March is my hardest month. Which is sort of pathetic considering a week of it is spring break. But I always have a lot of papers to grade over spring break. And new classes to get ready for.
March is my hardest month. My dad’s birth day and death day in the same month. I wonder if it will always be damp, dark and difficult.
This year I spent all of March deeply immersed in writing–or not writing–Act 3 of my memoir. Someone who knows Shakespeare’s body of work much better than I do @mollybooth said that Act 3s are always so intense, and that is where everything explodes. Or, in this case, for me and my family, implodes. It really helped hearing that from another (much admired!) writer, and I held it as a touchstone. Act 3 is always intense.
What made it extra weird was the way current calendar time synced up with the time frame I was writing about. It took over two months–February and March–to write Act 3. In February we found out my dad was definitely dying, and by the end of March he was in the ground.
He actually died while I was teaching Act 3, which goes from To be or not to be, to the Mousetrap, to recorders and sponges, and almost killing Claudius, and then actually killing Polonius. I had a time frame in my head for completing this story. It’s taken longer than I thought. A lot longer.
Absent thee from felicity awhile
And in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.
(5.2.382-4)
Like Horatio, I’ve been compelled to tell this story, and in fact, I draw my breath in pain each time I reapproach it.
I wonder if life and the story of my father will feel different once I finish.
I wonder what next March will hold.