Our Amazing Creative Writing Session

Our third meeting of the writing group here on the Continuum Care Campus was amazing. We had five people show up and that included Chatty Cathy who claims she just took dictations from God to write the songs she did before she had a series of strokes. She actually wrote a poem on the spot about something in another woman’s essay and it blew my mind how fast Chatty Cathy came up with what she did. No wonder she thinks there’s something mystical about her writing process. If she keeps coming---she missed the second meeting---it’s going to be a lesson in patience and tolerance for the rest of us, though, because like a lot of stroke survivors with damage to the frontal lobe part of the brain she has no impulse control, talks non-stop---often about God---and usually not on topic.

When Ms Angel---who wrote about her husband’s suicide and the letter he left behind where he confessed to a secret life---read the last line of her essay there was silence for a moment from three of us who were awestruck before Chatty Cathy started in about something totally unrelated. The former librarian and high school teacher in our group grabbed Cathy’s hand, squeezed it hard which made her stop talking mid-sentence and then The Librarian gave some appropriate feedback and I swear there were tears threatening to roll down her cheeks.

Ms Angel is an accomplished writer, had a newspaper column about religion for over three decades and I used to read her during my searching for the meaning of life era. And I’ve said it before when I wrote about us meeting on a bus over the summer that we had an instant connection---I think in part because Ms Angel reminds me of my do-good cousin. They both work/ed for the church, both have the same voice quality and the same physical stature, eyes and hair coloring. Both would do anything for someone in need and they make the world a better place just by being themselves. I used to joke that I was glad I didn’t live next door to my cousin because she would have had me volunteering for all kinds of do-good projects and I wouldn't have the energy to keep up. 

I admire and like Ms Angel even though we are so different. I knew about her husband's suicide before she sat across the table in writing group and bared her soul about the worse day of her life. She found a way to end her essay in an upbeat way that shocked me and it shouldn’t have. It was a classic example of how a person’s religion gave her peace during a terrible time. When I was a mentor in the stroke community I saw lots of examples of angry people turning away from their God who, in their eyes, should have protected them from having the rug pulled out from under them, where Ms Angel saw her God as giving her the tools to get through her pain.

Mr. Graphic Artist was also in attendance and you may remember he hadn’t written anything since moving in and he had visualized spending his time here at the CCC writing full time which didn't happen. But since I started the group he's been working on poetry and this past month he was prolific. He brought a dozen short poems to read plus another from a book written by a pastor. He loaned the book to Ms Angel since it was poetry about near-death confessions and he thought she’d be able to relate to it having heard many of them in her work here with Hospice residents. The Librarian last time brought twenty pages of a book she was working on to read but this time she brought a one page poem that was pretty neat. It was a good thing, however, that she and Mr. Artist read their stuff before the powerful essay on the suicide was shared.

I read last and I brought two pieces but I only shared the essay about my childhood friend's dying recently that I posted here in my blog. I was glad I brought it because anything frivolous read after the suicide essay would have been bridge too far to go emotional for most of us or it would have fallen flat like the poem I didn't read about a sing-along birthday party here on campus. I also brought my copy of A Year of Writing Dangerously: 356 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement and quite by serendipity I had marked a page about baring one's soul. Reading it was the perfect way to end our meeting.

Since Chatty Cathy hadn't written anything new in a few years---except the poem written on the fly in group---we gave her an assignment. We suggested that she write about her stroke and how it changed her life. I’m trying really hard not to let my annoyance of this woman show. Others here on campus avoid sitting next to her at lectures, meals and parties but that isn't possible around a table of five. I know she can’t help her non-stop talking and I’m going to have to research ways to handle that kind of brain damage in stroke survivors. Grabbing her hand and squeezing it tight to make her stop talking won’t work for germaphobic me the way it did for The Librarian and it was exactly what was needed doing in that moment of time.  

All and all I was happy with our third group even if Chatty Cathy makes it feel like I'm walking in a mine field. How do we balance not hurting her feelings with the sense that she's wasting everyone's time if we don't interrupt her to give others their time for feedback? If we didn't cut her off she'd literally talk the whole session away. When my husband was in speech therapy after his stroke I learned techniques that helped with his non-verbal impulse control issues but as a family member, a caregiver or a speech pathologist you can redirect and say things you can't say or do in a group of random people gathered for whatever. 

That kind of research is what one side of me wants to do while the other side doesn't want to get back in the saddle---so to speak---where a stroke is taking me to a place I don't want to go again. Why do I have to have these selfish thoughts when faced with a dilemma like this when others like Ms Angel and my cousin seem to be able to let their compassion for others be their first and only responses? The best I can do is show compassion on the outside while having selfish thoughts on the inside and hoping that I'm a good enough actress to pull it off. ©