Coffin Money

This story is based on real events and people. How many times have you heard that and thought, “Hmm, maybe not? Sounds too far-fetched and made-up.” But this one is indeed real, even though I took some creative license for the dramatic effect.

When I first heard the story, I was captivated by the ending. It just wouldn’t let me go, so I decided to write it up, using the most common character names to protect the real people. I also decided not to give out a lot of contextual information, thinking that given the generally advanced level of health care we have all over the world it could have been placed in any country. Sorry I can’t tell you where it really happened.

I was under a self-imposed deadline. My semester will start in a week, and I knew that if I didn’t finish the entire story before I get into the whirlpool of teaching, it would have been just hanging unfinished. Happened too many times before. So, I’ve started writing it during our trip to Rome and finished it today. So proud of myself, except that Vocal has been down for a couple of days and takes hours to approve submitted stories.

At first, I wanted to write up this story in a format of a play, entirely driven by the dialogue with minimalist descriptions. I love writing dialogues. But then I realized that I would have left out a lot of contextual and historical information about the story’s people and relationships, so I decided to write it up in a traditional chronological format. Silly me also had an ambitious goal of writing it all up in one part, three at the most. Good thing I abandoned that idea as it turned out to take eight parts, which I like as a nice round infinity-symbolizing number. I wrote an 8-part story in 8 days, with the total count of over 9,000 words, even though the last part was in review for over 24 hours. Yay to myself!

My biggest challenge was to decide who would be the lead character of the story. I had three main characters: an elderly mother, her son, and his wife, and they had a peculiar dynamic in that triangled relationship. I had several options:

1) I could have made the mother the lead character. However, I recently wrote another first-person story of an elderly woman with dementia (“You are not my daughter!”), so I wanted to try a different approach.

2) I could have made the son into the main character but that would be too traditional as we have a lot of stories written from a man’s perspective.

3) I could have made the wife into the main character, but then I’d have to do a lot of round-abouts for the mother-son dynamic.

4) I had a brilliant idea of making the coffin money – the object of the mother’s obsession – the main character and make the story as absurd as possible by giving the money the power of hearing and feeling what is going on around it. But that would have excluded the entire first part of the story when the mother ended up in the hospital.

In the end, I decided that the story would be focused on both the mother and the son, with other characters coming in and out as necessary. So, it’s a dynamic duo of characters, and I hope I was able to express that well.

A friend and a devoted reader on Facebook, whom I am incredibly grateful to have for encouragement, asked me after I finished Chapter 5, “Lana, are you inventing the story as you go? Or is it already there, fully imagined, and you just need to write it down segment by segment?” I responded, “I know the ending. Everything else is pretty much coming to me with the flow as I sit down to write. It's hard to explain, but the story kinda writes itself.”

So, I will try to dissect my process, both for my own records (I think all writers, once they read their own stories some time later, wonder, “How could I have come up with something like that?”) and for the readers' easier navigation of the story as all the parts are embedded here.

In Chapter 1, I describe the enticing incident – the mother getting into the hospital – and set up the two main characters through their conversations and interactions. The son’s wife shows up in the end, which is a deliberate choice to show that even though she is an important part of the story, she is not the main character. I also give some insights into the mother’s character and living environment.

In Chapter 2, I break major news about the mother’s health and give a teaser about when and how the relationship between the mother and son became what it is.

In Chapter 3, I give more details about the mother-son relationship, the mother’s paranoia of staying in the hospital, and for the first time mention the mother’s obsession – the coffin money – even though it is clear it was not the first time she talked about it. Also, more details are given about the wife’s character through the loving son’s eyes.

In Chapter 4, the son is forced to move his mother back to her home. Some more background is provided on a deceased brother and the mother’s role in driving family members away.

In Chapter 5, the mother and the wife directly talk to each other for the first time, and that conversation is telling of their tense relationship. The wife’s daughter is introduced as a character. The coffin money obsession comes up again.

In Chapter 6, I introduce a new character of a full-time nurse who turns out to be the only person capable of managing the mother.

In Chapter 7, two other characters are introduced – the son’s adult sons, one of whom is essential for the mother’s character arc. Through them, we learn of the son’s previous marriages. We also get a sense of how the relationship between the mother and her caregiver is developing, with a lot of background on the mother’s life.

In Chapter 8, we get the resolution to the mystery of the coffin money. I tried to bring as much humor into it as possible. If you read the story to the end, you will also understand why I asked DALL-E to create this particular cover image for the story.

Full disclosure: I have NOT been hired by the wife to write the story. It’s all on me.

Hope you enjoy the story and please let me know what you think in the comments.