Of late, I have encountered a handful of essays that wander into verboten personal statement territory. A mother, for example, dies unexpectedly and leaves behind a bewildered girl of thirteen. It is a truism of statement writing that an applicant cannot write about death. And yet, how can a young person not touch upon a truly proximate death – of a mother, a father, a brother, a twin – and still accurately recount their story ? How to write of death occurring in a chapter of childhood?
I am of two minds. The first is that such stories cannot, in fact, be written in too close a time. The second is more demanding but hopeful. Returning to my young girl above, I wonder what paradigm did that mother leave behind? If there is an outline of character to admire and, by degrees, to emulate, can the young writer see herself blossoming in a pattern? She remains herself and yet that self, perhaps, is heightened by traits revived, the recollected curve of a smile, a rekindling of interests: knitting, mathematics, or mosaics fixed in paving stones. In this, a young writer might reconsider loss and capture transformation, a coming of age tinged by immortality. Contrary to the truism, such a story is not bleak. It is vivid.
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