They say time is a thief, but sometimes it’s also a spotlight. If you’d asked me two years ago which memories would matter most to the memoir, I’d have bet on the dramatic ones: the call I never made, or maybe the day things fell apart for good. But looking back, it’s the happiest part that outshines everything else.

Every memoir has a chapter that refuses to fit the template. My book doesn’t even pretend; it’s not about addiction or recovery (spoiler alert), and it’s not a neat coming-of-age tale.

If there’s a spine, it’s the long, slow unlearning of everything I thought I knew about love and family.

It always surprises me, even now, that the chapter that breaks me open isn’t the one where I lose him for good, or the one where regret swallows me whole. It’s the happiest one; one that still glows radioactive green in my mind after everything else fades. A memory so bright and unspoiled, I worry I’ll lose it if I look away too long.

That happiness—or more precisely, the memory of being happy and the impossibility of holding it—exists in The Coaster That Said Yes.

On its face, it’s pure, undiluted delight: an Orlando theme park, a dad in his best form, sisters cackling, the kind of Technicolor joy that didn’t come around so often at Dad’s house. That nighttime ride with my daddy—six laps on the Hulk, just the two of us and all that permission to be happy—has become my internal gold standard for what love is supposed to feel like.

So why does it leave me wrecked every time I read it back?

Because I remember every sunlit detail from that week. Because the happiness is so bright, it casts a shadow that’s hard to live under now. Editing this chapter is like trying to hold a firefly in your hand without crushing it. I’m terrified I’ll lose the spark, or worse, accidentally snuff it out in the retelling.

Honestly, it’s easier to dissect the bad stuff. Pain is clinical, familiar; joy is the real risk. I know how to analyze the ways he failed me, or I failed him. But I don’t know what to do with a week where nothing needed fixing—where I got to just be his kid, where the universe said yes. More than anything, it was a time when Dad made us his first priority. Nobody else.

Sometimes I try to make it easier on myself by cracking jokes about all the sausages I ate at the breakfast buffet, or how his girlfriend could sour the mood with a single glance. (It’s true, she had a gift.) But cracking wise won’t change how raw this chapter leaves me, because it means the happiness was real. Which means his loss is real, too.

There’s a line near the end:

“Twenty-plus years later, those nighttime laps remain the brightest reel in my head: just me, Daddy, and a coaster that keeps saying yes.”

If you write a memoir involving loss, you learn that joy is the hardest thing to get right on the page. Because you’re not just writing about what you had; you’re writing about what you can never have again. Every edit risks breaking the spell.

But here’s what I’ve realized: the fact that this chapter still makes me cry—every damn time—isn’t just proof I lost something big. It’s proof I had it. Love this strong was real enough to outlast the pain, to shine through the wreckage, and to be worth capturing, even now. That’s enough for me.

The passage of time hasn’t blurred that memory; it’s sharpened it. Editing this chapter reminds me that happiness can survive almost anything. Maybe perspective is just knowing that some things don’t fade, no matter what comes after.

I used to think the hardest truths were found in the wreckage, but the years keep teaching me otherwise. What lasts isn’t always the pain, but sometimes a single week that glows brighter the farther away you get. Time takes so much, but it leaves behind the real stuff—the memory you still reach for, the one you didn’t make up.

Even after everything, that happiness was real. So was my love for him.

This isn’t about what’s gone, but about what I got to keep: one perfect, wild, sunlit week with my dad.

Daily writing prompt

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

View all responses

inspo: reviewing the memoir page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter // noticing a Daily Prompt I could actually answer // process + prompt = discovery // realizing time sharpens some days instead of fading them // learning joy isn’t just a trick memory plays // believing that same joy can survive the wreckage // crying at the same place, every draft, proof it’s all real // maybe perspective is what stays after the rest // the ordinary magic of holding on to one sunlit week // learning the good stuff is worth chasing too // i.6: The Coaster That Said Yes, mostly

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.

See Full Bio