is all there is.

I wish there were a way to spin the reality into something that looks like success and still be true and right. I can lie..I can pretend…but I won’t. My wife says our story is worth telling. I’ll have to ask her later what makes it worth telling. I have a story where justice has not prevailed…conflict is not resolved…relationships are not reconciled…and people are lost…end of story. If I were to read or watch such a story, my imagination would dictate the grandest of outcomes of all those circumstances. The author’s dilemma…or filmmaker’s problem…is to out imagine their audience. How can the writer achieve an ending that resolves all conflict…restores all relationships…and finds the lost in a manner that is beyond what the audience thought or imagined? Leave the audience with the injustice…fractured relationships…the missing…what happens? How would such a work be reviewed? What happens when the author brings the reader to the lowest depth of emotion on the last page of the book? What if the hero fails to rescue or save the captive as the credits begin to roll? I suppose that if I’m the reader or movie goer I would feel cheated…disappointed…angry perhaps. I’m upset that I spent time and resources on something that I experience most days for absolutely no charge…dissatisfaction…failure…disappointment.

My personal brand of reality involves making choices regarding how I view my circumstances. To be clear, I don’t try by some sort of mental gymnastics to make something that’s bad good. If it’s bad…it’s bad. I can’t and wouldn’t attempt to convince my wife that the recent passing of her mom was somehow…a good thing. It wasn’t. The thing I miss the most about her was the same thing that annoyed me the most when she was here…her presence. I miss her. I have a daughter…lost to me…in the wind…mentally ill…one of my heart’s great loves. It’s a bad situation. I refuse to say it’s somehow good…or for the best…or something good will come from it. My wife and I had to adopt my daughter’s child. It was the only lasting way we could adequately protect our granddaughter. People have from the depths of their profound ignorance congratulated me and my wife for what we did for our granddaughter and not a word about the loss that made our actions necessary. It’s like being lauded for being a decent human being…as though there was another choice. My grandson passed away the day after he was born. From my limited perspective there is nothing good about that…nothing that can be salvaged or wisdom to be attained that holds any value compared to who was lost. It’s bad…was bad…continues to be bad. Trying to find something good in any of these scenarios only cheapens the loss. Speaking for myself and no one else…I won’t do it. I think there are people who are of the opinion that finding value in a total loss is part of the process of healing. In all likelihood those people haven’t lost…really lost…anything. If someone were to ask me what I have learned since my daughter left and didn’t come back or from the loss of my grandson, I could only say that I have developed the strength to coexist with the pain. I would give back the worthlessness of strength for my girl and one more day for my grandson.

That all being said, what choice or choices do I make as I understand…coexist…with things that any reasonable person would call bad. I choose to not lose hope. I keep looking for hope…reasons to be hopeful. It’s very difficult when people die because where is hope then? It seems to have died with them, right? I mean they’re not coming back. Just because I don’t see where the hope in what seems hopeless comes from doesn’t mean, at least to me, that it doesn’t exist. Looking for something of value in circumstances surrounding death and loss to somehow compensate us for someone whose value could never be calculated is an obscenity. I will choose strength and choose hope. I have hope that the story isn’t really over and that what I am unable to imagine now will be real. I will honor the pain…and hope.