How writing skills can be transformed through a shared personal tragedy

- AJ -

My supervisor would send me emails asking me how I was doing and updating me on university going ons. Even if I did not reply, I was kept involved. I was then asked to send my work via email for her to read. In this way, I did not have to come onto campus.

- TB -

As the other postgraduates slowly cleared their emails and typed through their cold wet tears, other emails arrived. A funeral was organised. By email. Angela wrote to us. By email. It seemed that the writing was helping everyone. It made us more comfortable to think about what was happening. While we did not know what to say, we knew what to write. Through the words, we organised ourselves to support Angela, Dave and their families. We also wanted to pay our respects to our smallest colleague, our 'bump' that could have been.

That 'bump' became Morgan and our joy and happiness twisted into horror and blinked-back tears. Morgan would stay part of us, and we would remember and acknowledge the rage, anger, confusion and hopelessness that we felt and shared.

- AJ -

From the time of the funeral to my first meeting back I did not see or talk to my supervisor (voice to voice) for six weeks. This relationship via writing let me grieve in private without ever feeling that I had been excluded or was losing my PhD experience.

- TB -

Almost all of my honours and postgraduate students gathered for the funeral, our faces twisted with grief, jaws clenched with throbbing pain. Finally, after all the emails, we saw each other. Oddly, the earlier email 'conversations' did make the process easier. Because the words had been said, we could hug, hold and support eachother without question or concern about 'the right thing to say.' There is never a right thing, only the right words to use at an appropriate time.

As the tiny casket was lowered, I looked at my postgraduates. The toughest of them had crumbled. We were invested in this child, and that dividend was never going to be paid. Later, we would reveal our individual thoughts at that moment: some remembered the death of a younger brother, others their own miscarriage, and yet others would, with troubling despair, ponder their abortions. This is the life of academic women. This is the life of my students, and I, as their supervisor, had to validate and monitor their despair. Angela's journey and Morgan's life taught me these lessons.

- AJ -

I received Morgan's post mortem report six weeks after his death. There was nothing wrong with him or me. It was an event that just occurred without warning, without cause. When I finally returned to campus meetings and increased the rate of my writing, my supervisor advised me to use my experiences in excerpts throughout my PhD.

- TB -

Now, after the funeral, life is different. I teach and supervise differently. The group of postgraduates are even closer, as though we have been through a war together and survived. Through Angela's strength, we talk about Morgan freely, ask questions, give answers and believe that the future will be better. This tragedy has cut through and out the stuff and nonsense of life. Angela is an even better writer now and mentally she is much more knowing than her supervisor. She has seen the other side and tries to protect me from sharing it. Her writing is stronger because the writer is stronger. The thesis is sharper because this student's life has an edge. Her professional rigour is more pronounced because she has toppled into the well of personal despair, and crawled out.

- AJ -

In this situation, writing was used as a mechanism to contact and relay information between supervisor and student without crossing boundaries of public and private, work and life. It stabilised the relationship at the beginning of the crisis and consequently, the eventual continuation of my postgraduate studies. The encouragement of writing through the experience also allowed for continuity in the transition back to academic writing. Through this crisis, the supervisor's choice of writing worked not only as a communication tool, but also as a pedagogic device, enabling the student to continue writing, without returning prematurely to postgraduate studies.

- TB -

The best of writing environments are too often inked from the well of tragedy. Darkness provides the consummate quill for creativity, imagination and innovation. Teachers of writing, from first year to postgraduate level, must work with and through pain and test their own commitment to honesty and compassion. Without supervising the whole person, we are doomed to embrace the mediocre, banal and ordinary. But by riding the waves of sorrow, the revelatory may flood the page.