Memoir does two things at once. It helps someone survive something. And it helps someone else understand it. But more than that, memoir reminds us that we are all moving through the same cycle—just at different points in it.
Thirty-five years ago yesterday, my father died. He was 67. I was 18.
I wasn’t prepared to lose a parent.
And neither were my friends.
They supported me with the familiar, well-meaning: “Let me know what I can do.”
But we were 18.
Some of us hadn’t even lost a pet yet.
They didn’t know what to say. They felt awkward. My sadness interrupted the narrow, self-focused existence most of us were living during freshman year—and that’s exactly how it should be at 18.
We thought our parents were old—but also somehow permanent. Mortality was abstract. Something that happened later. So we didn’t talk about it much.
Now I’m older. Many of my peers have lost a parent. Some have lost both.
The Season We Once Stood Outside of Has Become Our Own
Lately, I’ve been thinking about my place in that lifecycle.
Parent. Child. Possibly soon, grandparent.
The thought makes me smile. It also makes me shift in my seat.
Imposter syndrome doesn’t disappear with age, it just takes on a different nuance, a new role to play. You’re no longer the carefree young kid. You’re in charge of people and you wonder who in the world thought giving you that level of responsibility was a good thing.
When you’re young, you don’t really think you’re going to get old. And then you get there in a hot thirty seconds. And when you do, you can’t imagine who launched you into this place where you should know what to do and say only the right things.
It’s taxing being in charge of people where only last weekend it feels like you were at a frat party getting free drink tickets because you flipped your hair in the right direction.
The Math Changes
One minute you’re trying to decide what you want to do when you grow up.
The next minute people expect you to know—because you already are grown up (at least according to the IRS).
Aging changes how the world sees you.
When you’re young, people assume you’re not ready yet.
When you’re older, they begin wondering whether you still are.
You start to notice subtle considerations like the quiet calculations you make before walking the dog in the rain. In the awareness of uneven sidewalks. In the passing thought that a fall might mean a different level of injury now than it once did.
When someone mentions the year 2000, I instinctively think, not that long ago.
And then I count.
Twenty-six years.
You Understand It Later
Someone my age might read this and nod.
Someone who is 25 might roll their eyes.
I would have.
I read an interview with Bruce Willis where he said at 40, “I feel like a 25-year-old kid in my heart.” Until he looked in the mirror.
At the time, I thought it was funny, maybe slightly delusional on his part
Now I understand. Perspective doesn’t just change how we see people. It changes how we see stories. I read literature differently now than I did in my twenties. Things hit me that I didn’t notice or understand before. When I read the short story “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, I didn’t understand his progression through his neighbors’ pools. It seemed like Cheever had indulged in his favorite vice a little too long before picking up the pen that day. But now I know that life really does fly by with the brevity of your best summer.
Meaning Comes After
Memoir meets people where they are in the lifecycle. It helps someone living through a season feel understood. It also helps someone approaching that season feel prepared. And it helps someone long past it remember who they once were.
Your story stops being a collection of events.
It becomes meaning.
And meaning is what endures.
If you’ve found yourself revisiting old memories differently lately—seeing them with new perspective—you may already be closer to writing your story than you think.
When you’re ready to explore it, you don’t have to do that alone.
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