The Wind Down

By Sherrida Woodley  

Writing began dedicated to empty spaces, what few I had. A mother, a medical transcriptionist, a wife, a land owner, and a deeply committed nature lover, I fit writing between worlds often tucked in at the end of a day, words overworked, frequently transient, sometimes alarming. An animal was about to die, for instance, and I would be flailing, seeking meaning, hoping to capture the memory of better times. Nothing could restore the past. But words helped me cope with loss, the bereft feeling of another little life forgotten except for a few thoughts right at the end. Writing slowly became an everyday occurrence. And it began to dominate the order of my days.

Finally, after months of research and notetaking, I realized it was a story that mattered, but that story was no easy find. I wrote a novel, then two. Writing had morphed, turning into desire and planning, patience and the sought-after guides, often inner guides, which led to long hours at a computer. My senses became heightened. I would fall asleep with one eye to the scrap of paper beside the bed and awake with a character drifting, struggling to hold her identity before daily matters took over. There was that vague line of demarcation between a writer’s truth and a hard-working woman’s truth—that being I could substantiate my daily actions in every way except the imagination. That part of me could no longer be reined in. Yet I told no one, except my husband, who sort of understood the long absences I’d begun to take in human relationships, including ours. The writer, I was finding, couldn’t truly exist without the element of loss.

Years went by, years vacated by children, by parents, by death. I learned to depend on my imagination to carry me through. Story drew me toward discovery, especially of my own inner need—to tell the magnificence of life despite its routines of yearning and the risk of becoming further dependent on an over-achieving nature. I had long ago begun to call myself a writer, not as much from pride as desperation. Otherwise, there was no accounting for the hundreds of hours spent withdrawn, locked in, imprisoned in an idea that wouldn’t let go until I wrote it through. Was I addicted became the question? Writing sequences became shorter, less well constructed. I had to find out why because there was something else taking over. And that something had an unsympathetic edge. Cancer.

Disease can be a distraction, but I’ve learned it also influences art or may be an addendum to art. Van Gogh, for instance. The missing ear. Loss again, the strong association with struggle and desire. My disease was vying for my attention. I found myself pleading for time from a doctor first, then myself. Cancer had power similar to dedicated writing. Feel good enough, I kept thinking, and you can write another novel. But there was a catch to all this. No one could promise me time, especially time to myself. Serious writing now had a competitor both devious and controlling. I took  several months off to hike, to assess my life and the potential shortness of it. Writing waited, stalled, then arrived in frantic detail. I couldn’t let go of the memoir I had begun—about becoming a pilot when I was young and learning to grapple with risk. “Nothing’s changed,” I thought. “Except the reasons I write hold answers to my longevity.”

And so my creation began again. I wrote out my ambivalence with flight, how I’d found myself wanting to excel but couldn’t make the dedicated climb to ratings and commitment. There came a severe test of things hidden for an entire lifetime. My family, for instance. How mental illness upended our lives, sending me in search of escape in an early marriage, a child, then flying. The inescapable truth, I wrote, was that I wasn’t really cut out to be a flier, but that I had to learn that disappointment slowly. Through tough digging into my mother’s heredity and my father’s tragedy, through the onslaught of metastasis, through acceptance that even writing wouldn’t allow for absentia from life. I wrote, especially in the last year, with an honesty and rhythm I’ve never experienced before.

In this moment there is pause. The young pilot has vanished, except for her memories of flying mountain passes, the Great Plains, the local haunts that tested her resolve. I no longer suffer from lack of experience or worry that I would never be good enough. Writing has brought me into the open, even though or maybe because I’ve had to pass through cancer’s long trajectory. I write because I’m where I belong. Within the structure of a disease that amplifies everything, including story. I am about to begin again—slowly, sometimes painfully and maybe in the final wind down. But I am ready, of that I’m sure, to spend the rest of my days in the pursuit of what I love most—writing. Just the ability becomes sweeter with time.