Rewrite

One of the projects I set for myself many years ago was to complete a written family history. I’m the last one of my maternal generation who remembers and it seemed important, no, imperative that I do this. Years of research have gathered much more information than I could ever have hoped to find. I’m still learning new things about the past. All of that information made writing a history a much larger project than it really needed to be and so I set myself this monumental task. The idea of it seemed doable but the actual completion felt like a mountain I was never going to be able to climb.

Many times, I thought of new ways to approach the task. And nothing ever came across as genuine or authentic. I’d give up in frustration and think I might just be wasting my time. I’d check in with my sons and ask them if this was something they’d like to have and they would encourage me to do it, so I would keep going.

A few months ago, my computer died. As all things must do eventually. The chapters I have written were backed up so I wasn’t too concerned, but as I discovered not all were. The ones I had written about my sister disappeared but for some unknown reason, I hadn’t backed up that file. I was bereft and angry with myself, but I knew I could write them again. And yet I haven’t done so. Something has been holding me back. As if she’s leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “That’s not it. That’s not the story I want you to share about me. Tell it all and tell it in a way that isn’t just how you remember me.”  My sister’s death still haunts me. Her unexpected death of a pulmonary embolism at a young age is something that I still find hard to accept.

I wrote her eulogy and said all the words of love I hadn’t said to her as often as I wished I had. I let the people who came to mourn her hear the words they wanted to hear – of the person they knew. The bright, sunny, funny young woman who always hid from even her closest friends, the pain she carried in her heart. I thought I was protecting her. And maybe I did the right thing on that occasion. I want to believe that is true.

Recently I read a quote that has stayed with me:

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

Terry Pratchett

I didn’t lose what I’d written when that computer bit the dust. I gained the insight that I was missing. I can still tell the story of who my sister was to me and what she meant in my life. But the story is not about me. The story is about her and who she was in this world.