By the Grace of God, I Write Memoir
(This essay was originally published in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, She Writes Press 2016)
As a memoirist, there are times when I question myself about why I feel called to write about my life. It’s like I need a reason, justification, in order to keep at it, not so much for others, but for myself.
About two years ago, while poking around online for some inspiration I landed on a sermon by Rev. Ed Bacon who said, "The reason God gave you your story is so you could tell it." A sense of freedom came over me. I knew that God was talking directly to me, saying, “Ruthie, you don’t need a reason. Just write.” Getting the go-ahead from God was the permission I needed, and the quality and quantity of my writing improved.
Through the process of writing my memoir, I’ve come to understand that it’s through our stories that we find out just how much alike we all are and how interconnected we are as humans. Feeling this sort of heart connection with another human being is one of the most magical feelings I’ve ever experienced. This type of heart connection is what true love feels like—natural and easy, yet at the same time magical because there’s no explaining it.
In sharing our stories we automatically, or, as I like to say, auto-magically, find greater compassion, understanding, and love for each other.
My original memoir wasn’t really my story, it wasn’t about me; it was my little sister Polly’s. Polly died just a month shy of her fourteenth birthday. If I hadn’t been so consumed with my own trauma and drama, being fifteen years old and nine months pregnant at the time, I might have taken the time to grieve her death when it happened. But I didn’t. That would come more than fifteen years later, the winter of 1996, when I began volunteering as a ski instructor for people with disabilities. This work awakened tenderness in my heart and triggered a need to write for my sister, to give her a voice. What I know now is that my urge to write Polly’s story was the beginning of my grieving process, and what ultimately turned out to be a spiritual awakening of sorts.
In the spring of 1997, when I was thirty-two, I went on my first personal writing retreat to a lodge in the Olympic National Forest, where I sat down to write Polly’s story. I opened with a scene of my little sister dying in my oldest brother’s arms. I’m not sure if she was already dead when my mom placed her in my brother’s arms, or if she died while my brother held her. All I know is that as I wrote Polly came alive inside me. I was channeling my sister. Her spirit gave me visions and sensations of being in her crippled body and mind as she passed away. Problem was, I couldn’t get through a page or two without being left curled up in a ball on the floor for hours sobbing. After less than a year, I put the writing away.
Five years later, I pulled out my writing, cleaned some stuff up, and signed up for a writer’s workshop. After the first class, I decided I couldn’t do it, but my husband urged me on, so I stuck it out. In the end, a writing teacher convinced me to change the story to my point of view. It didn’t help, and I put the work away again for a few more years.
It’s a bit shocking to realize that it’s been twenty years since I’ve been working at this memoir, but I’ve been all over the place with what and how to tell my story. Finally, in 2012, I decided it was time to write my story once and for all. That fall, my mom suffered a massive stroke and died. It was then, because of how her dying happened, that I got serious about writing my memoir.
I sat awake all night in the ICU with my sister Mac waiting for my mom to come to and to be okay—or to die. Mac stayed with me, she said, so that I wouldn’t be alone in case Mom passed. But then she stepped out with my brother Crit for a cup of coffee, and for the first time since arriving from Seattle, there I was—alone with my mom.
I’d been fiddling with the mala beads on my wrist and around my neck throughout the night. I read poems to my mom. I talked to her. I chanted om, silently and sometimes in a whisper, as I visualized the essence of peace running through and around her body. I told her she’d been good and that we all loved her like crazy. I forgave her for all of us. For not looking after us and pretending that she did. For making up fantasies about how she cooked all those Sunday dinners—pot roast and potatoes smothered in gravy—and gathering all nine of her kids around a table we didn’t have. It was a weekly feast she worked hard to prepare. I told her that we all knew the stories were her way of surviving and though we made fun of her, even to her face, for making shit up, we loved her more than anything on earth.
Thinking about why my mom made up fantasies broke my heart wide open as I imagined her suffering with nine kids, living in poverty with a man who tried to beat the beauty from her face. I wept as I felt her suffering leave this world and her God-like essence fill the room. It was just after six in the morning when my mom decided to finally let go. She’d been holding on for just the right moment.
Standing at her bedside, I lay my hands on my mom’s heart and kept them there until it stopped. I stood there for a half-hour with her, and then watched her take her last breath. I watched her eyes open for the first time since I’d arrived at the hospital from Seattle. Green eyes, like mine. Blank. Fixed. Dead. Although I’d come to understand death as part of life’s cycle at an early age from watching Polly die over the years, as well as near-death and out-of-body experiences of my own, I’d never been with it directly in the moment it happens.
Being in this Divine space with my mom shifted something in me I can only describe as grace. I’ve come to call this state of being my Amazing Grace. This experience allowed me to feel more human, while at the same time more connected to higher consciousness, to God. I was on both sides of living and dying at the same time. It felt like Mom gave me a part of her just then so that it would last me forever. It was my heart’s strong desire to stay connected to this essence, this tenderness that overwhelmed all of me.
Following my mom’s death, I spent several weeks in West Virginia with my brothers and sisters, all older than me, asking questions I wished I could still ask my mom. I felt the slipping away of information and details I’d never be able to recover. Filled with an insatiable need to know, I listened to stories and remembered things I’d tucked away. I took notes and captured stuff on my voice recorder because I just couldn’t keep up with it all. It was these weeks after losing my mom that I entered a new state of understanding and acceptance that we all have our own way of being human, our own version of living or dying, and our own stories. And it’s when I started writing with more determination and when I set an intention to finish my memoir.
Aware that my connection to this sacred space could fade once back in Seattle where I’d need to ease back into day-to-day living, I put on hold my yoga and meditation classes and limited my interaction with people. I was afraid these things would pull me away from my mom, from the grace we’d shared, and which now consumed me. But then something happened that assured me it was here to stay.
I was walking along the lake near my house about a week after getting home when I called out to my mom, asking her how to hold on to what she'd given me. “How do I keep your wisdom alive inside me?” I pleaded. “How do I know you are with me? How do I keep you with me, always?”
As I approached a nearby bench, I noticed a small piece of paper on the ground. I picked it up before sitting down. Unfolding it, warmth filled my heart. The words brought a salty sting that blurred my eyes. My mom’s essence embraced me as I read, "I still call out for you sometimes."
Before my mom died, this God space that I call my Amazing Grace was familiar, just not as easily accessible. But now, it’s always a breath away. It’s solid. Always there. And I call to it. Often. Especially when I write.
***
Through the early inspiration of my sister’s story, I was able to find my own voice and tell a story from my point of view. My outline went through so many iterations I’ve lost track but if I hadn’t gone through so many versions I wouldn’t have figured out where to start the story or where to end it. What I have now is a full manuscript and extra material for my next memoir.
My writing coach talked to me about theme throughout these revisions. I didn’t quite understand what she meant by theme at first, and it wasn’t until I wrote a lot of material that I saw my story’s theme. Resilience.
Although my main theme is resilience—about bouncing back from adverse circumstances—the biggest circumstance has been (and continues to be) overcoming a chronic case of ignorance I inherited from being raised in a holler by neglectful parents while stumbling my way through life. Profound ignorance is like having a disability because it limits your ability to thrive. Ignorance makes thriving harder, but it makes success sweeter. This understanding keeps me writing.
Even though I’d developed some level of resilience to hard stuff as a kid—like going hungry, dirty and cold, even having worms—none of that compares to having your ignorance exposed when trying to come off as smart in the world.
It wasn’t until the later chapters that I allowed myself to feel this truth and let it be part of my writing without censoring it. I’d spent my whole life covering up what a dumbass I was, how seriously ignorant I was, and now this secret was trying to show up in my memoir. When I saw this truth punching its way out, I felt my chest tighten. My mind cringed and my breathing went shallow. I was embarrassed of myself. My cheeks turned hot while sitting all alone at my desk. I guess I thought I could write a memoir and skip over a main part of who I am. It’s a little funny to me now, but it was painful and hard to move through. But I came to know that I’d have to expose my secret life as a dumbass if I really wanted to finish my memoir. And I decided that I’d rather have the temporary pain of shame and humiliation than to have a festering secret eat a hole in my gut.
I’ve read that to be a good and honest writer you’re supposed to write about what makes you uncomfortable. By tapping into my Amazing Grace, I’ve done my best to write honestly and openly while moving through my discomfort.
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” ~A.A. Milne