I attended a church sermon recently where the pastor reminded us that "nothing puts life into focus like death."  Adults are expected to know how to deal with death and its twin siblings "mourning" and "grief."  But unless you've experienced the loss of a loved one, you don't know how to handle it when it happens to you.  There's no script.  Especially if you experience death as a teenager.

A few years ago, I attended a funeral where a teenage girl (who happened to be an only child) had lost her mother just one week shy of her high school graduation.  At her mother's funeral, when she approached the podium to make remarks, we all expected the eighteen year old to be tearful and weeping, but instead she giggled her way through a poem that she'd written and ended her comments with this remark, "And Momma, Joey told me to tell you that you still owe him forty dollars!"  she laughed before walking back to her seat.  I was stunned by her behavior, as were most of the other guests at the funeral.  The daughter and mother were extremely close so most of us expected a coffin gripping spectacle where the girl tried to climb into the casket and revive her lifeless mother.  Her behavior was anything but, so naturally we concluded that she must have been in shock.   Maybe she was in shock.  Maybe she broke down later.  Or maybe not.  Maybe that was her way of dealing with her loss.  

In the third book in my series, Chemistry, Chaos & God's Grace, the girls have to deal with the death of a friend.  It was a difficult chapter to pen because when I wrote it, I hadn't yet experienced the loss of a friend.  As I stared at my computer trying to breathe exciting twists and turns into each character's journey, I decided that death is a fact of life that even teenagers must sometimes face.  Yet there's no script.  There's no guidebook to help you navigate the loss or rule book that explains how you should behave.  It was a very emotional chapter for me to write.  A few of my test readers were not pleased that I'd "killed off" one of the characters, but in fiction and in real life, sometimes friendships die.  And once they've died, what happens next?  What happens to the people that have survived the loss?  I think the "what happens next" portion makes for very interesting fiction that threads its way into the other characters' lives in a meaningful and realistic way.   Sadly, shortly after writing that chapter I experienced the sudden loss of a dear friend and a close relative within eight months of each other.  Blammo!  My life was placed into focus by death. 

 

My dad died in 2003, just six week after my youngest child was born.  "Keep living.  You never know what you'll do," was one of my dad's favorite sayings.  I noticed that he would say this whenever I expressed an opinion that was a tad judgmental.  "I can't believe she would giggle and laugh at her mother's funeral!"  "Keep living.  You never know what you'll do in a situation," my dad would have said.  He's right.  There's no script.  Life comes at us with surprising twists and turns.  And sometimes we get thrown a curve ball that we can't catch so the best we can do is giggle our way through it when everyone else around us expects a waterfall of tears.  

 

The characters in the Black Diamond Series are like girls in real life, they sometimes zig when folks think they should zag.  Nothing puts life into focus like death.  And no one can tell you how to behave when you've experienced a loss.  The loss could be a pet, a friend, a parent, grandparent or other close relative.  Loved ones can support you on your healing walk, and they can coach you on how you "should" behave like what's appropriate to wear at a funeral for instance, but they can't walk it for you no matter how much they'd like to.  No one can tell you how to feel, and grief is a feeling.  So if you find yourself giggling or making jokes at a funeral to eulogize a loved one, you just do you.  It's your walk.