Putting the Family in Memoir

Flannery O’Connor writes, ‘ … anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.’

If you, like me, write about your family – unavoidable in memoir — how do you do that without hurting someone? Upon hearing that I was writing about my veteran father, one brother of mine asked when he could sue me. He was joking — sort of. The final draft of my memoir is a long way off, so he’ll have to twiddle his thumbs for a while longer before running off to court. Inevitably though, my family will come into the story. The tale would be much diminished without my brothers’ whacky anecdotes and their differing perspectives.

On writing about others, non-fiction guru Lee Gutkind advises that the narrator present herself with a degree of irony. In this way she becomes as much the perpetrator of misdeeds as she is the victim. These days, for instance, I understand that when my father was dying in a repatriation hospital, I could have simply held his hand no matter his attitude to me. (Asking where Mum was and telling me off (as I saw it.) I could have acted with grace instead of inwardly railing against him as I often had. His behaviour used to challenge me, but nowadays it’s my job to comprehend our dynamic and recognise the role I played. Long dead, he can’t change things, but I can – at least at the heart level.

You can read about the last day I spent with my father here. The piece was published in Clairitage Press, a US blog curated by Karen Dustman.

With the role as narrator in mind, other family members can become ‘bit’ players to the interplay between my father and me. My brothers’ function (and my mother’s) is to highlight the humour and conflict, allowing a more spherical approach to our family life. In this sense my younger siblings are support act to the main event. They provide an easeful – if noisy – chorus to the central theme of the see-sawing relationship between my father and me

With thanks to Ms O’Connor for her writerly reminder about the richness of childhood, I write this in the further hope of getting mine – as (subjectively) right as I can.