Kelly S. Thompson explores deep grief from losing her sister in memoir Still, I Cannot Save You
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open for submissions until March 1
Kelly S. Thompson knows a thing or two about writing about grief. She was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize for The Edge of Change. The Edge of Change was supposed to be part of her memoir Still, I Cannot Save You, before it was cut in the editing process.
In Still, I Cannot Save You, Thompson explores her relationship with her older sister, Meghan. As the two grow into adulthood, their paths diverge and Meghan faces an addiction that drives a wedge in their relationship. When Meghan becomes a mother, the sisters are able to face past hurts together. But a shocking new diagnosis pushes the pair to share all that they can in the time that they have.
Thompson is a retired military officer who holds an MFA and a Ph.D. in creative writing. She has been published in Chatelaine, Maclean's, the Globe and Mail and more. Her memoir Girls Need Not Apply was named among the Globe and Mail's top 100 books of 2019. In 2021, she made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize for Dear CAF.
The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize is open for submissions until March 1, 2024. You can submit original, unpublished nonfiction that is up to 2,000 words in length. Nonfiction includes memoir, biography, humour writing, essay (including personal essay), travel writing and feature articles.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
Thompson spoke to CBC Books about how she wrote Still, I Cannot Save You.
A memoir of sisterhood
"I had a hard time defining this book for a long time. At the end of the day, the subtitle says a lot. It's a memoir of sisterhood, love and letting go, but it's a lot more complex than that. I used to say, 'Oh, it's a book about grief,' but this is a book about how we love people who hurt us and how we return to one another at the same time.
I felt that I had honoured her. I thought I had honoured my sister's memory and the request she made that I write about it.- Kelly S. Thompson
"I also think it's a book about how we struggle when people make decisions as well. In my sister's case, as she was dying, how do I cope with some of the very hard decisions she's making that are going to have this lasting impact? It was really a book about love between sisters above all else. Difficult love between sisters.
"I felt that I had honoured her. I thought I had honoured my sister's memory and the request she made that I write about it. I sometimes think there were deep parts of my sister's life that she felt she couldn't discuss, either out of shame, either out of pressure, out of an inability to find the words and inability to face those hard things. And I wanted to give that to her."
The challenges of writing nonfiction
"The biggest challenge was that I was writing it very closely after my sister's death, so the grief was so fresh. The other biggest impact was I was very aware that my sister left behind two children and I needed to strike a balance between telling the story as my sister asked me to, while simultaneously respecting the choices my sister made that ultimately brought these two beautiful children into my life. That was a really big hurdle.
"I tried to not being aware of it as much as I can when I'm in the writing process. It's funny because when I teach writing creative nonfiction, I'm always saying there are things that are a later you problem and sometimes the panic over upsetting people, especially in memoir, can serve as its own silence and that was really risky for me. I saw my sister as someone who was in an abusive relationship and spent most of her life in abusive relationships, with the impact of silence.
"I had to remind myself at the end of the day that I owed it to her. I owed it to her to speak our truth, but I also owed it to some later version of my niece and nephew, who ideally I hope one day will come to this book and see the multitudes of ways in which they were loved and are loved. So I try to not be aware while I'm doing it, because it will completely mess me up and keep me from making progress."
The power of telling your own story
"I hope that [readers] take away that love can be complicated and just because it doesn't follow a storybook route doesn't make it less beautiful. If she had died before we were able to come back to one another, I'd still feel like we did right by each other. We did what we could. Our love was ugly and messy and sometimes we were screaming at each other and we are super emotional, loud women and so it had a lot of blow up capacity, but we loved each other really well and that was a real gift.
Love can be complicated and just because it doesn't follow a storybook root doesn't make it less beautiful.- Kelly S. Thompson
"My PhD is in writing about grief and trauma. And so I was also, from an academic perspective, studying this approach while I was writing this book. Because the smart thing you do right after someone you love dies is two months later decide to do a PhD.
"It was like I needed to make sense of it academically to understand why I was doing this to myself because my family was very confused, like why are you sitting with these horrific memories? It was hard enough the first time, but I was always in it and living it. There was no escaping it, and I felt like when I really threw myself into it full on. It let me commit to the process of feeling like I've made some hard choices about what I put on the page, but I knew I was going to make them from the moment I started.
"I wrote part of this book in the hospice while she was there beside me. While she was hearing me type, I read certain parts out to her. And when she would get sort of panicked, she would say, can you just write something, it doesn't even have to be words. I just want to hear the sound of you typing and so that drove me on. My sister wants to hear me typing.
"How I managed to create anything in that state, I don't know. But there's something about grief that sets your senses on fire. And I was so attuned to everything around me that I wanted to capture it. People are often surprised that I did write it, but I was so motivated by both my sister and by calming her by a sound that she enjoyed."
Kelly S. Thompson's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
