TRANSFORMING LOSS INTO LITERATURE has never been easy, but when three of your best friends do it, it’s worth writing about, as did Nancy Doyle Palmer in this extraordinary interview with Amy Dickinson, Lee Woodruff and Wendy Burden. Memoir writers to the max, two of the three have been on the bestseller list, and after I got an eyeful recently on a reader’s copy of Wendy Burden’s upcoming (Spring, 2010) memoir, I can predict from here that it’s destined for the list, as well. Make a cup of tea, get cozy, and read on. (Photo from Huffington Post.)

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WHAT MAKES GOOD MEMOIR? I get this question all the time when I teach. And reading your comments on this makes me think it’s time to limn that line between what is merely some great scene versus a scene that is ready for the writing.

At some point in every memoir-writing class, I tell my students about a male architect I barely knew when he married a friend of mine. For their wedding he not only designed, but also sewed, his wife’s crushed white velvet, floor-length, cut-on-the bias dress, and made her white pillbox hat to match.

Consider that scene for a moment: Another bride, another groom, another musty old church filled with people in their 30s shooting looks at the dress, the hat, this Olympics of sewing on the part of the groom, the guests getting real wide-eyed at one another, raising their palms skyward and their shoulders to their ears. Here comes the bride, and is that groom in the tux and the slender Italian eyeglass frames straight or what?

Great scene. But what is it about? A fine collection of images, but what does it illustrate? Is it a tale about the way we live now?

Just because something happens doesn’t make it interesting. Don’t believe me? Tell someone your dreams. Unless you’re paying them to listen or haven’t slept with them yet (but might), chances are they’ll go to some lengths to avoid this download of your subconscious. Call my husband. He actually gets up and leaves the room if someone tries to tell him a dream. I think that’s why we’re married. So I don’t always have to be the rude one. He looks at this watch, nods, and actually says, “Oh, look at the time,” and leaves.

What is this about? The illustration–the crushed-velvet wedding dress, the tall groom, the whispers rocketing around the old stone church–needs a context, a frame. Ever notice how the perfect frame can bring out the color in your oil painting, your photo? Same with writing. The frame, the reason for the tale, is the same thing. And the question you now must tape to your wall is, “What is this about?”

What is the wedding story about? I have no idea–yet, at least–though in the 13 years since I delighted in witnessing it (and their happy marriage), I have picked it up a thousand times and had a look, each time putting it away again. It is gorgeous, it is there, and one of these days it will tuck into a tale I’m telling, but until it makes sense, in context, it’s just a spare part waiting to be sewed onto something else.

I’ve got a million of them, thank goodness. And so do you.

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For those of you on your first visit, or who haven’t read them before, my series On Writing Memoir is here.

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A SISTER-FRIEND FROM OUR extended network, writer and yoga instructor Joely Johnson Mork, sent us the following piece back in December, during which time all of us were otherwise engaged making other kinds of lists. But I keep thinking of Joely’s offering, and wanted to share it. One week after a loss she was certain she would never write about, the death of her best friend, I asked Joely, a former student in my memoir-writing class, if she thought she could simply bring in a list of thoughts related to the event. She actually she wrote a series of three lists, about her last visit with Mary. I offer them here, in another busy time of year, to again help us take stock of what we value.

Joely’s List That Helps With Loss

What I Brought
1. A copy of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “So Far.”
2. Three sticks of Buddhist incense that had been hand-delivered to me from Japan by a former lover.
3. A single change of clothes thrown without thinking into a canvas bag.
4. A week’s supply of Zoloft and Ativan.
5. My journal.
6. My marijuana pipe.
7. The turquoise necklace Mary brought back for me from Scottsdale.

What I Heard
1. Gale saying very solemnly, “Be prepared,” bowing her head to me as I walked toward the dining room where Mary was lying in her rented hospital bed.
2. The old-woman rasping of Mary’s breath.
3. Her husband’s surprised-sounding sobs.
4. The mechanical ocean sound of the oxygen tank.
5. Jeanne’s musical voice telling her daughter how honored she was to have been her mother and that it was OK to die now.
6. The moist crackle of fluid settling in Mary’s lungs.
7. The familiar, precious echo of Mary’s speaking voice breaking through her unconscious attempts to cough.
8. Thunder approaching with heavy boots and an empty sack slung over its back.
9. The release of rain on the leaves and earth outside the dining room windows.
10. The grinding of the hospital bed motor as we lowered the mattress after Mary had left us.

What I Said
1. On arriving, entering the kitchen to meet the crumpled faces of my friends standing there, “Oh, is she getting ready to spread her wings?”
2. “You have led an amazing life – you’ve done so much, we will all remember you.”
3. Whispered to Mary, when we were alone, “You are standing in front of a gate to a beautiful garden and the key is in your hand. Open the lock and let yourself walk inside. The sun is shining there – go, go, go.”

(For Mary “Mesa” Kittle, dear friend-sister.)

Of course, this reminds us of the gorgeous piece by TSP-new-sister Marilyn Pollack-Naron, and reminds us too, to read through the original comments sent to TSP and to Joely, as well as to ask you to send us your list, in the comments or by email to thesisterproject at gmail dot com.

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