Standing in the White Space

An observation. At one point, following the death of my wife, I felt as though I was entering the third act of a three-act play, with the following basic structure. Life before marriage, marriage, life after marriage. Now? Not so much. Today everything feels like it was all part of a good novel. A story of two people who met, had a life together, raised children, and made it through to retirement where it ended, with one left behind. Sad, but not uncommon. Lots of stories end that way, then the reader puts down the book and off they go.

Of course, the characters are left behind to do whatever it is characters in novels do when the reader finishes the book. My general impression is they find themselves in a bright, white, empty space, disoriented and wondering what the hell is going on. It’s a common trope in movies whenever a character finds itself in a place they don’t understand and usually involves meeting God but not always. Sometimes they make it into a new book, sometimes not. It’s sort of how I feel at the moment. I’ve lost the plot, what’s the story, where do we go from here?

My one advantage is clear. I’m my own author. It’s sort of interesting. I can already see new characters swimming in and out of view, old characters fading, and tantalizing plot lines developing. It will be fun to see who moves to center stage. I’m a little constrained on space, think time, I’m older now, but I still might get a good novelette out of it. You never know. Heck, it may even be a collection of short stories. That, actually, might be more appropriate, and offers a lot more flexibility, and they can be bound together into a good book when I’m done. We’ll see.