It Was Finally Time for Emily to Write Her memoir

by Michael McKown

In the quiet, sunlit corner of an old, creaky house in Pasadena, CA, where the walls whispered secrets of yesteryears, sat Emily, now in her late seventies. The room was cluttered with memories: photographs, old letters, and mementos from a life well-lived. For decades, her friends and family had been nudging, sometimes pushing, her towards a singular endeavor—writing her memoir.

Emily had lived a life that seemed almost too vibrant to be captured in mere words. She had danced through the '60s, marched in protests that shaped the world, loved and lost, and found love again in unexpected places. Her tales were not just stories; they were chapters of history, personal and global. Yet, the idea of pinning these experiences down to paper was daunting. When was the right time to start?

The question lingered like a persistent melody in her mind, especially as she observed the world around her changing. Her children, now adults with children of their own, would often sit with her, their eyes wide with curiosity or sometimes disbelief, as she recounted her adventures. "Mom, you must write these down," they'd insist, their voices a blend of reverence and urgency.

But Emily always had her reasons to postpone. In her younger days, there was always another adventure, another story to live before writing about the past. Then came the years of working, raising a family, and the silent, relentless march of time where days blurred into decades. "There will be time," she'd tell herself, the promise turning into a comforting lullaby.

However, as the years passed, the urgency of her loved ones' requests grew. Her grandchildren, bright-eyed and eager, loved her stories, but they feared that one day these tales might only be echoes in the memories of those who heard them directly from her. They wanted something tangible, something they could hold and pass on to their children.

One crisp autumn evening, as Emily sat by her window watching the leaves fall with a grace that spoke of life's impermanence, a realization dawned upon her. The right time was not about finding a perfect moment; it was about acknowledging that every moment was fleeting.

She remembered a conversation with an old friend, Henry, who had passed away a few years ago. Henry, a writer himself, had once said, "Emily, you're not writing your memoir to win awards or to be remembered as a writer. You're doing it because your life is a story worth telling, and those stories are the legacies we leave behind."

That night, she pulled out an old typewriter from the attic, its keys dusty and the ink ribbon dry and brittle. Emily didn’t have a computer, so the ancient Royal portable would have to do. She took it to an office machines company in town that began as a typewriter repair shop. A week later, she picked it up. Cleaned, oiled, a couple bent keys straightened, and a new red and black ribbon. The technician demonstrated how well it now worked.

On arriving home, she removed it from its case and set it on the desk. She opened a new ream of paper, and inserted a solitary sheet into the machine, and cranked it into position. A blank page can be intimidating. She put her fingers on the keys. She hadn’t typed on this machine since the 1980s. The act felt like a ceremonial beginning, a rite of passage into a new phase of her life. The first chapter was the hardest, the initial clack of the keys a loud declaration of her intent to finally share her narrative.

As words began to fill the pages, Emily found a rhythm. She wrote about her youth, the vibrancy of the counterculture, the love she found in the arms of a man who was her opposite yet her perfect match. She penned her heartbreak, her journeys through countries torn by war and peace, her silent battles with illness, and her triumphant return to life with every sunrise.

Writing her memoir wasn't just about the past; it was an exploration of her present self. Each memory revisited was a piece of her soul examined under the light of her current wisdom. She laughed at her youthful naivety, cried over the losses she had shouldered, and celebrated the growth in between.

The memoir grew, chapter by chapter, into a tapestry of a life lived fully. Her family watched with pride as the pile of typed pages grew. They saw not just the recounting of events but the essence of Emily, her resilience, her love for life, and her unyielding spirit.

Finally, when the last page was written, Emily didn't feel like she had completed a task but rather had embarked on an eternal conversation with her descendants. She realized that the right time to begin writing her memoir was when she understood that stories are not just told but lived, and every moment, no matter how ordinary or extraordinary, deserved to be captured if only to remind future generations of the beauty of living.

The memoir, completed, was not just a book; it was a bridge between generations, a testament to a life that, like the leaves outside her window, had fallen, only to enrich the earth for new growth.

Who am I? I’m Michael McKown, co-founder and president of Ghostwriters Central, Inc., a professional ghostwriting service based in Southern California. We’ve been ghostwriting memoirs and autobiographies since our beginning, in 2002. If it’s now your turn to tell your life story, we can help, and you won’t need a dusty old Royal portable typewriter. Take the first step: click the link. Thanks for reading.