Last year around this time, my kids gave me a present of writing my life story. The company was called “Remento,” and they turn spoken word into text and ultimately a book with little effort on the author’s part. It’s a terrific idea that allows people to tell stories about their life without having to write them on a computer.
It was a lovely idea, but around the time my family bought Remento for me, my sister died, and a few weeks later, my husband died as well. Needless to say, the last thing I wanted to do was write about my life. It was just too painful. After a few months though, I began to be intrigued by the idea of writing some stories that would outlast me. There’s nothing like a death in the family to make you aware of your own mortality. I had lived my husband’s dream. What part of that dream was mine? Chapter by chapter I reflected on the photos and stories from my life that my kids had uploaded for me. Remento would send me a “Prompt” every week to remind me to record that story. It took awhile, because at times it was still quite difficult to remember some of these stories.
Nevertheless, I persevered. After recording stories, I would go back and edit them in text to make them more concise and add things I had forgotten to say the first time. I added a few stories and I deleted some I had already recorded, because they were repetitive. Last week I finished editing the last story and proceeded to the “publication” phase. I did a final text edit, arranged the stories in the sequence I thought best fit the chronology, chose a title and hit “publish.” I have ordered hard copies for my family, including an e-book version and I have a 140+ page book about me that I can share at my birthday party this year. There is also a QR code on each chapter that readers can use to listen to my actual voice telling the story.
Having lived with my husband for 64 years, it was sometimes hard to separate out “our” life from “my life.” What had I accomplished in contrast to what he had accomplished? Was the “ours” mine or his or both of ours? As I recorded and remembered, however, I found nuggets of stories that explained what I am all about. I ended up titling the book “Becoming Linda” — “Still figuring it out.” Not an original title, but descriptive of what I was figuring out as I wrote it.
Remento is one of several options for helping people remember and record their lives for their family and friends. You don’t really have to type to do it, although I found that the text editing part was very important, because I had left things out of my recording or hemmed and hawed when I didn’t want to. Still, it was an important exercise for me to reflect on my now nearly 84 years and even more importantly think about what I want to do with the remaining years I have.
Will I now sit in my apartment and reflect on the past or will I look to a future I can still create? Living in a retirement community, it can be tempting to talk about the past, as well as our ailments. But I have three children and four grandchildren, and I want to be part of their lives as long as I can. Because I also live in a community that was devastated by the recent Eaton Fire, I want to be able to contribute to the healing of the community. I support ideas like urging residents to “buy local” from the few businesses that survived; volunteering at the nearby elementary school that did survive the fire; or inviting residents to use our community’s meeting spaces whenever possible. We have had several musicians who lost everything come to our community and play their instruments for us. I was even able to donate an old violin I had that we never played but have carried around with us for years, In the Fall, some of the local artists will come and show the work they have been able to create now after the fire burned most of their past work.
The last chapter of my book has a photo of a sunrise — or maybe it’s a sunset. I’m not sure. But it speaks to me of the chance to use the years I have left to continue to make a difference. It may be a small one. It may be that I just try to do one kind thing each day or send an encouraging text to one of my grandkids; or even write a piece on this blog about what is going on around us all. Whatever it is, you haven’t heard the last of me yet.