- Joined
- Aug 3, 2005
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- following the breadcrumbs back to AW
I never felt any real reason for not starting my memoir. And yet I've hesitated in really beginning. I have had my share of false starts that never felt right. Or half-hearted attempts just because of the BIC rule.
But last week I received what I thought was a phone call from a much-beloved friend--his name showed up on my caller ID. I hadn't heard from him for a few years, but that didn't negate the close feelings we had for each other as friends.
It wasn't my friend calling, though. It was his father, going down the list from my friend's cellphone. Letting everyone who had not yet heard the news that my dear friend had died the week before in a scuba diving accident.
This person had been more than my friend--he was my mentor, my encourager, a brother (in spirit), and even a pain in the ass, sometimes! But always--he was someone in my corner, sometimes fighting for me when I wanted to throw in the towel.
I never realized until he died that almost everything I had written since I met him had been with the idea that someday, his eye would find it. He was my Secret Audience of One, the person I wrote to please. He always promised me that when(!) I have my first book signing, he was going to be the first one in line for that autograph. He told me many times that my story is important enough to be told on the printed page. He said this to me as a fellow writer and lover of stories, not as a way of blowing me off or saying what he thought I wanted to hear.
And so--besides the questions I always hoped I would get to ask him--I am left with only memories as mementos. I know that his parents did not ever really get to know this person the way I knew him; they knew him as only what he wasn't, to them. As if they were viewing him through some odd-shaped scope that gave them a view limited only to what they imagined he was, which was only a splinter of the whole.
In the past few weeks, though, I realized that I can either be overwhelmed by my grief or I can put it to use. That his death has given my memoir more of a mission that I could ever give it--that it's not just my story, but it's his story, too, partly. Because if I tried to tell before he died, could I be so honest in my telling of what was only his to tell, before?
I don't know that I could ever say or have said what I wanted to in my memoir if he hadn't died. I'll never know. But I am putting it to good use, to proper use, hopefully.
So I can finally say that I have started my memoir, about a time when I was lost in a blizzard inside my head--a man came along and threw me a rope. Sometimes I ran after it, other times I cursed it. There were times I imagine I had to have been pulled by it. And as I began to find the way out, this man had the good sense to remind me that he was just holding the rope that had been attached to God, all along.
My point being that it's surprising what can hold us back from saying what we need to say. And that current events can shape our outlooks of the past and give us a hook for them long after we'd think anything useful can happen to do that, now.
I'd welcome any comment or input regarding the idea.
But last week I received what I thought was a phone call from a much-beloved friend--his name showed up on my caller ID. I hadn't heard from him for a few years, but that didn't negate the close feelings we had for each other as friends.
It wasn't my friend calling, though. It was his father, going down the list from my friend's cellphone. Letting everyone who had not yet heard the news that my dear friend had died the week before in a scuba diving accident.
This person had been more than my friend--he was my mentor, my encourager, a brother (in spirit), and even a pain in the ass, sometimes! But always--he was someone in my corner, sometimes fighting for me when I wanted to throw in the towel.
I never realized until he died that almost everything I had written since I met him had been with the idea that someday, his eye would find it. He was my Secret Audience of One, the person I wrote to please. He always promised me that when(!) I have my first book signing, he was going to be the first one in line for that autograph. He told me many times that my story is important enough to be told on the printed page. He said this to me as a fellow writer and lover of stories, not as a way of blowing me off or saying what he thought I wanted to hear.
And so--besides the questions I always hoped I would get to ask him--I am left with only memories as mementos. I know that his parents did not ever really get to know this person the way I knew him; they knew him as only what he wasn't, to them. As if they were viewing him through some odd-shaped scope that gave them a view limited only to what they imagined he was, which was only a splinter of the whole.
In the past few weeks, though, I realized that I can either be overwhelmed by my grief or I can put it to use. That his death has given my memoir more of a mission that I could ever give it--that it's not just my story, but it's his story, too, partly. Because if I tried to tell before he died, could I be so honest in my telling of what was only his to tell, before?
I don't know that I could ever say or have said what I wanted to in my memoir if he hadn't died. I'll never know. But I am putting it to good use, to proper use, hopefully.
So I can finally say that I have started my memoir, about a time when I was lost in a blizzard inside my head--a man came along and threw me a rope. Sometimes I ran after it, other times I cursed it. There were times I imagine I had to have been pulled by it. And as I began to find the way out, this man had the good sense to remind me that he was just holding the rope that had been attached to God, all along.
My point being that it's surprising what can hold us back from saying what we need to say. And that current events can shape our outlooks of the past and give us a hook for them long after we'd think anything useful can happen to do that, now.
I'd welcome any comment or input regarding the idea.
