Lisa Romeo is a writer and a writing coach and I am so honored to have her here to talk about her memoir, STARTING WITH GOODBYE. Thank you, Lisa!
Grief is never-ending, but there must have been a moment when you felt, okay, now I am ready to write this. Can you talk about that moment please?
There were many different moments. I
actually began the writing almost immediately, in the two weeks after my father
died, and then on and off for about six years. I went to the page each time I
felt that I had something else, something new or what struck me as unusual to
record about the grief experience. The writing and the curiosity about the
unfolding experience seemed to occur in partnership. Of that early writing,
some became essays of different lengths and forms and appeared in literary
journals. The rest stayed in my notebook until the structure for the book solidified.
There was a point—maybe that moment
you’re asking about—when it felt like the right time to transform all the
essays and the bits and pieces in notebooks, into a memoir, though I honestly
can’t say precisely when that happened or just what the exact impetus might
have been. It certainly wasn’t an aha
moment where I thought, “okay, time to move on from grief.” It was subtler than
that and was imperceptibly tied to the act of writing.
I’d resisted moving from the essay
from to a long continuous narrative for a couple of years, despite good advice,
because grief to me, even then, still seemed mostly fragmented and episodic,
not linear. In late 2015 though, I realized that this book had to happen before
anything else, before I could write any other
book. I was getting too comfortable writing short pieces about grief, and grief
is not supposed to be so comfortable that you don’t want to move on. It was
time. I went away for a week to a quiet bed-and-breakfast in remote Maine in
January 2016 to get started.
One of the things that people may not realize is that when a person
dies, the relationship does not. You still can work on that relationship. Can
you talk about how you came to see your father differently?
When my father was still alive,
even in his final two years when he was dealing with Alzheimer’s, severe arthritis,
heart disease and other ailments, to a certain extent we were still playing out
roles I believe got decided in my childhood and teen years. We were locked in those roles: he was the self-made,
successful businessman without much education, who always had to be right, and I
was the modern daughter with the privilege of higher education, who felt I
needed to align with my mother, and who had to prove that I was his equal and
that we were nothing alike.
The joke was on me. After he died,
there was nothing left to struggle against anymore, and I got curious about why
we had so often been at odds, why it was that we had a lot in common but didn’t
want to admit it. The reality was that the friction came from being so very
much alike. Once he was gone, I felt free to ask myself questions about his
life, his behavior and decisions, that I hadn’t bothered to investigate before,
because I’d been, frankly, a rather dismissive snob.
I found that I was able to come to
know my father differently, that I had more of an open mind, and he thus became
an even bigger part of my life than in the years before his death. In that way,
the relationship seemed to continue and even, in a sense, flourish.
The phrase “Love after Loss” really resonated with me. Can you talk
about what this feels like for you?
When Dad and I had “conversations”
after he was gone, so many things came clear for me; I had patience and
curiosity then which had been lacking when he was alive. At first there was a
certain amount of shame involved for how I’d treated him at times in my adult
life, but that faded because I felt so much love and acceptance in return—which
I now interpret as my finally grasping the depth of his love for me, something
which he wasn’t really ever able to express in life (and I wasn’t open to
hearing either).
When our parents age and decline,
there are so many mixed emotions—even though we act from love and compassion,
for many adult children I think there may also be guilt, impatience, confusion,
exasperation, inadequacy, judgment, bewilderment, all churning and distracting
us. There certainly was for me. But once he was gone, and I was able to think
about, acknowledge and process all of that, there was a certain calm. And the
only thing left, was love.
What kind of writer are you? Do you map things out? What was it like to
write this particular book?
For short pieces, I usually know
where I want to begin and where I will end. The middle is a mystery and I mean
that in the best way; I enjoy figuring out how to get from A to Z, even if that
means a number of rewrites and/or if it takes me in some unexpected direction
in form.
For a few years, I saw this as a
book of linked essays. Publishers and some trusted beta readers didn’t agree,
and I was stuck for a while. Then I decided to take their advice and rework it
as a more traditional memoir. For someone like me who feels like an essayist at
heart, that was a rather frightening step, but eventually the right one.
Because I had the challenge of
breaking down a number of pre-exiting essays and weaving that material into the
longer narrative I was writing, I felt I needed a firm chronological
frame—beginning two months before Dad died and ending two-and-a-half years
after. But inside of those bookends, the narrator needed to be able to move
around in time—back, way back, a little ahead, and then always returning to the
unfolding moment.
I made probably five different
chapter outlines, and then when I had a crappy first draft, I printed it all
out, got a pair of scissors and a roll of tape, cut things up according to
events and theme, and put it all together again. Several times. Then as I
poured it all back into the computer, I revised heavily and rewrote. Rinse,
repeat. After five months, I had a fairly polished manuscript and began
submitting.
What’s obsessing you now and why?
A few things. First, what the next
book will be. I have three different ideas, and when I tell them to the few
people I want advice from, I get wildly different feedback. One involves
horses—I rode and competed for many years, and horses were the first thing I ever
wrote about, first as a kid for fun, and then later professionally. The second
is another family-centered memoir. The third is a combination reported and
personal narrative.
Besides the sophomore book
question, I’m constantly upset by the state of the country, the divisive
society that my (college-age) sons will be inheriting. Finally, I’m always
obsessed with watching British crime dramas, and dark chocolate.
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
What question didn’t I ask that I should have?
By now I figured someone would have
asked, “What do you think your father would say about the book?”, so I’ll go
with that. The answer is, I don’t think he’d say much at all to me directly, as was his way. But at some point,
I’d probably overhear him telling other people, “My daughter wrote a
bestseller!” That will of course have no
foundation in reality! When I was a low-level staffer in a midsized public
relations agency, he’d boast, “My daughter is a top executive at one of the
best PR firms in New York City.” When I’d hear that, I’d get so frustrated and
wonder why he had to brag so. I sure wouldn’t mind hearing him bragging like
that now though.
http://www.watchungbooksellers.com/book/9781943859689 (Signed on request)
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