In Memoriam

Some breathtaking works of literature have been inspired by loss and grief -- Tennyson's In Memoriam, Grey's Elegy - and it can be a great way of turning feelings of  bereavement into something positive and creative - an exercise that blurs with the notion of writing as therapy.

If you want to write for comfort, because it is a way of conjuring up or even communing with the person you have lost, then do it straight away, while you are still raw and sore. What you produce will probably be messy and passionate, with an intensity you are unlikely to be able to reproduce again; the kind of writing that has urgency and immediacy but maybe lacks craft. If you want to write a rounder, fuller portrait of someone, or use them as the inspiration for a character in a piece of work, it might be best to wait a little bit until you are able to write more objectively.

Either way, it's an incredibly salving means of spending time with someone you have loved.  It's a way of paying tribute to them, of preserving their memory, of keeping yourself sane.  As Hilary Mantel said, "what's to be done with the lost, the dead, but write them into being?"

The door is closed, but not entirely...