It’s difficult to write in times of pain. When you are a person who processes (read: figures out) feelings by examining facts and surface impressions, writing can be a helpful tool. But it can brush too harshly against the tenderness of heartache. What I record in notebooks, with blue ink splotched with tears, stays closed and stays close.

My mother had a stroke 2 weeks ago. She was previously diagnosed with dementia, and the stroke seems to have accelerated her memory loss symptoms. In the past fourteen days, she has had two separate hospital stays, and I have spent long days sprawled on a couch in her sterile rooms. Trying to pray. Trying to read Scripture. Trying to journal. Trying to keep in touch with concerned family members and friends. Trying to hope for enough recovery to enable her to come home, eventually. Reminding her that she can’t get up without help, answering the same questions over and over, holding in my tears when she is unable to recognize where she is. Unable to recognize me.

Writers are taught to process their pain, mine their stories for lessons and solutions that will help other people. But there is no solution to this kind of pain, short of the miraculous. The best case scenario is still awful and difficult and life-altering for us all.