The Story Behind the Story

 It's been a while since I had a story come out. I spent much of the past year working on a novel, and before that I spent a couple of years finishing my doctorate. There simply wasn't much time or mental energy to produce new words of short fiction. But I have a new story out in Issue 7 of DreamForge Magazine, which has produced some lovely work.

"The Limits of the Human Heart" is an ode to several matters close to my own heart. First, it's about running. I have been running for about seven years now, and I have countless 5Ks, 10Ks, and a couple of half marathons behind me. Running has helped my health, both physically and mentally. When I have a good run, it's just a good feeling. And even when I have a bad run, after it's over, I'm always glad to have done it. I've never run an ultramarathon, like my character, but I love that there are people out there pushing the limits of the human body. For a couple of great documentaries on running very long distances, try the one on the Barkley Marathon on Netflix, or Breaking2 on Disney Plus. The Barkley Marathon is just pure fun to learn about because the organizer is so quirky and brings his personality to it. Breaking2 is about the attempt to break the two hour barrier for running a marathon, and part of it was filmed right here in Beaverton, OR. You don't need to be a runner to appreciate either one.

The story is also about dying. I was there for both of my parents' deaths, and I have a lot of thoughts on death and dying, and how it's handled, how it's faced. There's really something to be said for preparing for death ahead of time. Make the decisions when you're healthy and able so that your loved ones don't have to make them for you. We can all choose a good death, and that starts with living a good life today, right now. This week I've come across a quote from Seneca several times, and since it's apt for this story, I'll share it. "Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."

My story might seem like a real downer, on the surface at least. But what it's really about is the ability to forge on in the face of death, which we all do every day. It's about making moments count. It's about finding joy and peace wherever it might be, even at the very end, and about how good it can feel to let it all go. I hope you enjoy it.

Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

The tile of this blog post is the tagline used for the final season of Six Feet Under. Fair warning, spoilers for the show are about to happen, so if you haven't seen it and you want to, stop reading.

My HS economics teacher suggested I be a mortician. Seriously.

I've said it before, the finale for this series was the best finale to any show I've ever seen. Nothing has come close to topping it, not even my beloved Breaking Bad, good as that finale was. I've been trying to figure out why that last episode did so much for me, and I think I finally figured it out.

The show was about death. It was about funeral homes and how the little businesses stacked up against the big, corporate ones. It was about family. But mostly, it was about death. Every episode opened with somebody dying. There were old people dying of, well, old age, people dying in accidents, kids dying, spouses dying, parents dying. It was right there, in your face.

At some point in the last century or so, it became rather taboo to talk about death. I've seen people avoid the topic, or refuse to attend funerals. They might do the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and saying, "Lalalalalala, can't hear you!" Not so long ago, people talked about death more openly. When somebody died, they were laid out in their home for the viewing. In Victorian times, people died young, and often. There was no avoiding the topic. But now we go to funeral homes to view the deceased. People live longer, and so they might put off thinking about the inevitable. It's a topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

Shows like Six Feet Under are bringing death to the forefront, though, and perhaps encouraging people to think a little more about their deaths. So what is it about that show's ending that made such an impression on me? Well, almost every other series finale ends with the main characters still going about their lives in some way. But in Six Feet Under, we get to see snippets of how the rest of their lives played out, and how they died. Every single character's death is shown, all while Sia's "Breathe Me" played in the background. Incidentally, if you haven't heard this song, it's great. But there was no question about what happened to any of the characters. We saw them all die. It was such an intimate moment, and moving, and terribly sad, and completely satisfying. Holy cow, I'm sort of tearing up writing this. Yes, the ending was that good.

I'm not saying that every show needs to do this. But for this series, it was perfect. Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ended.

Every Day Above Ground Is A Good One

Over the next week, I'll be getting ready to release the first book in an urban fantasy trilogy. The Graveyard Girl features a necromancer named Rose, and so I've been thinking about death a lot recently and searching for interesting death-related tidbits of information as well as pondering my own experiences with death.

My first semester in physical therapy school I took gross anatomy. I spent hours every week in a lab studying a dead body. It remains my favorite class ever, and I wish I could take a refresher course every ten years or so. Working on a human body is irreplaceable when it comes to learning how we're all put together. I'm amazed and awed that there are enough people in the world who donate their bodies to the purpose of educating those in the medical field.

As what happens so often when we're surrounded by death, we resort to humor to dispel the seriousness of the situation. When I went home for Thanksgiving break that semester, I endured many jokes about being the one to carve the turkey since I'd had so much recent experience with a scalpel. Normally my family is a sarcastic bunch, but I think, in this case, there was a little discomfort mixed in with the usual cynicism. After all, none of them (to the best of my knowledge) had ever cut open a dead human before. For a great article on what it's like to take gross anatomy, check out this article.

So for the rest of the next week or so, I'll be talking about death and all sorts of assorted facts, from shows like Six Feet Under to books made of human flesh (like the book of magic in The Graveyard Girl).