Here’s a thought for the day, spotted over at Jessy Ferguson’s blog.

Sure, I feel that way sometimes: as if there is something I’m discovering, and if I don’t use it – find a way to express it – I’ll lose it. Of course, on dank and sultry nights like this, such a concession just raises the question that begs to be asked:

What’s the big idea?

Right now, I’m working on a piece in which the narrator – protagonist – describes a painful few days in his life. The narrator’s grandfather, who has been a close part of the narrator’s entire life, rapidly develops pneumonia, then senile dementia, and enters a nursing home. Our hero confronts his life-long fears of losing members of his family, and his abiding fear of solitude.

Cut off from his grandfather, he feels increasing alienated from the rest of his family too, and helpless to be of meaningful service to them. Narrator’s younger brother, a sucessful academic, returns to the family farm for a crisis visit. The brothers discuss the changes impending in their lives, and the narrator’s assertion that his house is haunted, but not the way you think.

So my ideas are these:

It is daunting to face life with an abiding fear of inadequacy and abandonment, and the certitude that one must go on in spite of fundamental changes in the form and structure of life as he’s always known it.

Being an integral member of a family in such calamity is painful. Being kept at arms’ length by loved ones at such a time is worse.

Often our memories just won’t give us any peace. They are what goes bump in the night.

Fortunately for me, the narrator’s brother is an associate professor of psychology. So he can help me with the pathologies implied above for the writer. … Free!

*Sorry about the post title. I couldn’t help myself.