"In the Form of a Child" by Sarah H. Clarke

 – choosing love to last

The child becomes the parent much too young but also just in time.

Sarah H. Clarke lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has privately written non-fiction since her teens. She recently joined the Charlotte Writers Club and looks forward to forging new relationships with fellow writers.  Married with two children and five stepchildren, she and her husband live in an 18th century home that they all restored together. International travel and the study of social sciences and metaphysical topics are among her passions, as well as maintaining a strong connection with our natural environment and inducing the creative flow in all she does. 

Author’s Talk

Writing this story was cathartic, and I am pleased at that transformation.  

Sarah H. Clarke

It’s been five years since Harry died and Madie endured a life-changing experience no child should ever know. I’ve watched her take that experience for what it was, without any misplaced guilt that could have so easily crept into her grieving heart. She continues to step forward confidently with drive and hope for the future. I am so proud of her. I know Harry would be too.    

While that day impacted so many of us personally, the story itself is truly Madie’s. The close and complex relationship she had with her father and being the one with whom he spent his last days on Earth, make it so.  As for me, the perspectives that arise when it’s quiet, those close remembrances felt as an ex-wife, co-parent, and friend, seem too intricate to adequately parse into prose, at least for now. This accounting sought to take a step back and to focus solely on the matter-of-fact happenings, as I knew them.  It’s remarkable that such a limited perspective still cannot mask the profound love Harry and Madie felt for one another, even during the deep unhappiness that marred his last years. 

Harry’s death will forever be a shock. Anyone who knew Harry could easily imagine him lasting well into his 90s, cigarette in hand. He was a kaleidoscopic character.  This short piece could in no way touch upon all of the dimensions that made him a larger-than-life force in so many people’s lives, including mine, my son’s (his stepson) and, of course, Madie’s.  He had vibrant sides that positively impacted his friends and family forever. He had sides that stirred the deepest resentments too. As an ex-wife and co-parent, the latter of those sides displayed more prominently in my mind for a long time – times when I would not have counted Harry as a friend. Writing this piece allowed me to emerge from that fog and remember, with fondness and gratitude, the significance and beauty his influence, however obstinate, left on us all. - Sarah H. Clarke