Day Six: What of Those Who Still Draw Breath?

For Augustine, this question provided the most challenge at the thought of publication. Drafting the book was liberating. No stone was left unturned. But the thought of sending the memoir out into the world was daunting. Some of the people he wrote about are deceased. In a way, the memoir is his farewell to them. But what of the others who still draw breath, who will no doubt read these accounts and see themselves reflected through Augustine’s eyes?

Part of the answer, at least for him, became a process of tracking down individuals with whom he hadn’t spoken since the moments he captured on the page. The book gave him an opening to reach out across time and distance and say hey, you were important enough to me to write about, I respect you enough to discuss your role in the book before I publish it. It wouldn’t be enough to say that the blessing of these individuals and their approval of all he had said about them was immense to Augustine. It was everything, truly, but his reconnection to his history and people he loved and left behind, has been the memoir’s greatest legacy.

Were there parts we revised based on the feedback of these individuals? Yes. This memoir is a celebration of the love these men and women gave to Augustine when he most needed that love. He believed the least he could do was revisit portions that might adversely impact those still living while remaining vigilant to his truth. Overwhelmingly, those captured on the page changed nothing. They may have had a different perspective, but they wanted the purity of a boy’s view to remain untouched. To me, that speaks volumes about the caliber of these individuals.

On a personal note, it’s impossible for a fiction writer’s characters to step off the page and into real life. I lived with the individuals in this memoir for months and years inside my imagination. But when I was able to meet a few of the people in the memoir in person, they could not have known the immense and rare joy of the moment for me. Inwardly, I was fangirling. Hard. Outwardly, I remained a professional writing coach. (At least, I hope.)

And of the difficult parts inevitably found in a memoir? Anne Lamott has a brilliant take on that:

“You own everything that happens to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Final Day of the Series: Memoir is More Story Than Diary

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