Memoir That

     After my dad died, my life and my thinking changed in a few major ways - more ways than I could write about now. During that period after his death, I decided that I wanted to write about my life and my family and my experience with Dad having cancer. I had a few reasons motivating me. The first is that I'm a writer by nature. I've kept a journal for as long as I can remember. The second is that it seemed like it would help me contain some of the unruly feelings (read: anxiety/panic/mentally hitting the ceiling like a helium balloon with air rushing out of it) that I encountered in my pre-grief, during the 15 months between when Dad was diagnosed and when he died, as well as the grief over the past two-and-a-half years. By writing things down I would be forced to organize my thoughts, make some sense of things, and perhaps have a cathartic experience that moved me closer to accepting the course of events. Maybe ratchet down the anxiety that I've had since that time, too. And, finally, I wanted to capture and pay tribute to some of the special relationships I've had including the one with my dad.

     "I feel like I have a book in me," I said to my mom when I was filling her in on the class I'd be taking.

     "You probably do. D., our family friend, is always saying you write better than some of the authors she reads," she said.

     "Shes's sweet," I said, making a mental note of how much I liked our friend D. 

     I've recently had quite the opportunity to write for a memoir class I'm taking at a nearby University. This term is focused on generating material, next is organizing material, and finally is polishing material. It runs Fall through Spring. It's definitely a commitment and nothing like I expected.

     On the first day of class, I was super jazzed. Our professor seemed kind, fun and a tiny bit neurotic, which, hello, I can totally handle. She told us that there would be a snack sign-up sheet going around so we had something to munch on during our break time during the three hour class. And, she clarified that although she knew five or six people from various place, there was NO in crowd among the few dozen people in our class. She said that if she was in a group and some of the people already knew each other that she'd automatically consider herself to be out of that group. Maybe she said she'd be jealous. Anyway, it was endearing. All that and the chairs and desks were super comfortable and we learned that multiple people who had taken the class before went on to become published. This is wonderful and I'm totally supposed to be here! I remember thinking.

     The first few classes were nice but now, six weeks later, my memoir honeymoon period has ended. I trudged my way along a thousand mile hike in one of our memoir class books, Wild, with an author whose voice that I didn't grow to like until she hit about mile 800. (Spoiler alert: her mom died of cancer in the first part of the book, she has a meltdown, she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.) I've had plenty of meltdowns, I've done marathon hikes (okay, only for a week, but still), and ditto on the parent thing only it was my dad instead of my mom. I won't ruin the rest of the book for you. 

     Our second book, Drinking: A Love Story, was totally brutal and incredibly well-written. The writer, Caroline Knapp, talks about her twenty years as a highly-functioning alcoholic and a successful writer/editor. Her life is absolute tortured chaos and her mom and dad both die. I think they both died of cancer but I had to skip from the chapter on having a double life dating two men and hitting rock bottom to help and healing.

     "This book is going to kill me," I said to my boss on one of our twelve hour days involving ferry travel time. "I just got to the part where she traded her anorexia for alcoholism."

     "Yeah, I read a few pages when you were over there writing. I couldn't take it," she said.

     The writer herself died at age 42 of lung cancer.

     Class itself has been equally brutal. Each week we give each other feedback on the pieces we've written. This past week my classmates wrote about becoming widowed at an extremely young age, another person nearly dying in Alaska, and another being sexually assaulted as a five year-old by a group of teens. I had to leave the room and it took me a day to recover from the rawness of hearing people's stories. I don't even like to watch the local news and that's people I've never met or shared memoir class break time snacks with. It's amazing what people go through and that they find a way to come out the other side with the wherewithal to sit down at a computer and create something artful. Oh, and one of our guest speakers was a widow whose husband died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. (Her book is The Alchemy of Loss, which I bought, and cried my way through the first few chapters until I tabled it and went and bought some more spirituality and self help books.)

     I was most unprepared for how difficult it would be to revisit the topics I've wanted to write about. This seems straightforward enough, but it's proven to be tough. Am I ready to relive some of those moments when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, when his treatment was so hard, when my anxiety was going through the roof, when I had to say goodbye? Do I have the ability now to do that when I'm already freaking out about another round of holidays that don't resemble the ones that I grew up with? Do I want to remember the little details and document them? Can I revisit the conversation I eavesdropped on from the other room when the end was nearing and the hospice pastor talked to Dad about his own death? Today on a walk I was wondering about at which point did my dad's sister B. call to say her final goodbyes to him. She had to call because she was back in Pennsylvania taking care of my grandma who died ten days after my dad. Opening all of that back up right now seems like bad timing. I didn't budget for that much therapy and herbal happy pills my naturopath gives me really only do so much.

     A few weeks ago I was making cookies and my girlfriend was upstairs reading my piece for the week. I was getting ready to submit it to have all of my classmates give me feedback for my first class review. I had been feeling really out of sorts and panicky about what type of feedback I'd get, how vulnerable it was to share my story, how difficult it is to figure out what to write about, and how challenging it is to make it fit in seven pages. And, most of all, how not ready I was to be revisiting some of the harder times. She pointed out that I don't have to be writing about all of this. I took the cookies out of the oven and submitted my first paper. I haven't been able to read most of the feedback write-ups that my classmates gave me. They're tucked away in my closet deep in my file area.

   Now I'm torn about what to do. Do I bail on the memoir class and spend more time doing yoga or hanging out with my cat? Write on sunnier topics like how amazing and positive my best friend M. is and how he's brightened my life since the minute we met? (Heart you, M.) Focus on learning the writing techniques and use them later when it's not during the holidays? I haven't decided yet but it feels good to write. And though I haven't figured it out, I have a hunch that this term will be me writing about gardening as a kid with my grandma and going on adventures. And if the next book we read in class is a downer I'm going to read my first Shopaholic and Sister book and call it good.