- Olivia Brooks
- Jan 12
- 2 min read
About the Work: Sarah Hare
In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Sarah Hare's work in SER Vol. 43.1.
“Results of My Depression Screening Three Weeks After My Dad Died”
Soon after my Dad died, I started writing down fragments about him that I wanted to process or remember. These snippets had no narrative throughline. The next spring, I read Miller and Paola’s Tell It Slant, where I learned about hermit crab essays. I was fascinated with how their nonlinearity mimicked grief. The shell was the content; the structure told a story that the narrative couldn’t tell alone. I read Gwendolyn Wallace’s “Math 1619” in the back of the book–an essay about taking tests as a Black student that took the form of a test–and I was in awe of how it forced the reader to feel what the narrator felt, viscerally, as if we were taking the test alongside her. I wanted this so badly for my piece–for readers to feel the rollercoaster ride of losing someone that you admired and were utterly disappointed in, for whom simple platitudes aren’t enough.
Then it clicked–I had done a depression screening for my already-scheduled annual exam a few weeks after Dad died. The screening was a perfect shell, not only because it could hold the disjointed fragments I had collected about Dad, but also because it illustrated the lack of capacity we have for understanding one another after loss. One of my favorite parts of the piece is the absurdity of the narrator trying to rank their habit of replaying how their Dad overdosed: is it a two or a three? What is the numerical value of that kind of pain?
SARAH HARE is a writer living in Southern Indiana. Her work has been published in River Teeth's Beautiful Things, Mutha Magazine, and Five Minutes. In 2024, Sarah received a scholarship to attend the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.