“When the time comes to eulogize my father, I have only my list and I edit as I go, turning each listed item into an anecdote, realizing this is what my father did when he tried to teach me anything in life: storify it.”
~ from Starting with Goodbye
When I sat down to write this introduction, I wanted to open with those moments after my mother died. Lisa Romeo’s new memoir, Starting with Goodbye, is after all about the death of a parent. But my words came out trite, almost prepared: the air shifted, my world collapsed, I walked around in a fog for months on end. Those things are true, but they do not begin to tap into the complexities of grief. What about the dreams? The tiny altars I created? And the way her furniture filled the new house we had just closed on?
There is so much that must be felt and figured out and reconciled when we lose a mother or a father; it is anything but predictable.
Starting with Goodbye dives into those complexities, as Lisa Romeo takes the reader on a meandering journey exploring a father-daughter relationship from the end back to the beginning. This is not a simple trajectory in reverse, though; the story moves seamlessly through past and present, infused with conversations between her and her father after he has died, interactions that serve as invitations–for Lisa but for the reader as well. You cannot walk away from these pages unchanged; a story about one woman’s grief becomes an invitation to explore your own. Even more, it serves as impetus to reconcile relationships still within physical grasp.
I’m honored to host Lisa and thrilled to offer a book giveaway. CLICK HERE for a chance to win a copy of Starting with Goodbye (deadline to enter is Tuesday, May 22nd, at noon).
Now, welcome Lisa!
Christi Craig (CC): In the Acknowledgments you say, “This entire book is a thank you note to my father.” When you first began writing about your father, did you envision a full memoir? What was the journey like, from creating a list for his eulogy to a 200+ page reflection on your relationship?
Lisa Romeo (LR): A full memoir was definitely not my initial plan! The eulogy led to a few essays. Then I just kept writing (and publishing) essays that were all somehow thematically connected—about grief, my father—for about six years. Each essay seemed to include the seed for the next, and the next. I love writing essays, and I wrote at different lengths, in varying forms and styles, so it always kept feeling fresh.
Then I thought it would be a linked essay collection. Feedback though (from publishers, one book coach, and some very smart author friends) told me it would work better as a memoir. But I was stubborn for a few more years before starting on the memoir manuscript.
Looking back, I can see that I continued to develop as a writer alongside the trajectory of this project. The accumulation of the essays, especially the longer more complex ones, was a key for me to develop the confidence and experience to tackle the more traditional manuscript that became Starting with Goodbye. While I’m not so glad it took as long as it did, I’m grateful for all the steps along the way.
CC: When we lose someone we love, we are usually told to anticipate the 5 traditional stages of grief. But you push through the boundaries of those expectations, writing about a different way in which we may experience such loss. At one point in your memoir you ask yourself, “what…would people say if I told them that my way of grief…is to talk to my dead father, to watch him move through my house, to think that we’re getting better acquainted?” Was there a moment during those visits from your father when you or someone close to you questioned that experience? What do you hope readers will carry with them after finishing your book?
LR: First, I’m a rather serious, pragmatic person, not prone to the mystical or seemingly unexplainable ideas. I would not even say I’m that spiritual and I am not religious. So, this came out of nowhere. So initially I didn’t tell anyone, for a long time. Also, it felt very private and I wanted to hold on to that. For so much of my life I did not feel close to my father, and now here I had a chance.
My husband first found out I was talking to my dead father when he read it in one of my published essays. He was skeptical but stayed silent. When he lost his own father—who he worked beside every day for 40 years—then we were able to talk about it a bit more.
When friends read some of those essays, they began to confide that they too had similar experiences. Finally, I began talking about it and found that many people were relieved to tell me how they too talk to their dead departed loved ones. Other people seem grateful just to talk about their gone loved ones because that’s something we don’t do enough of in this country. We take the idea of “don’t speak ill of the dead” too far – and in many families the dead are just never spoken about, period I hope readers will come away perhaps a bit more willing to talk about those who are gone, and maybe talk to them as well. To know that the point of grief is not to get over someone, but to remember them, to be curious about them. A life ends, but not the relationship does not.
CC: Outside of your work as an author, you teach writing classes, workshops, retreats. In fact, you have one upcoming in New Jersey (through The Cedar Ridge Writers Series), “Creating Memoir from Memory”), teaching alongside Allison K. Williams. If only I lived closer! What do you love most about working with students who are in the thick of the writing and publication process?
LR: Well, first of all, I learn something about myself every single time I teach— either from the general discussion that develops and/or from particular students, so there is a direct, somewhat selfish benefit in that! When writers are still in the developing stages of projects— whether that’s a full manuscript or a single essay — there are so many options and possibilities, some of which they themselves don’t even see because they are too close to the story. I love being able to help them draw out all the undeveloped parts of a bigger whole, find the nuance and subtext, dig down to the underlying story-beneath-the-story, and see all the different ways a story might go; or maybe it’s two or three stories and not just one. When that lightbulb goes off for the (student) writer, it feeds both of us.
CC: What are you reading these days?
LR: I just started The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, one of my favorite authors. I’d pre-ordered it and found it so ironic that the book arrived at one of the busiest times of my life, and its message is: slow down! I could feel my body loosen during the first chapter when she describes lolling under a shade tree as a young girl—but because it’s Patricia Hampl, it’s not just about lying under that tree!
When I get this busy, my reading slacks off and so I tend to reach for short stuff—I’ll pull a poetry collection from the shelf, or a short story anthology and dip in and out. True Story, from Creative Nonfiction Magazine, is perfect for that—a purse-sized mini-chapbook each month featuring one long essay or narrative nonfiction piece.
CC: What do you claim as your favorite writing space or where is a treasured place for retreat?
LR: The place I spend so much time each day working and writing IS my favorite spot. That was my goal five years ago when I replaced all the second-hand beige office furniture in my home office—yes, an entire room of my own!—with the furnishings and décor I wanted. The walls are bright red with white trim. There are two full walls and one-half wall covered in black wood bookcases. I have a huge black writing table (it’s really a dining room table; I hate desks) floating in the middle of the room. There’s a comfy wing chair in the corner, and I have all the space, light, and comfort I need. I work facing the front window so I see the snow piling up when I’m warm and cozy inside, and in summer I can enjoy the neighbors’ flowers.
~
Lisa Romeo is the author of Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss, (University of Nevada Press). Her nonfiction is listed in Best American Essays 2016, and published widely, including the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Longreads, Brain Child, Brevity, Hippocampus. Lisa teaches with Bay Path University’s MFA program, and works as a freelance editor and writing coach. She lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and sons.
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