Aaron M. Simmons is originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and moved to Boulder, Colorado, after a stint as an IT volunteer in Peace Corps Philippines (2006-2008). Lately a solo father of three. Writes computer software for a living, and sometimes words. He wrote the book “widow- widower- widowest- ” with the help of journals kept by his wife, Polly, before her death in 2022.
SunLit: The backstory of your book begins with the process of creating the memorial service and eulogy after your wife Polly’s death. Walk us through the process that led you to write, or co-author really, “widow— widower— widowest— .”
Aaron Simmons: After I wrote and delivered Polly’s eulogy I found that it wasn’t enough. How can someone’s entire life be summed up in a one-hour memorial service, a 10-minute eulogy, a 2-minute slide show? I found myself wanting to share the eulogy with people that hadn’t been able to attend the service, but I didn’t know why at first. I had this impulse that I wanted to do something more to commemorate this person who was so important to me.
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During that time I was going on these really long hikes into the mountains while the kids were at school. I was talking to myself, talking to Polly, trying to figure out what had happened to us. Writing her eulogy had uncorked something, and the words kept coming out. Eventually I realized I couldn’t remember everything I was thinking up, so I started writing it down. It kind of burst out of me.
At the same time I started reading Polly’s journal that she kept on her bedside table. It took me a while to gin up my courage to read it — I didn’t know what to expect. It felt like a violation of her privacy to read it, but I was missing her so badly it was the only way I could access her voice.
What I found was so good — so funny, or so deep, or so poignant — that I felt I had to share it. I would type up her passages and email them around. But even that wasn’t enough after a while. There was all this great stuff in her journal (and on her computer) that felt like it wanted to be shared, like Polly had been trying out ideas that she wanted people to see.
“widow- widower- widowest- : a grief mosaic”
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At some point these two threads came together, and the idea was just there: My writing and Polly’s writing needed to get together. I could collaborate with her on a work of art, even after she was gone.
SunLit: You’ve said you didn’t really consider yourself a writer prior to this project. What gave you the confidence and determination to keep writing once you’d written the eulogy?
Simmons: Once I understood that what I was doing was a collaboration with Polly, that the book was for her, like a last gift, I had all the determination I needed. I knew her writing was great and that people would want to read it, but I had to provide the context, the why-should-I-care framing that would bring people to it. Which meant that I had to make sure that what I was writing was good enough to sit alongside hers.
SunLit: Tell us about the excerpt you chose, why you selected it and how it fits into the book as a whole.
Simmons: I chose one of Polly’s pieces because, well, I like her writing better. This piece actually isn’t from her journal but from a draft letter I found where she was responding to the “Dear Amy” advice column. We would read these aloud to each other every morning, and this particular one just really bugged her, to the point that she wrote this response. I don’t know if she ever sent it off or not, but it was never published.
Her letter shows a moment in her life: what it was like to be a mother of several small children, what kinds of problems she had to solve, and her impatience with being judged for her solutions. I make a small cameo in it.
SunLit: Did writing this book, and exploring her writings, lead to discovering new aspects of Polly’s life, or did it just confirm what you’d known about her all along?
Simmons: I was struck by how honest and self-effacing she was, even in her own mind. There wasn’t anything new in the journal, in the sense of some kind of secret she was keeping or some kind of topic she was afraid to talk about. But everything I thought I knew was given a greater depth, a fuller color.
SunLit: How did you find your voice for your portions of the narrative? Did you feel as if you were speaking/writing to her or to a wider audience?
Simmons: I think because I started with a eulogy I continued to address that same audience, though there are parts that are written to Polly. I was trying to explain what had happened, and what was continuing to happen. I needed to explain what grief felt like, from the inside.
My writing voice is more or less how I talk in my head, though it doesn’t always come out that way when I speak aloud!
SunLit: What do you imagine Polly would say if she were to read this book?
Simmons: Imagining what our lost loved ones would say is a constant preoccupation of the grieving. Polly was always throwing me curve balls — I never could quite anticipate what her reaction would be to something. Would she be mad that I shared her private writings with the world? Or aghast that such a big deal was being made of her? (She was never great at taking compliments.)
I hope that Polly would appreciate the book as it was intended: that I took our partnership seriously, to the point that I wanted to continue to collaborate with her even after she died. That even now, after all this time, she’s with me.
SunLit: Is there an overarching message you’d like readers to take from this book?
Simmons: I didn’t write the book with a message as such. It’s not didactic like that. This is not a book that offers “one weird trick” for getting over grief. What the book does is show a highly specific view into what grief felt like for me. My hope is that this specificity wraps around to the general and gives grievers (or soon-to-be grievers) a kind of companionship. I have walked this road; I am still walking it. If you are also walking this road, perhaps we can walk it together.
SunLit: Polly’s sections in the book are rendered in a font made from her own handwriting. Can you tell us how that came about?
Simmons: Years ago, I think before we had kids, Polly used a font-from-your-handwriting service, where you fill out a grid with all the letters (upper and lowercase) and some punctuation, snail-mail the form off, and they send you a TrueType Font (.ttf) file. I had completely forgotten about it when I ran across “Pollys1st.ttf” in the Downloads folder of our family laptop.
I was already in the midst of putting the book together, and finding her font felt serendipitous, almost like a message. In including Polly’s writing my goal was to have her speak for herself — what better way to do that than to have it be in her own handwriting?
(Note that due to the limitations of webpages her excerpt on SunLit isn’t rendered that way, but it is in the book.)
SunLit: Was this book a one-time venture into literature for you, or can you envision doing more – either related or unrelated to the idea of processing grief?
Simmons: A friend asked me what was next, and I thought, “There’s a next?” I thought our book was going to be a one-time thing, but I continue to have ideas, mostly around processing grief. You’d think that since I read so much nerdy genre fiction I would have a fantasy book in the works, but I don’t. I don’t think I have anything to contribute there. But grief, well, maybe I have some more things to say about that.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: “The Summer Book” by Tove Jansson. I recently discovered Jansson’s “Moomin” children’s books (sort of Finnish Winnie-the-Pooh) and have enjoyed reading them aloud to my kids. But it’s this book for adults that has really won me over. It’s a poigniant, sad, hilarious collection of vignettes about a young girl and her grandmother during their summers on an island in the Finnish Archipelago.
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “Song of the Wild” by Allan W. Eckert. It’s this strange story about a kid who can project his consciousness into animals. He can’t control them, but he can experience what it’s like to be that animal. There isn’t much of a plot; it’s more of a series of wonderfully descriptive episodes about being a fly, an owl, a horse. I was a daydreamy kid, so it really spoke to me when the book had this character who would space out all the time.
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Every scene has to have some kind of tension; it has to go somewhere.
Favorite fictional literary character: Ursula K. LeGuin’s Sparrowhawk, from her “Earthsea” books. Sparrowhawk has all these incredible gifts, the greatest mage ever, which is a trope. What isn’t a trope is that in his arrogance and pride Sparrowhawk absolutely runs aground, nearly destroying himself (and maybe the world). In the process he learns deep lessons about responsibility, self-knowledge, and power. What’s important isn’t that he’s so powerful, but that he has the wisdom of how to use it. You don’t usually see that in genre fiction.
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): I love graphic novels and comic books, and even though I will give you a dissertation on how comics are more than just superheroes, I have to admit that I love me some superheroes.
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Digital. I got a giant iPad just so I could read graphic novels on it!
One book you’ve read multiple times: I read “The Lord of the Rings” aloud to my kids every few years.
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: Noise-cancelling headphones. I often write in coffee shops because I enjoy the noise and the busyness. But being able to cancel out an annoyingly loud conversation (or one-sided conference call!) is crucial.
Best antidote for writer’s block: A long, long walk. Maybe even a hike.Most valuable beta reader: Kate Lumdsen, an author friend of my wife Polly. I took a risk and showed her an early version of my (our) manuscript. Kate not only gave me valuable editorial feedback, she opened the door to how to get this thing published, even introducing me to my publisher, Motina Books. Please check out her upcoming middle-grade book, “Confessions of a Mango.”