Writing Memories

Barbara and I met some ten years back, when she was 83-years-old. She was a member of an expressive writing group I offered to residents at an area nursing home. Participants wrote in response to guided activities structured around the five senses.

We looked at pictures, listened to sounds and music, felt textures, tried to solve riddles and took our imaginations to other times and places. I collected often fragile and shaky marks on paper (or what I had transcribed if a member was not able to write), to take away with me each time. I typed final copies to return to group members when the group met next.

“I was born during the influenza [pandemic] in 1918,” Barbara explained with wide eyes. “They sent us right home from the hospital because a man who was out of his mind from the flu wandered in our room. The doctor said we’d be better off at home.”

During one session, writers were invited to choose an image which “spoke” to them, from a variety of picture postcards. Barbara wrote: “When I look at this picture of the lighthouse I think of my summers on Peak’s Island in Maine, looking out to the sea. From the back porch I could look across to the Portland Head light on the tip of Cape Elizabeth. It is a welcoming sight. The picture also reminds me of the nights I used to go to sleep listening to the foghorn. Most people hate to hear the foghorn but I loved it because it reminded me that I was near the ocean, which I love. I also think a lighthouse looks so stately there against the sky. The picture and the memory warm my heart.”

During her life, Barbara lived and/or worked at Waltham’s Fernald School. Her story ebbed and flowed each time I tried to dig more deeply. The Walter E. Fernald State School, now the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center is, according to Wikipedia, the oldest publicly funded institution in the Western Hemisphere serving people with developmental disabilities. Originally a Victorian sanatorium, it later was alleged to be the scene of medical research which led to new regulations regarding human research on children.

Imagination sets us free to create personal versions of our own stories, even as others attempt to unearth what is “real.” There is power far beyond putting something down on paper; creativity and energy flows from just under the surface when we dare to scratch the itch.

At age 83, I believe Barbara had made sense of the course of her life, focusing on memories of her own choosing. Collage is a wonderful metaphor; piecing together often disparate fragments to create a unique picture.

“If you can think, you can write. If you talk, imagine, or dream, then you have something to say that is worth writing down, even if only to yourself. This creative expression – creative because you create it – is art and you are an artist.” – Pat Schneider, The Writer as an Artist: a New Approach to Writing Alone and with Others.