Mary Monoky speaks
Writer • Speaker • Exploring the Long Middle
He Thought That Part of Him Was Gone
A reflective essay about creativity, identity, and the parts of ourselves that survive loss and limitation. In He Thought That Part of Him Was Gone, Mary Monoky explores how purpose and joy can quietly return through unexpected moments of connection—and how the soul often remembers what matters long before we do. A companion piece to Compass Point 7 — What Still Matters in My Soul?
COMPASS POINT 7--WHAT STILL MATTERS IN MY SOULCHRONIC ILLNESSFAMILY & RELATIONSHIPSNARRATIVE NONFICTIONGRANDPARENT STORIESCOMPASS POINTSREDISCOVERING JOYMEANING AFTER LIFE CHANGESTHE LONG MIDDLESOUL & PRESENCE
Mary Monoky
5/27/20261 min read
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He Thought That Part of Him Was Gone
Then his granddaughter handed him a piece of clay.
He thought that part of him was gone.
The part of him that needed to make things.
He had been a builder before the arthritis made building impossible. Not metaphorically. Literally — wood and tools and the satisfaction of a thing that hadn’t existed before and now did.
When his hands could no longer hold what they used to, he went through a long period of quiet fury. He didn’t talk about it. He just stopped making things and told himself that chapter was closed.
He took up other pastimes. Acceptable ones. Quiet ones. Things that didn’t remind him of what he couldn’t do.
He was fine. He told everyone he was fine.
His granddaughter, seven years old, handed him a lump of modeling clay one afternoon and asked him to make her a dog. He started to say he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore.
Instead, he sat down and made the dog.
It took him an hour. His hands ached. The dog looked more like a seal than a dog, and his granddaughter laughed with delight and put it on her windowsill.
Driving home, he understood something he had been avoiding.
The need to make things hadn’t gone anywhere.
He had just been punishing it for what he had lost.
He started working in clay seriously the following month. The medium was different. The satisfaction was identical.
Something in him — something that had been there since childhood, since the first time he held a hammer — exhaled.
There you are.
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Writing about identity, uncertainty, emotional endurance, and learning to live inside changed realities.