I had done a lot of historical research but had barely begun my novel "On Agate Hill" when my beloved son Josh died in his sleep on Oct. 26, 2003. The cause of death was acute myocardiopathy, the collapse of an enlarged heart brought about in part, I believe, by all the weight he had gained while taking an anti-psychotic drug. He was 33; he had been sick for half his life, doing daily battle with the brain disorder that first struck during the summer between his junior and senior years in high school.

In many ways, our old Josh died then -- that wild funny boy of 17, that brilliant musician, poet, break dancer, skateboarder and camper.

The hospitalizations began, alternating with intermittent, heartbreaking tries at returning to normalcy, then to group homes and day programs. Finally the new drug clozapine gave him back his life, or some of it, in 1992. He moved out of the hospital into a group home, then into an apartment. He completed a vocational rehabilitation program. He got a job.

And we got to know Josh all over again, now a huge whimsical man of immense kindness, with a special sort of gravity and eccentric insight. In this later stage of schizophrenia, he was like the bodhisattva, a person who has achieved the final apotheosis, beyond desire and self. It was comforting to be with him. As a friend said, he was a man like a mountain.

But then we lost him for good.

This time, my grief -- and rage -- were indescribable: "oceanic," to use a doctor's terminology. He told me that there are basically two physiological reactions to grief. Some people sleep a lot, gain weight, become depressed and lethargic.

I had the other reaction -- I felt like I was standing with my finger stuck into an electrical outlet, all the time. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't read, I couldn't eat, I couldn't remember anything, anything at all. I forgot how to drive to the grocery store. I couldn't find the school where I had taught for 20 years. I left a trail of glasses, jackets, pocketbooks everywhere I went. In group situations, I was apt to blurt out wildly inappropriate remarks, like a person with social Tourette syndrome. I cried all the time. I lost 30 pounds.

Finally, enough

Weeks passed, then months. I was wearing out my husband and my friends. But I couldn't calm down. It was almost as if I had become addicted to these days on fire, to this intensity. I felt that if I lost it, I'd lose him even more.

Finally I went to a psychiatrist, a kind, rumpled man who formed his hands into a little tent and listened to me scream and cry and rave for several weeks.

Then came the day when he held up his hand and said, "Enough."

"What?" I stared at him.

"I am going to give you a new prescription," my psychiatrist said, taking out his pad and pen. He began to write.

"Oh good," I said, wanting more drugs, anything.

He ripped the prescription out and handed it to me.

"Write fiction every day," it said in his crabbed little hand.

I just looked at him.

"I have been listening to you for some time," he said, "and it has occurred to me that you are an extremely lucky person, since you are a writer, because it is possible for you to enter into a narrative not your own, for extended periods of time. To live in someone else's story, as it were. I want you to do this every day for two hours. I believe that it will be good for you."

"I can't," I said. "I haven't written a word since Josh died."

"Do it," he said.

"I can't think straight, I can't concentrate," I said.

"Then just sit in the chair," he said. "Show up for work."

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