Living a life

I'm editing the memoirs of that same aunt, something she asked me to do several months before she died. I was honored, because she had been writing them for years and I knew how important the project was to her. I was also flattered that she appreciated my writing/editing experience. Right after she asked me, she had another heart attack and when my mother visited her, she gave her the stack of typewritten pages for me. When she died, part of my sadness was guilt that I hadn't been able to finish yet, but I also had been spending so much time immersed in her life that I felt closer to her in those last months than ever before. The 86 year old woman was buried, but the young 19 year old bride was alive and well in my heart.

I'm still working on it - scanning takes the most time, but I'm also careful to not erase the uniqueness of her voice even as I clean up some of the grammar/language. Her life is fascinating; I'll try to post some of it here.