Writing About The Tough Stuff

Saturday April 23, 2016

So - we finally got around to solving some technical problems with the blog and we're operational again. There was no real hurry to fix it - school and work are pretty nuts right now, and it feels like a struggle to even make time for writing, let alone blog writing.

It's been a rough few weeks around here for my community. Two days ago the body of a colleague was found after their disappearance a week ago. Suicide apparently. That's a week after a paramedic in the next county over died of a gunshot wound on a routine call - one that I've run before and will certainly run again in my career. And a few weeks before all of that a high school teacher of mine passed away very unexpectedly at the age of 56.

These deaths are on top of the normal goings on in my world, much more mundane things. My girlfriend moved in two weeks ago and both of our worlds have been thrown into the normal upheaval and disturbance that would normally accompany that activity. I've also been involved at work with a group that is trying to expand the role of paramedics in end of life and palliative care by partnering with local hospice services - a topic that is personal and important to me. Those talks have been emotional and somewhat challenging just by the nature of the topic.

It's been a long time since I've had difficulty coping with these issues, and I'm not having difficulty now at all. I talk about it with people I trust, I write, I exercise, I eat well, I cry. But the writing part remains a bit problematic for me. I have tried writing many times about the more serious aspects of my job and life - essays about one horror or another that someone else has endured and that I have witnessed. Trouble is, these ramblings end up sounding melodramatic or overdone - complaining versus artful. My writing ends up sounding so serious that I read back and find a grotesque caricature of my job or experiences. Head to Facebook and find a paramedic group, and that kind writing is common. Medics who try to sound smart and serious about topics that actually fall well within the realm of absurdism. How can I relate these experiences to an audience that is so far removed from them in a way that doesn't end up sounding patronizing or goofy?

The short answer is: I don't know.

The longer answer is that this is a weakness in my craft - one that bothers me and I want to fix. It's important that I fix it, I think, because what good is my writing if I can't convey the most serious parts of myself to others in a way that at once satisfies my desire to create and to inform in a truthful way. After 11 years of doing what I do, I want to write like William Manchester or George Orwell - not like Salinger's Caulfield. Not like a child.

Something to work towards. In the meantime, I'll settle for the closest I've come - a slam poem I wrote when I had a concussion last year.

Ripped from sleep and my bed at an entirely unacceptable hour. Don't get dressed, just pull on boots. Rush out to the bay and pull on my pants there. Maybe a coat too, but only if I have to. Rain batters the metal roof giving everything a false sense of severity. We buy into it though. Rain pelts the shell around us as we tear off. Every neighborhood looks the same when you look back and not forward. Every street may as well be the next when you roar by strapped into 50,000 lbs of steel and aluminum. Sleep leaves the eyes and is replaced by a scream in our blood - manifested by a klaxon not needed when no one else is up to drive the roads. The raging Q is for us though. The rain makes our world smaller but brighter. Alternating images flash both at once, a world painted in white broken glass, and electrocuted in scarlet. Our job is simple, to sanitize and protect. No one need know what it is to die until their own time. No one need see unsightly things. That is what the cynic in me says. The idealist says I bring comfort - but I left the idealist back in bed where it is dark and warm and dry. Cold and wet means tonight the cynic will win.