h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This sounds like a creative writing exercise. 'Imagine that you have lost your husband and you want to write to your friend about it'.

It's very easy to kill people off when you're writing stories, without really thinking about the emotional blow your protagonist would suffer in the circumstances.

We were thinking it could have been in relation to a classic of French literature where a character gets widowed.
Not an easy exercise for teenagers...

No, but they will surprise you! I gave a class of 16- and 17-year-olds the task of writing as if they lived in Germany in the 1930s and were watching the rise of Nazism. (These were American kids, although one was Vietnamese American and one was an Austrian exchange student.)

The insight in their answers blew me away! Some had empathy with the parents who saw their kids turn on them. Another imagined he was a bureaucrat who 'went along to get along'. Yet another wrote a poem...

Like I said: you never know what will turn up in an exercise like that!

It doesn't have to be a family member. One of my neighbors shovelled too much snow, and died of a heart attack. He had been filling potholes in teh road for years, and had taken turns watering the flowers around the perimeter of the Park for years.

I'm not looking at tis is just a writing exercise. When I had a virtual session with my psychiatrist today, I mentioned that I was grieving for my neighbor. (I also mentioned crying every night for a week before and after the Solstice).

Some of the things we lose may be tangible (lost jobs, lost chances to meet people face to face), and some may be intangible, such as light that is strong enough to combat Winter Depression.

We need to learn to treat ourselves well, or at least less badly....