E.L. Shen is the author of the middle grade novel The Comeback and the YA novel The Queens of New York, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year. In her essay for PW, Shen reflects on the experience of losing her father as a teenager and the catharsis of writing about grief in her forthcoming book for middle graders.
I was 15 when my dad passed away, and immediately, I wanted to write about him. I wanted to commit to memory everything about him. The way he’d be half-asleep watching a Yankees game and then intuitively wake up and cheer whenever they scored. His off-key baritone in church and his nonstop jokes during choir rehearsal. His eclectic collection of music and shows from Martina McBride and Star Trek to the Carpenters and Room 222. I worried that if I didn’t write about him while the memories were still fresh, they’d soon fade, until my father was a mirage of a person rather than someone I had looked up to and adored for 15 years.
But writing about him proved harder than I thought. Creative writing had always been an emotional outlet for me, but with my dad, the blank page felt imposing and impossible. In 2013, the summer before my senior year of high school , I attended a young writers conference in Gambier, Ohio. Surrounded by acres of tall corn and cocooned by the thick summer humidity (and the ghost of alumnus John Green’s college years), I sat at a rickety wooden desk and tried once again to write about my dad. My classmates were all scribbling away. I went to the bathroom and stared at the sink until someone came in to see if I was all right.
Later, my creative writing professor would tell me, “Sentimentality is standing too close to your subject. Maintain some distance.” Maybe that was the problem: I couldn’t write about my dad because how could I encompass the singularity that was my father without distilling him down to a cartoon version of himself? How could I express grief without losing myself in it?
And I was getting older. In addition to worrying that I’d forget my dad as the years passed, I grew concerned that maybe he wouldn’t like who I was becoming. I now had different political opinions than he did. I didn’t end up going to the college he wanted me to attend. I made my own choices, and I wondered if they would have disappointed him.
So instead of writing about him, I went to lots (and lots!) of grief counseling and therapy. I grappled with the knowledge that no one could ever answer my questions about my dad. I worked on accepting that I would never know if he was proud of all my decisions, and that I wouldn’t be able to discern the ultimate “truth” about who my father was. I could only express my truth—my perception of my father and my grief. This was my way of holding his memory close while moving forward.
Last fall, I finally found a way to put pen to paper and let the ink flow. I wrote about a 13-year-old girl named Freya June Sun who believes in the Chinese superstitions her father has spoonfed to her since birth. When he passes away, she becomes obsessed with them, convinced her father is sending her messages beyond the grave. While my dad and Freya’s dad are not the same person, it was cathartic to talk about the burden of expectations from a dead parent, the fear of moving on, the way grief impacts an entire family, and the love and support that can come from the most unexpected sources. For Freya, that’s a surprising new hobby and an annoying classmate who’s actually cuter than she thought.
My novel, Maybe It’s a Sign, is the story I wanted my younger self to read and take comfort in. And I hope it’s a beacon of hope for children and adults who have lost loved ones and are trying to make sense of their own strange, new worlds. Talking about and understanding grief can be so difficult, especially when you’re young and feel like you’re the only person in the world who has experienced such immense loss. If one child finds that this story can act as a second home, a place where their complicated emotions are validated, I’ll feel like I accomplished my goal.
As for me, it turns out I didn’t have to worry that I’d forget my dad; I remember so much about him, and now have imbued his essence and his love for me into my novel. Some memories and some people last forever.
Maybe It’s a Sign by E.L. Shen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17.99 Jan. 23 ISBN 978-0-374-39077-8
