Why you should write your parent’s biography
Gayle Torrens, 64 from Yandina, Queensland, reveals how writing her mother’s biography has been one of her best experiences to date.
Every Christmas when the family gathers, we sit around and retell the family legends. They have been told many times and we all know them and love them. Last Christmas, however, we got a real wake up call. Our beloved mother was in hospital and too sick to come to the Christmas celebrations. The prognosis for her was not very rosy.
Suddenly, it hit home – one-day mum will not be here to start the stories off. I suddenly realised that she was a treasure trove of experiences that my brothers and I knew all about. Our children had also grown up with these stories but our grandchildren were just beginning to appreciate them at a time when they could be disappearing from our grasp forever.
Thankfully, mum made a full recovery. As soon as she was home, we started on her biography. She would tell me a story and I would write it down and search for the appropriate photographs. In time, I had pages and pages of anecdotes so with mum's help, so I started putting them in chronological order.
I have always had a very close relationship with my mother. We have always been more like sisters than mother and daughter and whenever we are together we'd chatter incessantly so I knew a lot about her life. But even then she never talked much about her life prior to when her mother married her stepfather. And although I knew she'd been in a home, I didn't know how she got there, how she felt about it or how she got away from it. I also didn't know much about her life during the war years.
This project has provided me with precious memories of special times shared with mum. My mum said she loved me writing her biography because I would read each section back and that would engender a lot of discussion. We had a wonderful time sourcing the old photos and talking about each one. The whole family got really involved.
The result is a beautiful book that mum is very proud of and one that can be passed down through the family. I did a big family history photo album for mum's 80th and she loved it but it didn't give her whole story. I feel it is really important to get the story so we know her and the times in which she lived better. Our children and grandchildren now have been given an opportunity to get to know this wonderful woman a whole lot more.
I really recommend this activity to everyone. The world is changing at a very rapid pace. It would be sad if the memories of a slower, less complicated life disappeared forever and with them the wonderful memories of your loved ones.
Here's a peek into the first couples page of the biography.