What Book Will Be at Your Bedside?

My favorite moment in thirty years of helping others write their memoirs occurred beside a deathbed. I was visiting one of my favorite clients, Dick P. He was flat on his back and very pale, but smiling as usual.

His wife was by his side. It was she who pointed out the book on Dick’s hospital side table: the memoir he and I had worked on together five years before.

“He shows it to everyone who comes in to see him,” she said. “Especially the pretty nurses.” It was a measure of the satisfaction his memoir had given Dick.

About ten years later, my father lay in a hospice when his book was delivered to him. Inspired to start Memoirs Unlimited by my grandfather’s life story, I had proposed to Dad and my daughter that they work together on his story. Granddad’s book, when I put it between hard covers, was titled Country Boy. My father, in deference to his father and perhaps as a sort of sly joke at his own expense, called his book City Boy. 

The photo here shows Dad and Granddad playing backgammon in Minnesota in the 1950s.

My daughter had begun the project of interviewing Dad and then editing his words about a year before. By coincidence, fate, or grace, his printed books were delivered in time for him to hold one. That book, like Dick P’s, was laid on Dad’s bedside table and was with him at the end.