Full Circle

The other day, I blogged about beginning your novel. Now I'll blog about endings.

I wish life had neat little endings. We talk about "closure" all the time. But really, I have found my life has no closure. Grief, for example, can strike me ten years after the fact and bring me to my knees as surely as the day a death first happened. Old relationships don't end neatly. I try to be "in the moment" and let go, but occasionally old hurts rise to the surface. I found out recently that someone said something unkind about me to Oldest Daughter. She said the person said it in a joking manner, but it didn't sound funny to me. I aim for closure, but I don't often get it.

But then I have my novels.

My characters nearly always get closure. They may not get a perfect Happily Ever After, but they aren't plagued by old baggage either. They get their answers, their closure, their new love, the ability to move on. Whatever they seek--solving a murder, finding love, saying good-bye to someone . . . they usually get. The path may have twists and turns, but in the end . . . SOMETHING happens.

Because in real life, sometimes something DOESN'T. I will never forget losing a friend in a plane crash. No bodies were recovered. For years, I would "see" him places. Doppelgangers. Because there was nothing to say good-bye to. Just ash.

Not so in my books. My characters, even the ones where it doesn't end well, get that "something"--that dramatic moment.

The other part of my endings is a sense of full circle. I nearly always reference something in the last chapter that happened in chapter one. In The Roofer the last line mirrors almost exactly the first chapter.

I like to think that when I die, I will have come full circle. I will have a sense of having accomplished what I wanted with no regrets. A completed circle is a sign of a life well-lived, I think.

Thoughts?