Our Writing Legacy

Recently, my brother brought over a box of miscellaneous family stuff that had once been in my father's possession. This meant that it could've been anything from either my father's or mother's side of the family, from any one of many generations. The only qualifiers were that it was something my father physically encountered, and it was something he decided to keep. Needless to say, there was a wide and varied amount of stuff in this box - even some things that were technically mine in the first place. However, few things were more interesting than two things he kept that my uncle sent to him maybe thirty years ago.

Uncle Charles, writer

These two things sent by my oldest uncle (now deceased) were manuscripts he wrote in the 1960s. My uncle sent them to my father - with edits - under the idea that maybe they could be published in one form or the other. One was a sixty-page treatise on pacifism during the Viet Nam War, with a lot of my uncle's beliefs poured into it. The other was a full manuscript telling the story (through thinly fictionalized narrative) of my uncle's time with the Flying Tigers during World War 2. These were amazing discoveries, though unfortunate in the timing since the author died almost twenty years ago and my father passed about 17 years ago, leaving no frame of reference for these writings. I couldn't ask them for explanations or clarity without a Ouija board, and even then the answers might be a little vague. All I have is the physical manuscripts, the edits written on the pages, and educated guesses as to what the final product should be.

Along with all this writing comes a significant dilemma - what to do about publishing these, even if just for the rest of the family. I genuinely do not know if his children knew about these works (they were just kids according to my calculations), or ever had a chance to read them. (That's the thing about writing something in the 1960s - you didn't just make a Word doc and send to everyone, you typed up a physical copy and that was pretty much it.) More to the point, I don't know if my uncle would want these stories to be produced for the family, if he was comfortable admitting to certain youthful transgressions, or if there was any disrespect publishing these posthumously - and therefore without his permission. Definitely a lot to think about.

My brother (who brought these things into my life) gave me some clarity in this concept. He reminded me that my uncle sent these stories for review by eyes other than his own, so they were no longer really secrets. "Once you tell someone something, you tell everyone that thing," is how my brother put it. And he reminded me that my uncle wrote all these stories down, for better or worse, with a thought about publishing them, so he must've been ready to spread the word. Might it be embarrassing for him to admit to that one time in the Regent Hotel? Maybe, but he wrote it out. Might everyone see through the fictionalizing narrative and know just who his different characters represented? Always a chance. But apparently he was ready, so I am taking them to press... soon enough.

The big takeaway from this is if you are writing some personal stories down, make a simple decision: Do you want these to go public, or are you writing them for your own catharsis? Either reason is perfectly viable, but remember that once you start sharing them, you open them and yourself to the world. This can be a freeing, liberating experience, and possibly very terrifying, so make your intentions very much known. And if you don't want them going around, remember that eventually, your nephew might just end up publishing them.