Memoir Writing: Embracing Life’s Pivotal Moments

I still remember the beautiful sunny Friday, September 11, 1987, peeling carrots in the kitchen for my husband’s 40^th birthday party. The baby wasn’t due for three weeks, but he had other ideas. As John returned home from the hospital, where he had just undergone chemotherapy treatment for his cancer, I said, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to turn around and go back to the hospital. The baby is coming.”

And so it was that I wrote about this in my memoir, Again in a Heartbeat. Our son was born at 4:12 p.m., in time for John to return home and celebrate his birthday with friends, as we had ordered all the platters of food and it was too late to cancel. I stayed in the hospital with Daniel, whose life would not have been possible if his father had been diagnosed six months earlier than he was, as the operation had left us unable to ever conceive again.

When Daniel turned 14 on September 11, 2001, I was working as a reporter for a major daily newspaper, so of course, his birthday plans were derailed by a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. And just like the day he was born, it was a beautiful, sunny day with flawless blue September skies. How strange life is.

Writing that memory of my husband’s and son’s birthday, and recalling it in as much detail as I can, offers a close look at the memoir writer’s journey. It transports the writer back to that moment, time, and place. Sunlight on the kitchen counter, the quick phone call to my mother, who said it wasn’t possible as the baby wasn’t due for three weeks. The exact details of the memory may have changed over time, but the feelings remain poignant, even as the years pass by. So we share with our readers the days of our lives, especially those that ultimately impacted us and still do.

It takes a strong person to go back and write the hardest times, but as they say, we don’t have forever, and if we don’t write it, the memory, the life, will be forgotten. Often, we reach for what Julia Cameron calls in The Artist’s Way, “blocks that slow our growth. If we are honest with ourselves, we all know which blocks are the toxic ones for us. Clue: this is the block we defend as our right.”

Is our writing derailed by fear, by something as toxic as diversions such as social media, by eating too much or drinking too much, or by saying, “I’ll get to it tomorrow”? And sometimes, even when we do get to it, we don’t really “get to it”…that being the emotional honesty, or the heart of what we are trying to say, because it is too scary. My husband is sick, so I will write about the treatment and his healing and not my terrible fear that he could die and I will be left alone.

Then we pull out that special photo, or another perfect September day triggers a memory and helps unblock the writer. Which details to include, which to leave out, who is important in that scene, and why that scene and not another come with time, with daily writing and work to improve our craft.

We care for ourselves by lighting a candle, closing the door on the distractions of the outside world, brewing a cup of tea or coffee, and pouring it into our favorite mug.

I remember that September day when Daniel was born; I was a child myself. I had no idea what was in store: the long years without John, the years of raising two sons on my own, and also how much I missed John. “A woman alone” became a tentative title for another memoir, and although I never used it, it served as a useful template to answer that all-important question: what is my story about? But thanks to memoir, I wrote about life’s pivotal moments as best as I could, when I could.