199: The Passing of Sorrow

Allison Langer  0:03  
I'm Andrea askowitz, I'm Allison Langer, and this is writing class radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories. Together, we produce this podcast, which is equal parts heart and art. By heart we mean the truth in a story, and by art we mean the craft of writing no matter what's going on in our lives, writing class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our shield. Oh, okay, there's no place in the world like writing class, and we want to bring you

Andrea Askowitz  0:32  
in today on our show, we bring you a story by Dana Shavin. In this episode, you're going to hear such beautiful writing. You'll learn again, what is the difference between a situation and a story. And also, I just want to say that you'll hear a very, very, very excellent first line, great grounding back with Dana's story. After the break, we're back. I'm Andrea askowitz, and this is writing class radio. Up next is Dana Shavin reading her story, the passing of sorrow.

Dana Shavin  1:09  
A year ago, I hit a man with my car. It was early in the morning, still dark at my two house, cul de sac, deep in the woods. I was backing down my steep driveway, watching my side view mirror. As long as I stayed about a foot from the edge, I'd avoid our mailbox and the pond of mud in front of it. On impact, I thought I'd hit one of the many tree branches that often fell and rolled into our road. I pulled forward and my car lurched, nearly, jerking the steering wheel out of my hands. What the hell I thought getting out to look it took a minute to make sense of what I saw, a rumpled trench coat, the color of fog. Then I heard moaning, and I realized with unfolding horror that it was my elderly neighbor, Stan. I screamed until my husband heard me and came running. Miraculously, Stan was able to get up. With our help, I pulled out my cell phone to call an ambulance, but he said he would not go to the hospital. His wife, Rosalynn, was at home. She had a brain tumor, was bedridden and rarely conscious. Should Stan be admitted to the hospital? Rosalyn would have to go under respite care, where he said she would not eat and would die. We drove Stan the half mile back to his house, and sat with him for nearly an hour as the shock of the accident began to wear off, a sizzling pain in his left leg set in, he reluctantly agreed to go for X rays, which revealed a crushed muscle in his thigh and was admitted for treatment. Roslyn went into respite care, stopped eating and died six days later. In the aftermath of the accident, a haze settled around me. I could still see the hard outlines of my life. I took care of my dogs, I went to the store, I cooked and wrote and slept. But where there had been color and clarity, gratitude and gladness tinged with small, tiny worries, there was now just the blurry smear of life inching forward, accident to stand. I called it this place where I no longer woke without the dull tug of guilt, no longer went about my days as if they were a given, no longer backed down my driveway without the sharp prick of apprehension. Was there something there I could not see? When I was in my 20s, I hit a deer. I often saw a deer along the rural two lane road between my house and the highway, but by the time I saw this one, it was too late to stop. She leapt in front of me, and I smashed into her the sickening blow of impact, followed by the clanging of bones and axles tangling and snapping. I slammed all my brakes and looked in the rear view mirror, just as my truck spit out her broken body, it bounced limbs akimbo into the middle of the road then came to rest in a heap. A man who had seen the accident from his den window sauntered out with a crowbar and pulled my fender off my tire, as if this was something he did daily, and frankly, it was getting old, a woman driving by pulled over and after examining the deer, asked if I planned to take it home and eat it. No, I said, and she popped her trunk and wrestled the mangled animal into it. Over the years, these people would be given their rightful cameos in my recounting of the quote, unquote, sad deer incident. But after I hit Stan, the deer and her quirky side show slid into my brain's archive of regrettable events, an unfortunate butchery that turned out to be just a gateway, a run up to the real calamity my house. And I visited Stan every day in the hospital. Over the many hours at his bedside, we learned a lot about him. He like me, was Jewish, and he like me, had worked in community mental health. He and Rosalynn had been married 40 years, had three children, and had never slept apart. He promised her, when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that he would never put her in a nursing home, even if she became incapacitated over several of our visits, lying in the hush chill of his hospital room, Stan brought up the question of a grand plan. I keep thinking, God, put me in the path of your car to teach me something he would say. And so we brought him books we thought might have some answers the monk and the philosopher, a father and son discussed the meaning of life, by Jean Francois, Rubel and Matthieu Ricard, when bad things happen to good people, by Rabbi Harold Kushner. One afternoon, I brought in Chinese food from his favorite restaurant, and when he opened his fortune cookie, there were two fortunes, one for each of us, he suggested, both of which said the same thing, if you wait until you are ready, opportunity will pass you by. I wonder what that means for me. Stan said, separated from Roslyn, unable to deliver on his promise to her, he wanted his accident to count for something. One night when I was unable to sleep, I Googled when you injure someone accidentally, and learned that approximately 30,000 people accidentally kill other people every year, just in the US. And although it's impossible to know how many people accidentally injure other people. It's likely much higher than that. There's even an organization devoted to supporting and helping people through the trauma of harming others. It's called the hyacinth fellowship, and it was started in 2013 by a man named Chris yaw who accidentally killed his gardener. It turns out it's an astonishingly simple thing to almost kill a man. One minute you're just going about your business, and the next minute there lies in your rear view mirror the mangled body of your blameless life when all you'd done up until that point was hit a fickle, injudicious deer. But that was before opportunity that supposed guarantor of good fate put a man dressed in fog beneath the horizon of your vision, and you in your blindness rush to meet him. In his book when bad things happen to good people, Rabbi Kushner writes that pain and suffering are an inevitable fact of every life. Our task is not to attempt to imbue meaning to the randomness, but to go forward in a meaningful way. It's what I believe also. But if I did think, as Stan said many times, that there was a lesson to be learned, it would be this. There are times when pain is visited upon us. There are times when we visit pain upon others, and there are times we trade pain back and forth like a stone that is too heavy, too unwieldy to carry alone for long on that cool November morning that Stan took a right out of his driveway and made his way to the bottom of mine. I happened to be backing out. He thought I could see him. He thought he could get across in time. Instead, in the clash of car and body, we fashioned from our shared sorrow the stone we would pass back and forth for how long I can't yet know. A year has passed, and Stan walks the neighborhood almost every day. Sometimes he takes a left out of his driveway and heads up the steep, freshly paved hill to the Overlook where the river cuts a path through the canyon. Other days, like today, he takes a right and walks to the end of my cul de sac, maneuvering carefully across the persistently broken asphalt and skittering gravel and acorns. His steps are slow and plodding, just as they were before the accident. I stop and roll down my window. His face brightens, looking good. I say. He laughs self consciously, I'm doing pretty well. He says, All things considered, he looks at me with impossible tenderness, are you okay? I'm okay, I say, a heaviness passes between us. Stand, nods and pouts my arm. I lay my hand on his then I roll up my window and in my rear view mirror, watch as he resumes his walks.

Allison Langer  9:48  
I love this story so much, and I think it's because the structure is just very clean. But also, here's a narrator. She's trying to figure out why do bad things. Happen, and she comes to something that really helps us. Well, me make sense of these bad things that have happened to me. You know what I mean? And I, and I wonder if that's how other people are seeing it. It does

Andrea Askowitz  10:11  
help you make sense of bad things that have happened to you. Yeah. But

Allison Langer  10:15  
I, I've always believed that we pass these Well, it's taken me a while to figure this out, but that you can't escape bad things, and that we it's just sometimes not your turn, but that we do pass these things, basically the sorrow, the sadness, from one person to another. Sometimes it's just somebody else's turn, and you're there for them, but it's not your turn, so you've passed the stone. Is that what that means? That's what I see it. Because

Andrea Askowitz  10:43  
I understood the passing of this stone as it her way of connecting to Stan. They're passing a stone to each other. That's the way I understood it.

Allison Langer  10:54  
I find that the micro, yeah, the micro way. So if I if something between us happens like, you know, we're involved in some sadness. Then some days I'm better than you, a better off, like, in a better way. And I pass you, pass the stone to me, and then I pass it back, like we pass the sorrow. One day I'm better, one day you're better. But I think in the macro sense of it is sometimes we're going through something, and sometimes we're not, and then that stone is passed to somebody else. So it's passed around to whoever's dealing with the pain at that moment. That's how I saw it. That's That's cool, but that's the beauty of story. I think everybody hears it differently and sees it differently and takes it in differently.

Andrea Askowitz  11:39  
We fashion from our shared sorrow, the stone we would pass back and forth for how long I can't yet know. I mean, I love how I understood it, too. The way I understood it was like they were just the stone was too heavy to carry alone, so they carry it together. I like that. That's what I understood. There are a million things about this story that I think are amazing. What about this first line? A year ago, I hit a man with my car. God damn, that's a really good first line

Allison Langer  12:13  
I do well, Doesn't it remind you of half a life? Darren Strauss, true, yes, yes. His his book starts with, hold on, I'm going to tell you right now.

Andrea Askowitz  12:24  
Oh, really, the whole thing reminded me of half a life by Darren Strauss.

Allison Langer  12:27  
I mean literally, it starts half a life ago. I killed a girl. Oh, very first line of his book.

Andrea Askowitz  12:34  
Okay, so I didn't, I didn't think directly right away, of half a life by Darren Strauss, which is a memoir, and it's really, really interesting, but yeah, but I love this first line. I thought it was so good. God, she did a very good job with callbacks, very subtle callbacks, but one of them was we knew that he couldn't go to the hospital because Rosalynn would go to respite care, she wouldn't eat, and she would die, and then he goes and he gets treated, and she goes to respite care, stopped eating and died six days later, on its own. It's a It's so emotional, but because it was set up so that me, the reader, I would know what happened and that it happened. It was like, I don't know it somehow it was doubly effective in moving me and making me feel sad. Did that happen to you? Yeah,

Allison Langer  13:35  
you're expecting it, and then it happens. So, yeah, I don't know why it's worse, but it is because you're hopeful it's not going to happen, but then it does, yeah,

Andrea Askowitz  13:45  
like, don't let that bad thing happen, and then that bad thing exactly that bad thing happens, I guess. But that's setting up the reader with an expectation and then having the reader experience that expectation. Worked really well as storytelling goes. The use of accidental Stan. I really thought it was interesting, because it showed me that she was in a new place. So I thought that that it worked when she hit the deer. Amazing how she just stops the action. In my 20s, I hit a deer and, oh my god. Like that whole scene, like when the woman comes and, like, another one, just like, are you gonna eat that deer? And, like, pops it into her trunk, like I saw, like all the characters, and then that's how she started to think about it herself. Like there was the deer incident with the the characters, but it was just a run up to the real calamity.

Allison Langer  14:41  
This narrator has, like a real gift of finding like these words and statements like limbs akimbo, and frankly, it was getting old rightful cameos, the gateway a run up to real calamity and the great. Grand plan, like, I'm sure, I don't know, maybe they came to her just like, off the top of her head, and she's, like, just a genius. But like most people, it's curated, and you think about it, and you keep writing. So maybe it was that too, I'm not sure, but her writing is the just her words are so good,

Andrea Askowitz  15:17  
yeah, right, because it conjures up this whole feeling for us about all the characters? Yeah, really good. So

Allison Langer  15:25  
you mentioned callback, and maybe there's a better description that you can also explain, like what exactly a callback is. I

Andrea Askowitz  15:34  
have one more that I noticed when they got two fortunes in one cookie and one was for her and one was for him. And then she read it, the fortune was, until you're ready, opportunity will pass you by. And I was like, how does that have anything to do with this situation? But she used the word opportunity later, and I want to find it. Because I was like, wow. So she made meaning of the opportunity in a different way, and it was but that was before opportunity put a man's rest in fog beneath the horizon of your vision, and you and your blindness rushed to meet him. Dang. So what it very cool way of like using that word opportunity from the fortune cookie, and like making meaning out of it for what the hell is happening for her, it's a search for, why do bad things happen? And

Allison Langer  16:28  
it's all contained, like in the frame of a walk. This guy walks, gets hit the whole life. She tells us this whole big story, and then he resumes. The last line is, then I roll up my window into my rear view mirror, watch as he resumes his walk, and obviously rear view mirror is also, you know, how it all started. She sees the rear view mirror with the fog on the ground. Color of fog, very cool. I wanted to ask you, because we in our writing classes have been really struggling with situation and story, and I feel like this might be a great example of the difference between situation and story. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah,

Andrea Askowitz  17:06  
this is a great example of situation and story. So the situation is woman hits a man. That's such a clear situation. Bad thing happened. There are steaks. This is a this is a bad banana peel slippage. And then the story is, why do bad things happen? And my takeaway is that it brings people together to share in shared sorrow yours. But that's what this is about. But what is yours again,

Allison Langer  17:39  
mine is that we pass sorrow from person to person, that sometimes it's our turn and sometimes it's not our turn. So

Andrea Askowitz  17:48  
that's what the story is about, passing sorrow or sharing star sorrow. Yeah, really good, very good situation and story example.

Allison Langer  17:57  
Thank you so much, Dana, for sharing your story. So good. Dana is an award winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga times free press, and the author of the memoir The body tourist and the collection of essays finding the world thoughts on life, love, home and dogs. Dana's essays and articles have appeared in the sun Oxford, American garden and gun, travel and leisure. Alaska, quarterly review, fourth genre today.com, Appalachian review, Psychology Today. Bark the writer, Jesus, honestly, no doubt. Well, I'm not surprised. No wonder we thought it was amazing. She's hardcore. You can find more at Dana Shavin dot comm and follow her on Facebook at Dana shavin writes.

Andrea Askowitz  18:48  
Writing class radio is hosted by me Andrea askowitz and me Allison Langer. Audio production is by Matt Condal, Evan serminsky and Aiden glassy at the sound off media company. Theme music is by Justina Shandler. There's more writing class on our website, including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats and live online classes. If you want to write with us every week, or if you're a business owner, community activist group that needs healing, entrepreneur and you want to help your team write better. Check out all the classes we offer on our website, writing class radio.com, join the community that comes together for instruction and an excuse to write and the support from other writers to learn more. Go to our website or patreon.com/writing class radio, starting in 2025 a new episode will drop the first Wednesday of the month.

Allison Langer  19:45  
There's no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What's yours?

Unknown Speaker  19:58  
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