The Story Behind Don't Look Back, Agnes and In This House
More Backstories
By Kathryn Meyer Griffith
The older I get,
the more I like to reminisce and write about what I’m going through at any
particular time. I guess it’s an age thing. So many of my stories and novels
come about because of what I’m actually experiencing in my real life at the
time. Not all, but some.
But my novella, Don't Look Back, Agnes
is definitely one such story.
At the end of 1998 my beloved father,
the very heart (along with my mother’s mother, Grandmother Fehrt, who was also
much loved) of my large family, passed away after a short but heartbreaking
battle with lung cancer. He’d been a cigarette smoker his whole life so it
wasn’t a complete shock that it ended up killing him. Yet the suddenness and
the swiftness of his departure devastated my six siblings, my mother,
grandmother, and me. It was a very dark time for us.
To complicate the matter, my brothers
and sisters, myself included, were in our forties and working hard at our
lives, our families and jobs, but my grandmother and mother were left living
alone together and neither one drove; so both needed constant care and
attention. My grandmother was in her eighties and my mother in her late
sixties; though my grandmother was fairly healthy (she was spunky lady, with a
zest for life, who’d emigrated from Austria as a child) my mother was already
in a wheelchair, crippled from bad ankle surgeries, debilitating osteoarthritis
and a host of heart related problems.
The first thing the family had to do
was move them into town, nearer to some of us, and out of the country where
they’d been living in the new sprawling house my father had built them just the
year before. It was too hard caring for them way out there and the house was
too big, too expensive. Boy, that was fun. They had so much stuff, so many
memories to dispose of and cry over. We settled them in a small ranch house in
town and life went on. Or tried to.
Now, I loved my mother and grandmother
dearly but taking care of them was often difficult. Each needed concentrated
care, love, endless visits to the doctor, prescriptions fulfilled and, as time
went on, housekeeping and grocery shopping help–and finally, someone to do
their bills, my mother becoming too disoriented and sick to any longer do any
of those chores. For a long time, years, my grandmother stepped up, even at her
age, and became my mother’s constant nurse and helper. Their two Social
Security checks combined were just enough for them to live on. It was a thin
line they had to tread and we tried to help them every step of the way.
So, with love, sometimes desperation,
and some bickering every so often between us siblings as to who would do what
when, we took care of them and their whole household, their house. There were
many late night runs to hospital emergency rooms, or long stays, and rehab
centers for my mother, who steadily over the next nine years grew worse. By the
end of 2005 it seemed we were always at the hospital with mom or grandma. My
mom had her heart troubles, high blood pressure and medication problems, and my
grandmother broke her hip. One thing after another. It was exhausting at times.
Who’d ever think two sick old ladies could need so much care?
Then my grandmother got really ill and
was rushed to the hospital. She needed emergency surgery and afterwards was in
intensive care for a month…never recovered…then sadly joined our grandfather in
the next life. We were all so broken hearted.
That left our mother, all alone,
without enough money to live on (her Social Security meager; no savings), and
unable to care for herself or her three cats. Born an only child, she was a
demanding sort of woman, almost childlike in her unending need for attention
and devotion. She was terrified of going to a nursing home so the family did
what we could to keep her in her own home as long as possible. My brother got her
a reverse mortgage on her house and we all chipped in financially whenever and
however we could. We fought the good fight but there came a day where mom got
so sick, was rushed to the hospital so often, needed so much constant
supervision, that my siblings and I had to admit defeat…mom had to go into a
nursing home or one of us had to move in with her, which wasn’t feasible. We
were married with families.
So a nursing home it was. We picked out
a newly opened one in town, the nicest we could find, and the next time mom got
sick we moved her into it for her recovery. Then told her the truth. The house
was up for sale and the cats had been placed in new homes. I even took one,
Patches (the cat in the story), because it was old and no one wanted her. My
husband and I already had two cats but it was something I had to do…for
mom. She really loved that cat as she’d really loved her home. But poor
Patches, probably pining for her mistress and her old life, only lasted five
months. I lied to my mother for months afterwards, afraid to tell her that the
old cat had died (mom had always said that when Patches died, she’d die) and it
broke my heart when I finally had to tell her. Mom had come to our house for a
family Thanksgiving and I couldn’t hide the fact that Patches was no longer
there. Oh, that was hard. Telling her.
If anyone has ever put a parent or
relative into a nursing home, they know the heartbreak it causes all around. My
mother was inconsolable and my guilt was awful. But, as sick as mom had become,
with so many prescriptions each day, hospital visits, and how most days she
couldn’t even get out of bed or get to the bathroom, clean or feed herself…we
had no choice. She stayed in that nursing home – although it was a bright
cheery place with kind people running it – until she died two years later. The
hardest two years of my life. I visited her often, shopped for her and kept her
company. Decorated her room so it looked like a home. Brought her special
lunches and little gifts. Fancy quilts and stuffed cats. It still broke my
heart.
I began writing the novella, Don’t Look
Back, Agnes, while she was there. A ghost story centered around a young woman
who’s forced by grim circumstances into returning to her haunted, and deadly,
childhood home because her mother is ill in a nursing home and needs her.
Looking back now, I can see it was also my way of dealing with the nursing home
guilt…of wishing for a different ending to mom’s life than what had occurred.
Writing the story was my therapy. I cried all my sorrow out into those words
and prayed to be forgiven for putting my mother into such a place.
Even In This House, the bonus short
story included because it’s also a ghostly tale, deals with old age and the
passing of all a person (or a couple in this instance) ever knew or loved as
time and their lives slip away, as it must always do. At the same time I
was writing the Agnes story I read an article in the newspaper about this old
man who was the last resident of a neighborhood that had been systematically
bought out and emptied by an iron smelter plant. He was the last one living
there in the last house. He spoke of his loneliness since his wife had died;
about her. Their past. It sparked the idea for In This House. Both stories deal
with responsibility, sacrifice and…love. Love for a mate, for an aging parent,
children, and a way of life or the loss of one’s independence that we all in
the end have to relinquish in one way or another. Life’s sorrows faced with a
brave smile to cover the tears.
I hope the two stories help anyone
going through what I was going through in those difficult years. If they do,
then the words have done their job.
Written by the author Kathryn Meyer
Griffith this nineteenth day of December 2011
****
My books (most out again from Damnation
Books and Eternal Press): Evil Stalks the Night, The Heart of the Rose, Blood
Forge, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire, Witches, The Nameless One short story,
The Calling, Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away, Egyptian Heart, Winter's
Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don't Look Back, Agnes novella, In This House short
story, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons, The Woman in Crimson, The Guide to
Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the
Introduction)
About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...
2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS NOMINEE
for her romantic horror novel
The Last Vampire-Revised
Author’s Edition
Since
childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the
corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to
write full time. I began writing novels at 21 and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror,
one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two
murder mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure
Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I’ve been
married to Russell for thirty-three years; have a son, James, and two
grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in
Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis,
Mo. We have two quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha and live cat Cleo, and the four of
us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist,
and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my
greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the
day I die.
Novels and short
stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation
Books, July 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press
Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised
Edition, February 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised
Edition, July 2011)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised
Edition out April 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised
Edition, 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery,
2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s
Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s
Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
Don’t
Look Back, Agnes novella & bonus short story:
In This House (2008; ghostly romantic short story out; Eternal Press in
January 2012)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons
(Damnation Books 2010)
Damnation
Books buy link: httphttp://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615721313
The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010)
My Websites:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1019954486
http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith
My books (most out again from Damnation Books and Eternal Press): Evil Stalks the Night,
The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forge, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire, Witches,
The Nameless One short story, The Calling,
Scraps of Paper, All Things Slip Away, Egyptian Heart, Winter's Journey, The
Ice Bridge, Don't Look Back, Agnes novella, In This House short story,
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons, The Woman in Crimson, The Guide to Writing
Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction) ***
