CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—CONCLUSIONS ARE HARD [T, 10-17-23]
One day in June, 8 years
ago, two of my closest long-time friends died on the same day. Bill and I were
clergy and couples friends for 55 years. Mike and I became friends when we were
ten years old. He died 68 years later.
Bill was in the hospital
for several days. His children and grandchildren came to see him, or if they
were too far distant, called him. He got to say goodbye to them and to friends
like us. I felt good about the conclusion of his story.
Mike took his
grandchildren to a movie and out for ice cream. Then he went home and sat in
his recliner to wait for supper. He dropped off to sleep and never woke up. I
felt good about the conclusion of his story.
Their conclusions were so
different.
This comes to mind because
I have had trouble with the conclusions of several CIW columns recently. Most
of them I have not posted. I did not feel good about their conclusions. Some I posted anyway. Then I felt even worse
about their conclusions.
Both as a reader and as a
writer, I’m aware that the conclusion of a story is usually the hardest part. I
can tell when an author just gave up because they couldn’t figure out how to
end the story. The worst one was an early novel by a now highly-respected
writer. I was really enjoying the book. It had so many irons in the fire. I was
looking forward with excitement to how he would bring them all together. But he
didn’t know how. He had gone down all these promising avenues and couldn’t find
where they went, or find his way back. So he had his protagonist sit on his
back porch at the end of the book and say, “Well, I guess I’ll never know who
Susie married and who killed Ralph and whether the twins got away and…” It was
the worst conclusion ever!
So, first, I apologize for
my own poor conclusions. Normally my thinking about a column starts with the
conclusion. But sometimes there is a story that I want to tell, and I get it
told, except for the conclusion, and…
But I knew how I wanted to
conclude this column when I started. It’s about concluding life, which is why I
started with the ways Bill and Mike concluded their lives. I like to start and
end in the same place, the way Garrison Keillor usually did with his Lake
Wobegon monologues.
How do you, how should
you, go about writing the conclusion of your own story?
Well, that’s as far as
I’ve gotten… Maybe you can finish it…
John Robert McFarland
I have lived in dozens of different town in my life. Some in the North and some in the South. Picking up roots and transplanting somewhere else...some chosen, some appointed...has a trademark of my existence. The conclusion of my life will be taken in the same way I lived it...What's next?
ReplyDeleteMe, too. I've always been eager to see what happens next.
ReplyDelete