"The Doctor Couldn't Give Me More Time. So I Did the One Thing That Made Sure I'd Never Be Forgotten."

"Carol, at your age, what we really want to focus on now is keeping you comfortable."

That's what my doctor told me this past spring, after a dizzy spell put me in the hospital for two days.

I drove home and sat in my driveway for a long time before I went inside.

It wasn't the diagnosis that scared me. I've made peace with growing older.

It was this: if I were gone tomorrow, my grandchildren would never really know me. Don. My parents. Where we came from. All of it, gone quiet.

Fifteen years of telling myself "someday." Three notebooks in a drawer, blank after page two. That's all I had to show for it.

What I Couldn't Stop Thinking About

I couldn't do a thing about how much time I had left. The doctor made that clear enough, in his own kind way.

But sitting there in that driveway, something else occurred to me — something I don't think I'd ever let myself think before.

I might not be able to control how long I'm here.

But I could still have some say in whether my story went quiet along with me.

The Trouble Was, I'm No Writer

Every single time I sat down with one of those notebooks, I'd freeze right up. Where in the world do you even start with a whole life? And computers — well, let's just say those were never my strong suit either.

A Woman in My Bible Study Mentioned Something

It was a woman in my Tuesday Bible study who mentioned it first. She'd made a whole book of her life, she said — for her kids. Took her about two months.

I'll be honest, I didn't believe her one bit. At our age? Without any kind of writing background?

Then she brought it in to show the group. A real hardcover book. Her photographs right there inside it. Her stories, laid out nice, the kind of thing you'd expect to find on a shelf at a bookstore. Her name printed right across the cover.

I asked her, plain as I could, "How on earth did you manage that?"

What She Told Me

She said there was a service for exactly this sort of thing.

You don't sit down and try to write your life story from scratch — that's the part that always trips people up. Instead, somebody asks you questions. Small ones. Specific ones. And you just answer.

The company's called Memowrite, in case you're wondering.

They send you fifty questions, one at a time — written by folks who clearly know how to coax a memory out of a person gently. Answer one, and it leads you right into the next. Before I knew what was happening, I was telling stories I hadn't thought about in fifty years.

You don't even have to write it down yourself, if you don't want to. You can just talk it out loud, the way you would with an old friend over coffee, and it captures every word.

You add in your own photographs too — up to a hundred of them — right alongside the memories they go with.

Then they put it all together into a real, printed book. Your own cover. Your own title. Delivered right to your door.

I ordered mine that very night.

"Mom, I Never Knew Any of This."

The very first week, one of the questions asked about the day I met Don. I started talking, and the memory came back to me so clear, so complete, that I had to stop for a minute — I was crying. Good tears, mind you. I hadn't felt that close to him in years.

By the second month, I had pages and pages of my own life, things I never once imagined I'd manage to put into words.

When the finished book showed up at my door, I held it in my hands and felt something I still can't quite put a name to. My whole life. Something you could actually hold onto.

My daughter read through the first few pages and had to set it down for a minute — she was tearing up too.

"Mom," she said, "I never knew any of this."

My grandson, he's twelve, asked if he could keep his copy in his own room.

This Was Never Really About Writing

I want to be honest with you about something. This isn't going to turn you into some great author, and I'm certainly no exception myself.

What it gives you is a good deal simpler than that. Every life is a story worth telling — yours included. The questions do the heavy lifting. All you really have to do is be honest and let yourself remember.

If you've been meaning to write it all down and somehow never quite gotten around to it...

If you've started a notebook before and quit after a couple pages...

If you've ever worried that your grandchildren won't really know who you were...

...then this was made with you in mind. It was certainly made for me.

That book sits right on my coffee table now. My grandchildren will have it long after I'm gone — my voice, my own words, my whole life, right there in their hands.

I'm not afraid of being forgotten anymore.

I just wish I hadn't waited so long to start.

With love,

Carol R., Ohio