Not too many teenagers these days experience the death of a parent. Medical advances mean life expectancy is greater. Workplace safety rules mean fewer industrial accidents. There is war, and military deaths, but even these are fewer than during the Vietnam years.

So I wonder if much of a market exists for my two short stories. These tell the story, fictionalized, of my own experience with my mother’s death when I was 13. In “Mom’s Letter” I tell about the sharpest memory at all, when Dad told me while we were driving home from scout camp that Mom’s death was imminent. I had no idea. Just like in the short story, he asked me how I could possibly not have known, that it was obvious from looking at her and how much more difficult it was for her to move around. Somehow I had missed it.

The second short story, “Too Old To Play“, recounts the after the funeral gathering at our house. At the time it seemed inappropriate. All I wanted to do was grieve. Yet here were all these people: neighbors, cousins, neighbors of my grandparents, and who knows who, at our house, yucking it up. I didn’t understand the power of diversion to assist with the early part of grieving. So I fumed a bit, hid in my room as best I could, and weathered the storm.

My adult perspective is different, of course. I understand the grieving process much better. Death has come ever closer, and I now know the people who die around me. Years ago they were vaguely familiar names. Now they are friends and relatives. If I don’t understand grieving now, I’m in trouble.

Why did I write these two short stories? I suppose just to tell a story. But in my subconscious, maybe it was with the intent of helping some teenager somewhere through the grieving process, to help them see that someone else went through it at a vulnerable age, and “graduated” to adulthood without too much trouble. If I could do it, they can too.

I have a couple of more memories I could share in short stories, and possibly I will. Having completed and published two, I only want to write more if I can do it in a way to help someone with their grief. A teenager perhaps, or an adult who experienced what I did, and still needs help with it. I’m thinking about it.