IN MARGARET’S WORDS – THE BACKSTORY

“This story also came out of the writing course. The term was over, and all my work was complete. I was sitting in my husband’s office waiting while he finished monitoring final exams. His computer was on, and I started playing with it to pass the time. I thought: “I wonder how long I can keep a dialogue going?” The writing professor had said to write what you know. So I thought, “What do I know the most about?” I had been a geriatric physical rehabilitation nurse, so I wrote about that.

I had worked in a very old nursing home that creaked and whispered in the night. It was the original city hospital, which was ending its days as a nursing home for the elderly. Molly is a composite of all the old ladies I looked after there and in other places. She had earned her living as a house cleaner, and read cards on the side for a little extra cash. Now she was old and confined to a nursing home, the victim of a stroke that had robbed her of her ability to communicate clearly. She had an ongoing spat with the night nurse, but because of her disability, she could never win an argument. Molly’s best friend Lucy had died before her, but she watched over Molly from the other side and was very distressed about her situation. She and her “boss” Larry decide to appear to Molly and to teach her astral travel. Once she was free of her body, Molly got up to all kinds of mischief and managed to break most of the heavenly rules.

It was a challenge to write dialogue that made sense when the characters kept substituting words. If my husband’s computer hadn’t been on, I would never have become a writer.”