Mary O'Gara

Posts Tagged ‘World War I’

Today is a fine day for a writing dialogue with someone you loved–or might have loved if he or she had returned from a war, any war–or perhaps for writing a heartfelt prayer for the ones who did come back.

In Red Oak, Iowa, my home town, they still fly the funeral flags of our hometown veterans on Memorial Day.   Among them are two men I loved who came back:  My father and my grandmother’s brother, who was my surrogate grandfather:  Charles Arthur Reese and Philo Douglas Clark.

The stories they told me as a child were wildly exaggerated and made war sound like a great adventure.   Today I might dialogue with Uncle Philo about his real memories of World War One.   Dialogues aren’t limited to living people.

You could also dialogue with the condition of living in a world at war, and you might be surprised at what you discover for your own life and your writing.

Or this may be a chance to say good-bye in dialogue–or hello to someone you never got to meet.

Dialoguing is simple:   Sit quietly and breathe slowly and deeply.   Write a name on the journal page and make a short list of up to a dozen milestones in that person’s life, remembering that you are only one of those milestones.   Then close your eyes and imagine that person or something representing the situationn in front of you.

Close your eyes.

Write:  Hello or some other greeting.

Listen and record what you hear or understand.

Write your next sentence.   Continue until the conversation drops.

Ask if there’s anything else.

Sit in silence a little longer, waiting.

And when it’s really done, jot down a summary sentence for yourself or maybe a reminder about what you want to take into the rest of your life from this moment.