Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: August 24, 2021
A curated collection of recent stories about writing—and reading—memoir, creating lasting legacies, and telling family stories in engaging, truthful ways.
“A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
Vintage postcard of Trinity Church in Boston, 1899. Photograph courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1898-1931.
Conversations Worth Having
JOURNEY TOGETHER
A memoir should be a conversation, not a monologue, Beth Kephart opines in this excerpt from her latest craft book, We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class. “Find a place for a ‘we’ inside your pages. Step down from the stage. Lower the lights. Mingle with the audience.”
INTERVIEW SUBJECTS, GET READY!
Know someone who is about to be interviewed about their life? Share these six tips for getting comfortable with the idea of stepping up to the mic and telling great stories.
Behind the Memoirs
WHEN GUILT, GRIEF, AND SHAME COLLIDE
“I’m revealing major flaws about myself that I’m going to get judged for, but that’s what makes a story interesting,” memoirist Rachel Michelberg tells Marion Roach Smith on the QWERTY podcast. “I wrote it because it was my truth, and there was shame at the time, but there isn’t shame anymore.”
“WE SHARE THE SAME SKY”
“‘I had so much of my grandmother’s stuff that I probably could have written a biography of her life without ever leaving my bedroom,’ said [Rachael] Cerrotti, while sitting in her apartment in Portland. ‘But I wanted to hear the language, see the landscape, and explore what it all meant in my life.’” (I am completely engrossed in this the memoir right now, fyi!)
GUIDE TO GRIEVING
“It wasn’t even a year since my father had died, I hadn’t completed my Jewish mourning cycles and rituals, I was still a raw and cracked egg, and this book was born amidst my half-cooked grief.” Merissa Nathan Gerson on writing her grief in Forget Prayers, Bring Cake.
‘REMEMBERINGS’ OF A SINGER-SONGWRITER
“Early on, [Sinéad O’Connor] realizes, ‘In real life you aren’t allowed to say you’re angry but in music you can say anything.’ It turns out that she thought real life and music were the same thing.”
THE MORRIS SISTERS
“It didn’t take me long to realize that for women who were so famous within my family, there didn’t seem to be much written about them in the world.” Julie Klam on tracking down the truth and telling the story of her notable relatives.
Creating Legacies
PRESERVING HER FATHER’S PHOTO LEGACY
“I am so proud of my father’s body of work and the fact that his legacy will now live on in perpetuity…. Also, this legacy will no longer be my responsibility. For that, I am greatly relieved.” Houston–based video biographer Stefani Elkort Twyford prepares and ships off her father’s photo archive, with pride and a twinge of sadness.
HONORING A QUIETLY JOYFUL SOUL
While most people visit StoryCorps to interview a loved one, Libby Stroik recorded memories of her grandfather on her own, as his memories were fading. “If I could ask him something now I think I would probably ask him what his secret was,” she said, “cause he always seemed so grateful for living.”
HIDDEN HISTORY
How Vancouver–based personal historian Mali Bain went from a box of photos and ephemera to a richly researched book about the uncle her client never met.
Video Inspiration
LIFE INSPIRES ART
“Dear son, Charles wrote on the last page of the journal, ‘I hope this book is somewhat helpful to you. Please forgive me for the poor handwriting and grammar. I tried to finish this book before I was deployed to Iraq. It has to be something special to you.’” The upcoming movie A Journal for Jordan, due out in December and based on a true story, was inspired by this original New York Times article by Dana Canedy and the 200-page father’s journal her partner wrote for their son. Here’s a preview of the film:
A NEW CHANNEL FOR FAMILY STORYTELLING
Jamie Yuenger, who has long produced legacy videos for families as founder of StoryKeep, is now offering private podcasting as another medium for story sharing and preservation. Here she gives a brief intro to the concept:
...and a Few More Links
North Carolina documentarian aims to preserve family histories with video heirlooms.
How blockchain could have saved the Library of Alexandria (and what it can do for future historical preservation)
Netflix’s Misha and the Wolves is “as much about storytelling as it is about the Holocaust.”
Why Billie Jean King finally took control of her own story
Short Takes
The photo legacy you leave your kids
Prepare your family photos so they provide comfort—not a burden—to your children when you're gone. It’s one of the most meaningful legacies you can leave your kids.
Don’t leave behind three obsolete devices filled with thousands of digital photos for your children to find when you’re gone. Prepare your pictures so they provide comfort—not a burden—to your children: It’s one of the most meaningful things you can do for your kids.
Prepare for the inevitable.
We are all going to die one day. Hopefully you’re not thinking about this inevitability too often, but it’s wise to prepare: Have a will drafted by an estate attorney, prepare your finances and insurance, and organize your records. Even this common wisdom is too often ignored by many.
So is it only the organizationally obsessed who will think about something as mundane as preparing your photos? I hope not.
The legacy of family photos, stories, and the artifacts of memory—scrapbooks, letters, heirlooms—may be of greater value to your heirs than your monetary legacy. Don’t underestimate how much a connection to the past will mean to your loved ones someday!
All that stuff can be a burden to your kids.
It’s convenient as heck to have a basement in which to toss those extra boxes of stuff. But Americans have taken consumerism to new levels in recent years, with shows about hoarding captivating television viewers and paid storage facilities dotting suburban landscapes. We love our stuff, for sure. And while I doubt you are a hoarder, chances are your closets and garage are housing plenty of stuff.
Julie Hall, author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, speaks from decades of experience when she says that the next generation will undoubtedly be burdened by all that you will leave behind. “I can virtually guarantee they will not care for these items the way you do, and often are upset and resentful when having to sell or discard them,” she says. “When this happens, hasty decisions are made to ‘just get rid of it.’”
Her advice? “Choose only your favorite things and let the rest go. Future generations will be most appreciative.”
Organize your family photos so they provide comfort, not nuisance.
Don’t assume that your library of family photos is exempt from that “just get rid of it” mentality. If what you leave behind is messy or overwhelming, well, then it’s more of a burden than a gift.
Here’s how to approach your photo organization project, in seven simple steps:
1 - Organize.
Tossing family photos can be one of the hardest things we do. There is a guilt associated with it—those pictures meant something to someone, after all. But do they mean anything to you? Will they matter to your children? Before you can determine which pictures to keep and which to trash, you must first organize them.
Choose a method that suits you, and dive in: Chronological, thematic, or by individual.
If you think creating a straight visual timeline of your life is best, keep in mind that it’s unlikely you will know exact dates for everything; sorting photographs into decades might be most efficient.
Sorting pictures by theme—birthdays, vacations, Christmas, childhood milestones, etc.—is a popular option for those who may want to create books or slideshows down the road. It can be fun to see the similarities in your traditions or amongst your children, too.
It’s possible that you are undertaking this organization project with the idea of divvying up the treasures for your kids. The most challenging part here, particularly with physical photographs, is that multiple children are likely to appear in one photo. I suggest creating one pile for those shots, and prioritizing having those images digitized first.
2 - Toss.
Delete pictures from your phone. Throw away old photos. Easier said than done? Yes, but once complete, this process can feel liberating. And it will be tremendously less burdensome for your heirs. Find advice for how to start trashing digital photos in this helpful article. And don’t forget to place the digital images you choose to keep into albums or folders sorted by date or theme—a hard drive filled with thousands of pictures in no particular order will be more overwhelming than inviting!
Do the same thing with the piles of physical photos you sorted in step one—begin to throw away any that do not hold meaning. Get rid of duplicates and indecipherable pictures.
On the most basic level, ask yourself: Does the picture tell a story that you want to remember? Is it a spectacular photo? If the answer to either of those is YES, it’s a keeper. If not, consider if someone else may value it, or put it in the garbage.
3 - Caption.
Now that you’ve sorted and narrowed down your collection, it’s time to preserve the most basic details of your important pictures. Use a photo-safe pen to write names, dates, and places on the back of your physical photos. Write legibly, and include full names whenever possible. Don’t assume your children will remember their toddler friends’ names or even their grandparents’, for that matter.
If you are technologically savvy, consider inputting all the caption information into the metadata of your digital photos. If that’s too ambitious, print out the most important ones, even on regular office paper, so you can write the information on them.
Seem like a crazy amount of work? Perhaps it is a lot, but consider this: What value will these photos hold if your family members do not even know what they represent? (None.) Alternatively, what value will they hold if you share not only the vital details, but the stories behind them? (Priceless.)
4 - Designate.
Don’t leave it for your kids and your grandkids and your siblings to hash out who gets what. Determine who might want your photos, and divvy them up accordingly.
Many people find that gifting old photos, especially, to their loved ones, is a worthwhile endeavor to do now. Sit with those you love, use your photographs as prompts to share the stories of your life, and see how much they are cherished! Your time and story sharing are the best gifts you can give. If you can’t part with your pictures just yet, share your intentions for bequesting them when you are gone.
5 - Create.
There are strong reasons why we hold our family photos dear. They connect us to the past, testify to our triumphs and experiences, and make us remember. And smile.
Share the smiles with those you love by creating something special from your favorite photo moments:
enlarge and frame a single print
send a digital image via email with more than a #tt hashtag: write its story, share the memories it conjures up
By creating something—and sharing it—you are giving life to the stories behind your photos.
6 - Permit.
Give permission to your children to toss your things. You may have an attachment to your stuff, but your children will find their own connection to what you leave behind—and it may be to something completely unexpected.
Let them know that you do not expect them to keep everything, and if you have a preferred charity, tell them you’d be happy to have your things be donated. Likewise, tell them which photographs and heirlooms you would most like to pass on, and why. When your loved ones are armed with this knowledge, their decision-making becomes much less emotionally charged, and they are more likely to hold onto and cherish those things that hold true meaning.
7 - Hire.
If all of the above seems too daunting, or if your time is simply taken up by other priorities right now, consider hiring a professional photo organizer. They can jump in at any stage of the process or help out with just one step.