Sixteen Pages

I wrote sixteen of the hardest pages I’ve ever written yesterday. In the story, the husband of a secondary character is killed in Afghanistan when a car bomb detonates near his convoy during a combat advisory mission with Afghan National Army Commandos. 

What I wrote is based on something that actually happened. Recently. It directly touched the lives of people I am very, very close to, and what I wrote is everything they went through from the time they were notified, until the day at the cemetery.

I wrote it out, but I’m going to go back and edit, to blend more of the real story into the book’s story, but I’ll keep what I wrote and give it to my friend to keep.

Doug came in at one point to talk to me about something, and I was sobbing. Of course, he immediately asked what was wrong, and when I turned around, he realized I was writing. I tried to tell him a little bit about what I had just written, but I couldn’t speak. The harder I tried, the harder I cried.

When my friend and I talked about my writing this, one of the things she said was that she wanted people to know, to feel it, to realize this war results in loss. Loss of life. Loss of lives of people we love. People who matter. People who would’ve continued to make a difference in the world, had their life not been cut so tragically short. 

As I listened to her yesterday, and wrote notes, both of us would tear up, sometimes unable to speak. I am grateful to her for sharing this with me. I was honored to write it.