It isn’t easy for us to write up to the standards we demand of ourselves when we are writing about those we love who are no longer with us. The more we wish to honor them and the life we resolve to live by incorporating their spirit into ours, the harder it seems to write.

Although dealing with loss is a complex task both in life and in writing, I have found that closely observing place offers the opportunity for associations that I can incorporate to evoke my loved one as well as my love for him.

 Here is an excerpt from near the end of my memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, and following the excerpt, I present two writing exercises based on what I observed in my writing process.

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On December 27th, 2006, Kurt and I go, as we have for five years now, to watch the sun rise outside the Port Townsend Marine Science Center overlooking Admiralty Inlet to the Cascade Mountains. More often than not, we have witnessed exquisite sunrises. But even when there have been cloudy skies, subtle light brings divinity into relief, sometimes in the shape of animals in the large stones nearby. Other times, we’ve been accompanied once again by that hawk hovering over the portico that covers the benches.

This year, we take our places on the memorial benches a half hour before sunrise. We watch daylight break from behind a mostly cloudy sky, and at dawn, we get up from the benches and walk across a small road to a long pier that extends into Admiralty Inlet. We hear a bird calling persistently, “Look my way! Look my way!” And when we do, we see a black bird sitting on top of a piling off to our right, a white patch on its neck, clear even from a distance. Then the bird flies south along the shoreline, a foot over the water, swallow-like but at high speed. When it is out of view, I look north again and see our hawk circling.

At the end of the pier, we look out over Admiralty Inlet. The water below us swells and undulates in an unusual pattern and rhythm and with what seems, to me, a kind of affection. The swelling of the water becomes the backs of dolphins or of whales, so compelling, I imagine riding one of them. I think of the orca totem Seth painted on the front of the kayak, the way it remains stored under our house, a spiritual foundation.

We watch a tugboat pulling a loaded barge from the Strait of Juan de Fuca into Admiralty Inlet. It looks like a friendly, furry monster from a children’s book, with a crane that lies on its side for a tail and a bright lamp for an eye. For an instant, I think of standing here with the children Seth and Kristen would have had by now.

As Kurt and I walk back along the pier toward our car, I ask if he saw anything in the water, and he described being mesmerized by an unusual motion. He says the movement did not seem to correspond with any wave action or tidal currents. I feel certain that what we witnessed is there for us because of the change in our beings on this day, our heightened sense of belonging to a whole, the sense that allows us to locate Seth, to fully feel his presence.

At home, I get out my bird books with the hope of identifying the bird we had listened to and watched. I go to the Internet. Descriptions of the White Collared Vaux seem to match the bird we saw, though the species isn’t said to winter here. As I look at the pictures of the black Vaux with a thick white patch at its neck, memories of Seth come–an eighth-grade boy standing outside of a French restaurant in his black pants and white shirt waiting for us to drive him home from his new busboy job and from that same year, the sight of him standing on the school stage in black pants and white shirt to dance with his school’s folkdance troupe, surprised to enjoy it so much.

I spend much of the rest of the morning rereading poems I’d written about Seth over the years of his growing up. I resonate with the one I wrote in the months just after he left home for college, because it is about living without him but feeling him everywhere, and it opens with a bird image:

Buying a Birthday Card for My Son Just After He’s Gone to College
For Seth on his18th birthday

With each card I look at, I think of your phone calls, the way
they dart unexpectedly into my afternoons like sparrows.
I imagine the dorm room you describe, the rented refrigerator,
food carried from the dining hall, bed rigged to hang over your desk,
your stereo components integrated with ones your roommate brought.

As I listen, I think backwards, see you at 18 months in your cot
before tangerine striped wallpaper, your bib overalls on the floor,
pockets full of garden snails and twigs. Today, I hold a birthday
greeting book in my hand, flip the pages fast to see an animation
of candles lit and blown so hard the birthday cake slides into a lap.

Memories come of you sliding into my lap, pleading with me
to play cars, make engine noises, grind wheels over floors, watch
plastic smash into baseboards, of you running in cleats over muddy
Saturday soccer fields, chubby in your orange and black uniform.

Then I see you older, in summer carrying a wind surfing board
towards water, not telling us how afraid you are there might
be sharks and in the fall refusing rides I offer, insisting on using
your own two wheels, though it is dark and cold at midnight.

Then you get a perfect score on your driver’s test, proud shoulders
straight as the bar on trapeze. You drive away and I pass through rooms
with your gifts from over the years, drawings in blue and red and yellow,
copper crab in the center of our dining table, deer shaped candleholder,
glass otters and humming birds, the book about mountain biking you
left for me to read since you aren’t here to coax me up the high curbs.

At his benches I told Seth, as I do every year, that I love him. Before Nootka roses and snowberry that form a backdrop to the Science Center building, below the fir and cedar tree-covered bluff that rises above it, I touched the love in me as strong as ever, and I thanked my son for the commitment and the energy he brought to this life.

As I write now, my thoughts turn to Kristen’s coming marriage this September, just short of seven years since the accident, the amount of time a widow she had asked told her it would take to feel strong. I think of my four-and-a-half year-old grandson Toby coming to visit us soon for “five days and four nights,” as he excitedly describes his plans. I think of his brother, Raphael, now sixteen months old, able to speak many words, of which my favorite, of course, is “Ganma.”

Seth would have loved designing and building for his nephews and his own kids; he would have loved visiting our home, where they could all hike and beach comb and kayak. I know that I would have loved watching him being a father. Honoring his spirit keeps my senses open to this world. It is essential if I am to make it up loss’s high curbs and recognize the gifts in this life.

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Two Exercises that Help If You are Writing About Loss

1. Sit somewhere that allows you to remember your loved one(s) and where you feel urged to speech about or to them. Write a letter to the one(s) who are gone or to someone close to you who would be interested in what you see and feel, taste, touch and hear in this spot.

Weave in scenes from books you are reading, writing you have done, movies you’ve seen or places you’ve gone and people who have done something meaningful recently. By the end of what you write, see if there is a lesson for you to carry away, something the person you are addressing the letter to would find important to know about you and your feelings and beliefs.

2. Sit in the same spot twice or three times. Write one letter from now, the time after your loss. Write a second letter (and a third if you’d like) from a time before the loss. It will be interesting to see the difference in the letters; figure out in which you order you feel you might best present the letters.