My resolve weakens as the months pass, and my perspective on Dad’s death fails to evolve.

My mostly optimistic outlook on where this memoir journey will take me has begun to sour. The more I delve into my childhood, the deeper my doubts grow. It feels like I’m beating a dead man to death all over again. Do I truly have what it takes to be a memoirist? I’m not sure I can stomach much more of this.

Adding to my uncertainty is the difficult task of deciding which life events are significant enough to “make the cut.” It feels wrong to choose only the sensational aspects of Dad’s life—primarily the toxic relationships he couldn’t escape before his death. But I also know that is the story most people want to read, not the one about my alcoholic dad or my upbringing.

I’m starting to lose track of my emotions. I struggle to discern if what I’m feeling is genuine. Writing about my childhood blurs the lines between my present and past selves the most. Am I truly channeling my past self when I’m writing, or are these actually my current thoughts and feelings? It’s a confusing and painful process.

“Not being able to sense our loved one who has died and feeling on some level that they are ignoring us, calls everything we believe into question…we run endless possible scenarios after a death…This would’ve/could’ve/should’ve loop can feel exhausting. In some cases, we are sad or angry at ourselves because we have ‘failed’ to keep our loved ones close on the closeness dimension…the brain can also believe that by repairing our relationship with them, we can somehow bring them back.”

(O’Connor 29)

In her meticulously researched book The Grieving Brain, renowned psychologist, neurologist, and grief expert Mary-Frances O’Connor explains how the brain uses the “closeness dimension” to measure and track how close we are to the people in our lives. The brain creates maps of our loved ones in a specific area called the posterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in emotional responses and memory. Even after someone dies, these maps stay in our brain, making us feel like they are still with us. This dimension helps explain why grief feels so disorienting; our brain’s map continues to expect the presence of the deceased, leading to feelings of confusion and disbelief until we adapt to the new reality (11-12).

“[I]t is because your loved one existed that certain neurons fire together and certain proteins are folded in your brain in particular ways. It is because your loved one lived, and because you loved each other, that means when the person is no longer in the outer world, they still physically exist—in the wiring of the neurons of your brain.”

(O’Connor 49)

I have to wonder, and not for the first time, if what I’m doing here is truly healthy. O’Conner says that our brain trusts and makes predictions based on our lived experience, and that we need enough new lived experiences for our brain to develop new predications, and that takes time (21). If I spend all my time living in the past, how will I be able to create those new lived experiences?

If writing this memoir merely prolongs my grief or the mourning process, how can I hope to actually be healed by the end of it?

What’s worse is that, regardless of the answer to that question, I know I’ll continue working on this memoir. To do otherwise would be tantamount to giving up on my dad, and I can’t bear the thought of doing that to him all over again.

References:

Jeejeebhoy, Shireen. “Closeness Is a Dimension.” Psychology Today, 29 Sept. 2023, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/concussion-is-brain-injury/202309/closeness-is-a-dimension.

O’Connor, Mary-Frances. The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. HarperCollins, 2022.

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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