Hanging In...

Sorry to have skipped out on the blog last week, but I went down to North Carolina to visit my mom and my grandmother, who has recently entered a hospice. It has been a tough year for my grandmother, as she has gone from using a walker, to barely being able to stand to the recent loss of the use of her legs. She has always been a fiercely independent woman and this physical weakness has really taken a toll of her emotionally.

I’m not sure if there are bleaker places than rest homes and hospices, but her sparse room became even colder when she asked me to go over to her house and pick out the things I wanted “once she was gone.” I didn’t want to, but it was important to her that I fulfill this request, so I forced myself to do so. My mom and I walked around her quiet, clean house using subdued voices. At first, we werereluctant to touch anything, but then the memories that certain objects held broke the spell and allowed us to touch her things.

I’m sure everyone has had to face some kind of loss and one of the hardest things is going through the minutia of someone’s life. I picked out some antique toys for my children and a scrapbook full of letters my mother had written about her own three children to her mother, my grandmother, for myself. I held it together until my mother picked up a cheap and chipped hand mirror that had been in my grandmother’s bathroom as long as I could remember. Twenty-five years fell away and I could see Gram gazing into it while brushing her long, silver hair. She only has a few white tufts now and I’ve got plenty of gray hairs myself, but it seemed just yesterday that I was a stringy haired blond tomboy watching my lovely grandmother wind her hair into a tight bun.

When I got back to Virginia from NC, I was stunned by the violence that occurred at Virginia Tech. The city of Richmond has been subdued this week and, like most folks around here, I’ve been feeling rather down. It’s been a challenge to write light-hearted murder mysteries when cold-blooded, life-changing murders have ruined lives forever down the road.

There has been a silver lining to all this bleakness, however. Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job and Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mysteries, is recovering from her stroke. Everyone in the writing community was shocked that someone so young and healthy had been suddenly hospitalized with a dire prognosis. Elaine is doing much better, but clearly cannot tour or promote her new book. The MWA, Sisters in Crime, PJ Nunn at Breakthrough Promotions, and her fellow authors have rallied around her to promote her latest Dead End Job Mystery, Murder With Reservations.

The call to help Elaine has been answered by many: readers, authors, librarians, bookstore owners, etc. It has made me feel grateful to be a part of such a generous and caring group of people and also reinforced the notion that this is a small world after all. We all feel pain, loss, and fear, but once we reach out to one another, we become aware of the power of goodness.

Please support Elaine by pre-ordering her book. It will be released May 1^st and on that date, it would be great to see it soar to the top of the Bestseller List! Clock here for the Amazon link and learn more about Elaine and her works on http://www.elaineviets.com/