Recently, I met Beckie A. Miller online and learned that her writing career began with the need to write about loss. This week in our series on writing grief, I am sharing her first published essay, a recent humorous essay she’s written, and her commentary on the development of her writing life.

Beckie describes the writing of her first published essay this way:

My writing career did not begin like most with simply a love for the written word. Mine began out of a desperate need to vent the horrific pain of losing my eighteen-year-old son, Brian, when he was robbed and shot to death in Phoenix, Arizona in 1991. In the midst of utter chaos and a world suddenly turned inside out, I began journaling in the middle of night when sleep escaped me as my mind ran rampant with the emotional pain and grief like no other ever experienced before, every parent’s worst nightmare.

Becky soon found her journal entries leading to writing for an audience of parents grieving children who were victims of violent crime. She wrote from her heart when her grief was not very old, and her words resonate with those who are finding their way through grief and life after sudden, stunning, agonizing loss. If you or someone you care about has suffered the violent death of a relative or friend, you might find needed help through the resource groups listed on the Violent Death Bereavement Society website. Parents might appreciate the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children.
 Here is Beckie’s first published essay, which appeared in the January/February 1995 issue of Bereavement Magazine:

Homicide: A Prolonged Suffering
By Beckie A. Miller

My son, Brian, was robbed and murdered almost three years ago, just two weeks after his eighteenth birthday. They say on a scale of one to ten, losing a child is a ten, but I believe that losing a child to murder is an eleven. There is nothing worse. There is nothing as shattering and devastating…nothing else has turned my entire world, my entire being, so completely (and even sometimes irreversibly) upside down.

As a mother, all I knew those first few weeks was intense pain and a conviction that my son had been taken away from me. But I decided they were not going to take ME away from me, unless I let them. The three young, gang members who took my son from me had taken enough! I could not afford to lose anymore, yet I had no idea how to remain strong enough so that my family could also remain strong. Little did I ever imagine just what an undertaking that would be as we suffered the next years of injustice, pain and anger in the reality of what life should never be.

Suddenly we were thrust into the strange world of a judicial system that we had known nothing about before this happened (except from out television world of make believe).

We thought we were lucky that the three people involved with our son’s death had been caught and jailed by the fifth day after the murder, but that was where our “luck” ended. Mistakes made by both the detectives and the prosecutor eventually ended with the eighteen-year-old man who actually shot our son serving only seven years because of a plea bargain.

The authorities thought that one of the three, a seventeen-year-old, had shot Brian, and they wanted the other two to testify to that fact to ensure his conviction. However, halfway through the trial, we learned that he was not the one who killed our son. The prosecutor tried to make amends through legal channels, but it was not to be.

Curiously, the seventeen-year-old is serving twenty years for his part in the robbery. The judicial system in this country is in desperate need of major change before it can ever be called a “justice” system.

Because I wanted to give meaning to my son’s life and death, I was motivated to get involved with helping to change some of the things that I believe need to be changed, such as the juvenile gun ordinance in our city.

I also joined a support group called Parents of Murdered Children. At first, I was appalled that an organization by that name even existed, but that was before I fully realized that I was the parent of a murdered child! First, I took help from this wonderful support group of people who have suffered life’s worst and yet try to go on and still see the good in life. Now, I am giving back to this organization by serving as its Phoenix chapter president and writing its monthly newsletter.

I would like to say that is has all been easy, but that would be a lie. Some have been amazed at the strength they perceive in me through all of this, but no one is really that strong. My motivation has been for my son’s memory, for Christie, my remaining daughter, and my husband, Don, and for other family members and friends who are suffering from the horror of losing someone close to them because of a cold, cruel murderer. Even after three years, the effects are ravaging my son’s friends and our family. The pain is never-ending, so I simply try to give meaning to the pain.

We have struggled to remain close and stay whole, and we have survived. We have lost some friends who could not handle the reality of what we have had to live with, but we have also gained many friends. Though we have seen the absolute worst life can be, we are lucky enough to have seen the best, too, through the love and compassion of many.

Although my belief system is stronger now than ever, it has changed also. I do not, as some others do, believe God had my son murdered as part of His plan. My God is all-loving and could not be so cruel to me. I do believe He knew it would happen, and I believe what my pastor said at our son’s funeral, “God was the first to cry when Brian was killed.”

Man killed my son … Man, with his free will to choose the right or the wrong path. At times, I have actually felt sorry for my son’s killers, because I know if they had been raised with the same love, compassion and teaching as my son had, they could never have killed. I have been angrier at their parents and the society that failed them.

Now, when we have to face a parole hearing for the release of the one who actually killed our child in cold blood, I hope we will be able to face it with the same strength and conviction we have maintained since Brian’s death. It will not be easy, but I believe it will be possible.

Grief is like roller coaster ride of ups and downs, and our ride through the judicial system has seemed endless with twists and turns. But Brian’s memory will see us through, and the love we shared will be stronger than what we have lost.

We are like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece. We have put together the puzzle, and though it is incomplete, it is still a picture. We are missing one of those pieces, but we are still a family. We will always feel the pain of its loss, but we will be a family, regardless. We owe it to ourselves to be the best we can despite our loss, but it will never be easy. We will get used to the pain the same way would get used to the loss of an arm or leg…it is gone and we have no choice … but we still miss that part.

Forever, I will miss my son and feel the pain of his death, but as time goes on, I tuck away a little more of that pain deep inside. In the first few months and years, it was so horrible that I found myself wishing for a magic pill to ease the pain by erasing my memory for just a little while. There are no magic pills, of course, but with time, the pain did become easier to handle.

After Brian was killed, I had to learn to follow some advice I had given him a couple of years earlier. For many years, he had suffered from fear attacks about dying. While he was in the throes of those horrid attacks, he would scream out at night, and I would run in and comfort him. While his heart raced in his chest, I would search my soul for an answer to his fears. I told him that everyone would die sometime, and though we never know when, we could not live our lives with the fear of dying. To do so, would not be living.

To live my life now, afraid to venture out into the same world that killed my son, would not be living either. At times, the fear and pain make it difficult, but I do it for my son … in his memory. It is the final gift of a mother to her child who is no longer here. It is a fitting tribute to that deep bond that began the moment I knew I was pregnant and it will continue until the end of time itself.

I love you, Brian.

****

Beckie’s comments:
When I stopped writing in the journals, after the trial for our son’s killer ended nearly two years later, I began writing articles on grief and trauma for our support group newsletter. The more I wrote and was encouraged to continue writing by the other members, family and friends, the more I wanted to write. I wanted to sing my son’s silenced song and help others survive what they believed might be un-survivable, as I once had.

Soon after my first article had appeared in Bereavement Magazine, I published an article in a horse magazine. We have horse property and in order to help our daughter, Brian’s sister, deal with the emotions of her loss, we bred our mare to teach her about the circle of life through a newborn filly. That article was entitled, “Circle of Life Helps Grieving Family.” I had to compromise with the editor of the magazine and take out the part that spoke of Brian’s murder and so instead, I simply said he died.

It was a hard compromise to make but the bug had bitten and I needed to be published.

I began writing poetry, attending writing groups and learning as much as I could to be a better writer. I eventually had several short stories published in books, and also began getting “Guest Column” articles published in our local newpaper, as I became the leader of our support group, Parents Of Murdered Children, for the families and friends of those who have died by violence.

The more I was published, the more I wrote. I guarantee, for those of you who think the journey was easy, I was turned down by a lot more editors than I was published by, but through the years since my son’s death, have managed to amass an array of published works and keep my ego intact. I am still trying to break into major magazines, such as Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest. Those, even with two pages of published credits, still elude me.

I have also been successful with expanding my writing to not be just about traumatic grief and homicide. I was afraid I could not write about anything else and it was wonderful to realize with the publications of humorous life vignettes that I was truly a writer and not just a “grief subject expert.” I have had three stories published since July of this year: Still Crazy Magazine, for those over fifty, “Starting Over Parenting” which is a humorous slice of life vignette about my husband and I adopting a baby after already raising our two children and the pros and cons of doing so at an older age. I’ve also been published in an online version of Yesterday’s Magazette. “Tree House Memories” is from my childhood in southern California. Also published in September, in a book entitled “Thanksgiving to Christmas: A Patchwork of Stories,” is a short story regarding how our adopted baby brought joy and a rebirth to a grieving family that first Christmas after she graced our lives, five years after the death of our son.

Here is one of Beckie’s recent humorous essays:

Saving the Tooth Fairy
by Beckie A. Miller

In our home the tooth fairy, who had previously resigned her duties after our first two children were grown, came out of retirement as we began parenting again. Our new daughter, Kimberlie, who had stripped the title of youngest from her nineteen-year-old sister, Christie, is to those who don’t know any better an “oops” child. But we adopted her, so a lack of not being planned is simply not involved, only careful choices of the heart.

Her older brother and sister each received twenty-five cents for their lost teeth, but Kimberlie receives a crisp one-dollar bill. The tooth fairy is probably not quite keeping up with the rate of inflation, but Kimberlie is happy. The only time she did complain was when the tooth fairy, who on this particular round of raising our kids, happens to be my husband, Don, forgot to claim the tooth and leave the money tucked under her pillow before he turned in for the night. Since I head to bed shortly after my daughter, energy level not being what it once was, I have relinquished my tooth fairy duties this time around.

The next morning while I was reading the newspaper and sipping my own recipe of chocolate mint coffee, peacefully enjoying the silent time before anyone else in the house awakened, my quiet reverie was instantly disrupted as I heard a scream.

“Mommy,” Kimberlie shrieked. “The tooth fairy forgot my tooth!” she literally yelled choking back tears of dismay.

This caused me to immediately assess the situation and jump into mommy-fix-this-one- mode. Not to brag, but in true super-mom-fashion and without skipping a beat, I might add, I calmly covered with a scenario that the tooth fairy probably saw she was sleeping so soundly, arms wrapped tightly around her pillow that the tooth fairy did not have the heart to awaken her.

I then proceeded to put in place part two of my child’s emotional trauma rescue and proverbial saving of my dear husband’s butt. I wrote a note (disguising my handwriting just in case my daughter got suspicious) from the tooth fairy to her explaining just the scenario I had given her, telling Kimberlie in the note, which by the way had her dollar enclosed, that because the fairy could not reach her tooth without waking her, Kimberlie could keep the tooth as a special memento for herself. I then carefully placed the note on the floor by her bed, hoping when she made the bed, she would find it and believe she had knocked it off in her sleep.

That’s exactly what happened, thanks to my intervention and careful, though spur-of-the-moment planning. Kimberlie was totally thrilled to be able to keep her tooth. She even took it to school, along with the forged note, to share with her first-grade classmates.

Of course, when my husband got up later that first morning, I could not wait to admonish him for forgetting his tooth fairy duties, and then, when the look of dismay on his flushed face mirrored our daughter’s earlier one of being forgotten, I let him off the hook. I explained I had covered quite nicely for him. Upon hearing her dad was up, Kimberlie ran in and could not wait to share her special keepsake with him.

“Daddy! Look what the tooth fairy left me, a dollar, and my tooth to keep,” she exclaimed with pride.

Oh, dearest little one, if only you knew what we moms have to go through sometimes to save our children hurt, I thought to myself, hating that I could not take credit for her joy. That’s okay for now, though. Someday, I will share this story with her when she is long past her time of childhood innocence and emotional ties to the tooth fairy. It will bring us much laughter when recalled in years to come.

Parenting always keeps you on your toes. It is just that my husband’s and my toes are not as spry as they used to be and that makes for some challenges and near disasters more often than our younger counterparts might experience; however, it balances out with our mature wisdom!

I tease my husband that since I am seven years younger than he is, I will continue to cover for him whenever necessary. He also knows, to his ultimate chagrin, that I will never let him live this episode down — I consider it my wifely duty. After all, I have my daughter’s emotional well being to consider as well as saving the reputation of the tooth fairy for generations of kids to come!

****

A postscript from Beckie about the development of her writing life:

I said at the beginning of this, I did not begin my writing career the usual way and while I may not have, I have come to realize it is the passion for writing, for whatever reason that leads us on the path, that allows us to take rejection after rejection and not give up. That is what a true writer is, pursuing it against the odds. I learned in one of my first writer’s groups that Steven King, arguably the greatest horror novel writer of our time, had more than 200 rejections to his first novel, which eventually became a best seller.

My advice to new writers is to write with a firm passion concerning what you know about and you will not fail. It is tougher to break into publication in today’s world where more and more publications use their in-house staff to write articles for readers with shorter and shorter attention spans, but I still intend to break into a larger publication someday in the future, no matter how many rejections. I am a writer, no matter how I began or found out I was.