Reflecting on the Grist… the inspiration and the process

One day I was driving down Kailua Road and saw an elderly man sitting in a chair, smiling.  The sun shone through the leaves of a sheltering tree, and I remember thinking, “He’s waiting for his daughter to pick him up.”  And the story unfolded from there.  His daughter picked him up on Sundays, but this Sunday she wasn’t coming; she was sick.  When she does visit him, it’s in his dreams as a memory, or in his waking life as a ghost.  

Although this is fiction, I drew from my sons’ Portuguese grandparents’ traditions of faithfully visiting family graves, although candy was gifted, not beer.  

During editing, I chose details that honored my sons’ grandmother by using her middle and maiden name for Mrs. Albert Souza and my grandparents by using their birthdates for the dates of her birth and death.

It’s told in third person.  The tense changes, first to represent a past routine, then to reflect the present, and lastly to portend a future event. 

I received feedback in Ian MacMillan’s ENG 313 course, workshopped it in my writing group with Tammy and Chris, mentored by Ian, and included it in my MA thesis collection, The Grace of Dark Times.