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My father’s passing was his return to wellness. Having had brain damage for thirty years, he had not been cognizant of his life. In dear father, – a collection of letter-like essays and poems – it is my task to review memories with my deceased father that he may learn of his time on Earth through an epistolary form. Writing in the second person was driven by a need to connect: writing to and not of. The essays assume a lyric style that is imagistic. They seek honesty rather than sentimentality. They serve as a zoom lens to magnify jarring moments when his dementia flared, as well as heartfelt hours. Some essays offer a collage of early memories, of a well father who was much loved before his open-heart surgery during which there was a lack of oxygen. The bulk of essays however, center on the first year of his brain damage when, traumatized by his dementia, I starved myself. These essays show a corollary relationship of a father and his young daughter co-existing in a damaged world. Interspersed are poems. Set between longer pieces, they work like stepping-stones that help forge the path our lives took. The organization of the collection uses mind-time rather than a chronological arrangement. Time moves about as with most letter collections; with no guarantee the next essay begins where the previous left off. Scenes unfold by way of emotional impact, like flashbacks that usher forth, rather than a linear approach. This worked for me on an aesthetic and metaphorical level, as it reflected my father’s imagined world. In dear father, readers learn of long suffering and family survival – not so much by any outward change. Rather, transcendence occurs by staying in place, navigating and finally coming to terms with the strange terrain of a ruined mind.

ETD_5174

M.F.A.

by Therese Anne Halscheid

doi:10.7282/T34J0C63

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.