#1 Postcard - Unnecessary Reminder

Starting in the early hours of high school days, Mom grouched into her coffee while I awoke with a smile. I'd check my math homework or practice a piano tune, waiting for her brain to hum along. Why not start the day smiling? Like I told her, nothing bad has happened yet.

Today I rolled to the edge of the bed opening Facebook notification on my phone. My mother turned 53. Would I like to wish her Happy Birthday? Scripted platitudes fanned her wall.

The stunted glazed urn next to the bed held my mother’s ashes.  I do not want your thoughts and prayers; our grief is not the same. Why won’t you all leave me alone? I curled fetal into the sheets and tasted the sea on my pillow. 

~JRogers 

7.26.2016

***

Once I decided on the project for my 72 postcards, I blanked on what to write. I have books which suggest different writing prompts, but they were at home and I was eager to start NOW! Instead, I turned to Google for writing prompt generators and found page after page of suggestions.

The first Writing Prompt Generator came from Adam Maxwell's Fiction Lounge. The generator kicked out: "I was sad to see in the phonebook that he still existed."

I had trouble with this prompt because a) phonebook, who uses that today? b) I can't relate to being sad that someone is still alive. So I changed it around to: "I was sad to see on Facebook that he/she had died." That I could write about.

Since I'm doing this postcard fiction challenge, I thought it would help me to sample some of the advice the internet offered. Here's one I enjoyed: Stories in Your Pocket: How to Write Flash Fiction - the author described postcard fiction as "stories that took less time to read than to suppress a sneeze."

After I finished writing the rough story about grief, I realized I had an outline. Not a story. I turned back to the internet for more advice and found Writer's Digest "Writing Effective Grief in Fiction."

1. Make the reader care. "Help the reader get to know the character before you rip their hearts apart." => Provide some background to the mother/daughter relationship.
2. Grief has conflict because those grieving desire isolation and often can't get it. => Use Facebook notice to break the isolation and provide a grief trigger.
3. Additional conflict arises when grieving occurs at the worst possible times or places.
4. The story doesn't need to end when the character stops grieving.

Word Count: 131