John Richard Wraight embraces emotional friction with fiction
PLYMOUTH — After the loss of his first wife Ruthann, John Richard Wraight faced grief the likes of which he had never known. They were married from June 24, 1959 to Jan. 1, 2018.
After a period of time dealing with the many and compounding emotions that impact an individual when they
are dealing with loss, Wraight found comfort writing fiction. He started writing at the age of 79 and published his first book “The Dance” in 2018.
He has since written and published two more books, “The circle” and “an Invitation to Dinner”, and is editing his fourth, “Knothole”. “a lot of my stuff deals with, or I try to deal with life the way it is. It’s not all butterflies and fun stuff. a lot of it is pretty raw. Life gets that way. People are that way. If you look out and see people out there. There are people who are kind and considerate and wouldn’t say a bad word to save their own life. But then there are the other kind and there are those other kind in my book.”
“an Invitation to Dinner” impacts the course of his life. “It’s rather similar to my own life, but a lot of it is made up. Everything I write comes from some of my own experiences, but they are embellished and changed.”
“an Invitation to Dinner” confronts grief and loss. “How a man handles the grief, or doesn’t handle it I should say.” Through the main character James, Wraight explores the depth of human emotion and grief from anger to suicidal thoughts. “James, the man in the book, when he tries to re-enter into a life, you know — after trying to actually drink himself to death or get in a car wreck by driving like a crazy man down the highway at 90 miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic — that sort of thing. When he tries to get back in to things, he tries to go out to eat. He can’t even go in to a place. Drives by. ‘I was in there with her. I was in there with her. I was in there with her. I can’t go in there. I can’t go in there.’ So he goes back home and gets something to eat and pours another cocktail. That’s all in there.”
Taken from the forward, Wraight described the frustrating interaction some people experience when navigating grief and loss. “as the emotional roller coaster speeds along, James finds the religious community to be of little solace after Roberta dies. He feels abandoned. He feels he must deal with his grief, his sadness, and yes, even his guilt, by himself. He tries to make sense of his loss, but doesn’t have much success. The people who risk interacting with him thought they understood his situation, state of mind. James found, however, that most people wanted to steer clear of him. He found that most people wanted to avoid those like him… those in despair. Those that braved interaction fell short of alleviating his pain. all their good intentions, their standard cliche´s and their anemic attempts to help, fell short, and were viewed as feeble, insulting, and totally lacking in understanding.”
Some of his characters speak plainly and sometimes even harshly. He empathized with those who don’t know what to say when confronted with someone’s grief. “I never knew what to say to someone who suffered a loss. So I usually didn’t say anything except ‘I’m sorry.’ or something. But I never said things like, ‘I know how you feel.’ or things like that. But, people do that. I know when they did it to me I felt like, ‘I think I’m going to punch you.”
Wraight attempts to empathize with his characters and illustrate them as they would be thinking and feeling. Wraight said that grief is a personal experience. “I read somewhere that grief and dying are alike in that you have to do them alone.” Though he found comfort in writing. Writing even became enjoyable. “It’s fun for me. I’m compelled to do it. I was getting up, I couldn’t sleep. I would get up at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.” He has sat for up to 9 hours at a time having to determine to take a break. “I’ve got this idea, I’ve got to keep going.”
“The circle” is a historical novel set in Marshall county and surrounding areas exploring ancestry while confronting topics including racism and immigration. Taken from “The circle”, “as the diameter of the circle lengthens, more and more people enter! Soon we shall discover that we are related to everyone! Whoever lived and everyone who ever will be! Even so! We the people who occupy this planet remain bitterly divided! The chasm that separates us appears wide, dark and deep — unbridgeable. Only after we are able to recognize that we as a people are not so different…we will find peace! It is only after we cross to the other side that we find ourselves!”
Though Wraight himself suffered deep anguish grieving the loss of his first wife, he embraced life and love fully again and remarried. For those who would be hesitant to risk that type of pain again he said “It’s worth it. absolutely.” He pointed lovingly to a canvas print of himself with his wife Glenda on the mantle.