#TheStoryBehind: Love Is a Verb

⊕This essay was first published in December 2020 on this site. Its permalink is here.

(Read the story first, if you haven’t yet.)

This story sparked a range of responses from my writing group, including one person who thought it felt melodramatic—which is understandable, because it throws two improbable deaths into one 750-word space. But as they say, truth is stranger than fiction. All these things really happened, and happened to me:

• my teenage daughter’s death from cancer
• my brother-in-law’s sudden death at thirty-seven, eight years later
• one of the angels disguised as Ped Onc nurses who really did go through the hospital laundry to find my daughter’s missing sock (though in real life it was underwear)
• another act of unprompted kindness years and years ago, when I was in my late teens and didn’t have enough to buy a candy bar and a Coke at a gas station. When I finally went up to the counter after lots of counting and putting things back down, the clerk said, “The man who just walked out left two dollars for you.”

That murky process that roils and writhes deep in the writing heart spit them all up together one weekend. And when—almost two years later—the dust had settled, I saw why. And I finally had my title.