No One Deserves to Die Twice
Sharing a small piece of fiction
The fiction project I’ve made the most progress on so far is a piece of epistolary fiction. It’s a young-adult, romance-adjacent novel told from the perspective of one boy, Leland (Lee) Jacobs, who is keeping a journal during his senior year of high school (2008-2009). Lee, typically “lame” and “boring,” is determined to “live it up” his senior year, and he plans to document it all. The book is the collection of his journal entries through what proves to be quite an eventful year—even more eventful than he planned.
I’m really excited about the overall trajectory of the book, but I’m still wrestling with a lot of details—like if it’s going to be a bit raw/vulgar or more “Christian” in nature. It’s important to me that the book feel realistic—like something a temperamental 18-year-old would write—and not white-washed with cheesy Christian themes. But at the same time I don’t want it to be offensive, either. My hope is to strike some sort of compromise between realistically crass and inoffensively clean, but it may be tough to do that.
Anyway, I thought I’d share a first draft of a journal entry with you. It’s from quite early in the book—September 23, 2008—and there isn’t really much you need to know other than that.
So, here it is. Again, this a first draft, so your grace is appreciated. Feeling a bit vulnerable with this one given that it’s the first fiction sample I’ve shared here.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Three years ago at this moment I killed my dad in a car wreck on I-65 in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky. Everyone tells me it wasn’t my fault, but I don’t believe them.
I called him because I just had to tell him that for my birthday a friend bought me the new Burnout game for the Playstation 2 and that I couldn’t wait to play with him when he got home from his work trip.
But I never got to tell him because he ran his car off the road and into a tree trying to get his ringing cell phone off of the floor of the passenger side of his car.
At least that’s what I imagine happened, even though everyone says that no one can know what actually happened.
I’ve mostly forgiven myself and don’t actually blame myself for my dad’s death all the time, but sometimes I do.
And sometimes is enough to be too much.
Of course it’s hard that my dad is dead and I don’t have a father figure to help me with my chemistry homework or teach me how to change the oil in my car. But as much as those practical, negative side effects of losing my dad suck, nothing sucks as much as the emptiness I feel.
When you lose someone you love, it makes life easier if you forget them. But if you truly loved them, you don’t want to forget them. This is what makes loss so difficult, I think.
That’s the hardest part about my dad being gone: I never want to think about him or forget him.
I realize as I write this that what I’m feeling isn’t really unique to the death of a loved one.
Whether it’s a friend who moves to the other side of the world, a rough break-up, or your dad dying when you turn 15-years-old, it isn’t easy to forget the people we wanted to share the rest of our lives with.
It is torture to remember the loved ones who leave—however they do it—but forgetting them is worse.
It’s better to pretend the people we love are still around than to erase them from our lives. We can’t forget the people we love because we love them whether they’re in our lives or not, whether they’re enjoying the warmth of another’s arms or lying cold beneath six feet of dirt.
And maybe, if we imagine and we pretend just hard enough, we can fool ourselves into thinking we never lost them at all.
Because no matter how much it hurts, I would rather pretend my dad is still on a work trip than remember he’s in the ground.
It is easier to forget lost loved ones, but it is not better than remembering them.
So however difficult it may be, we remember.
We imagine.
And we smile, wondering what life would be like if they were still around.
I don’t believe in multiple universes or reincarnation or anything like that.
I don’t have any hope that one day I’ll get to re-live a version of my life in which my dad doesn’t die four days after I turn 15.
So I do the best I can: I pretend he’s still around.
When I lie in bed at night, I talk to him like he’s still sitting on the end of my bed like he used to.
When I’m in the car driving to school, I tell him what I’m nervous about.
I don’t want to forget, but it hurts so much to remember.
The relationship between a boy and his father survives even when one of them doesn’t, I think.
It is torture to love someone you will never see again, but it is better than stopping loving them.
My dad was not perfect. But he was mine.
Remembering him does not get any less painful, even as the years go by, but to forget him would be to kill him again.
And no one deserves to die twice.
Sad,
Lee