By Anne M. Hamilton, M.F.A. –

I’ve been writing a play about four women who have lost their men accidentally or suddenly. Some losses happen in fatal accidents and some through illness. I am sharing in this column a monologue from my chamber-play-with-dance entitled ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT.

This monologue is given by Mary, a teenager who is modeled after me. It takes place as she visits the gravesite of her best friend John, who has been killed in a car crash. Though short, the action in the writing is packed with the heralds of grieving: inability to eat, a sense of helplessness, anger, reflection on earlier life experiences, and the desire to control one’s life experiences – completely – from this time on.

Mary has a good deal of bravery because she does choose to carry on, but it is important to note the depression that has struck her quite deeply, even causing her to want to end her life as the emotional pain becomes overwhelming. She also begins to abuse food as a way of controlling her life.

ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT is ultimately about healing – about moving through the process of grief until the mind, body and mind/heart can stabilize and reach some sense of acceptance of the present and hope for the future.

I hope that this monologue will bring meaning and understanding to those who are currently grieving, and that it will serve as a warning sign to help them identify the destructive behaviors that often follow the loss of a loved one, so that they may be addressed.

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An Excerpt from

ANOTHER WHITE SHIRT

A Chamber-Play-with-Dance

? 2009 All Rights Reserved

Act Two, Scene 6

??(Lights up on MARY at JOHN’s grave, very weak and thin, wrapped in a blanket. She has a paper bag with deli food and is eating take-out soup near his grave. A harsh wind is blowing. It seems as if she has been talking to him out loud for a while.)

MARY:

Ugh, why did they give me those stupid horse pill antibiotics? I had a 102-degree temperature for four days! Then they give me these horse pills and I threw up. I am not that big!

(Beat)

You know, that’s the first time I had ever thrown up. Never as a baby. Not even in high school – all my friends were drinking and getting drunk and throwing up and eating too much and throwing up. Binging and purging, binging and purging. I never knew what it was like…to throw up…Not even when you died.

I couldn’t eat for days. I think I lost 10 pounds in a week. My mother was worried sick about me. Then I remember. I ate something – a half a tuna fish sandwich, without the crusts, with tomato. That’s when my problems with food started. I started starving myself. Then I started stuffing myself.

I just kept stuffing food down my throat the make the pain go away. Stuffing and pressing and pushing and tightening. Until then I played it safe -? I controlled my future and my present, my grades, my feelings. I controlled my skin and my organs. I didn’t eat too much, I didn’t drink too much. I avoided every type of excess or pleasure. I took in information. I learned everything like a god-damned encyclopedia. And look at me – I want to kill myself. I should have thrown up my whole past a long time ago.

(Pause)

And now I cry. I have sad eyes. I have a nervous breakdown every month or on Sundays when I slow down enough to notice how I’m feeling. I can’t be in a relationship. I wish I could throw up again. I’d throw up my life and start again.

(Pause. The wind starts blowing harder. She reaches out and touches the headstone.)

?I need you to forgive me. I need…to forgive myself. To let you go.

(The wind picks up to a full gale. She lays her head down on the grass on his grave. Lights fade.)

End of scene.

Anne Hamilton?is an award-winning Columbia University graduate and the principal of Hamilton Dramaturgy. To ask Anne for help on developing your own play, screenplay, poetry, fiction or non-fiction, please contact her at hamiltonlit@gmail.com

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