Julie’s Journal: September 1997
Julie Showalter: Unpublished Writings1
Julie’s Journal
I spent much of this morning reading one of the documents I discovered among Julie’s computer files long after her death. I know it is a journal but only because the name of the document is “Journal.”2 There are only a handful of entries, less than twenty in all. None of the items are more than four or five paragraphs and most could be easily contained in one screen of this blog’s column.
They appear to be written with an eye toward using them in her writing, and, indeed, I recognize some of the scenes from having read their finished versions in her short stories.
Some parts of the journal describe episodes that took place contemporaneously with or within a few days of Julie’s recording them, others occurred many years previously, and some appear to be ideas for stories rather than accounts of actual events.
The September 1997 Entry
One of the entries, concerning a part of our lives relevant to the time it was written (September 1997), is particularly poignant, presaging the difficulties our older son (AKA The Prodigal, AKA Sam) has experienced during the last three years, beginning fully four years after his mother died and seven years after she wrote these words.
As one might imagine, the Journal notes, including this one, are scribbles (if one can scribble with a keyboard) that contain misspellings, punctuation errors, complete sentences, and other violations of grammatical niceties. I’ve reprinted her words exactly as I found them, preserving the errors Julie would inevitably have corrected. I have added both at the top of this post and at the top of the page containing her text, a photo of the painting, Campesinos Atitlán by Mariano Gonzalez Chavajay, that hangs on our bedroom wall and is mentioned in this Journal entry. (Click on thumbnail for view of larger image.)
In any case, the few lines are easy to follow, and, especially for those who know our family, convey an unexpectedly deep-felt emotional impact.
This entry from Julie’s Journal can be found at Julie’s Journal Entry 9/97
Footnotes
- Julie was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. She was also a prize-winning writer. This blog includes many other posts about her and the unlikely but true story of our romance (See Julie FAQ) as well as several of her short stories and other pieces. Most of Julie’s fully edited and buffed literary efforts are already available under the heading, Julie’s Writings, in “Categories.” Unpublished Julie is a group of pieces I’ve found on her computer or in her office that range from workshop exercises to story fragments to projects set aside to finish at a later day to work that appears, at least to me, to be fully as polished and effective as her published stories. ~back~
- Julie also had a few handwritten journals with comparable content ~back~
