The urgency to write one’s story grows stronger with age, propelled by a growing acceptance that mortality is, indeed, real and applies to everyone. At the same time, the danger of revealing the deepest secrets and flaws argues against revelation. How can the doting old woman find it in herself to reveal to her grandchildren her torrid fifteen-year-long infidelity to her now-dead husband? How can the avuncular Kiwanian-of-the-year find the courage to expose the lechery and contemptible disregard for decency that defined his early years when he made unwelcome overtures to women who depended on him for their jobs? The flaws need not be so despicable to be painful, either. The octogenarian who harbors regret at accepting the proposal of marriage to her husband of sixty-five years has done no wrong, but will the idea of sharing that lifetime of doubt allow her to tell her story? Or will shame at her own regret preclude the story from being written?
I don’t know these people. I don’t know their stories. But as I listened to a speaker the other day, exhorting the audience to write through their pain and to tell their truth, I looked around the room and wondered what painful secrets the audience might be unable or unwilling to tell. I wondered whether there were, in that room, people whose pain and regret was so deep and so bitter that it would seal their stories forever in impenetrable tombs. No need to wonder. I am sure of it. I could feel it.
It occurs to me that memoirs are suitable outlets for writers whose lives are not vessels of regret and shame, whereas fiction is suitable for the rest of us.
