My story, "Wake of Absolution," was selected as a finalist in the 2024 Hemingway Shorts Contest, and was recently published in Volume 9 of the Hemingway Shorts literary journal.
The inspiration for "Wake of Absolution" came from a number of stories I had heard surrounding infant deaths. I read a news article discussing a case of Forgotten Baby Syndrome, a phenomenon where a young child is accidentally left in a car. The child died of hyperthermia. I remember nurses cautioning us against co-sleeping with our infants because of the possibility of sleep-related death. A friend told me about a woman who lost her baby after the child rolled into the crack between the bed and the wall. All tragedies, all accidents.
These stories haunted me. I thought about blame, guilt, shame, the role of forgiveness in grief and mourning. Questions swirled around my mind. How would grief look for a mother who blamed herself for her child's death? What would it take for her to move on? Was it even possible?
In my story, the protagonist, Stella, is a self-proclaimed professional mourner. Professional mourning can be traced back to ancient times, where people, most often women, were hired to express grief for the deceased during funerals. They were considered essential for the bereaved to release their sorrow, and vestiges of the tradition still survive in hymns and lamentations sung for the dead to this day.
To read Stella's story, you'll have to purchase a copy of Hemingway Shorts, Volume 9 on Amazon: https://a.co/d/bYPdzTw. I hope you find it compelling.
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