Because you sometimes need a disclaimer when writing about things that may piss people off. Mainly the people who may be choosing your nursing home. Pray for me.

When I was a youngster I read a lot. I always read nonfiction. In my brilliant juvenile mind I believed that reading fiction was a waste of time. Reading factual content could always prove to be useful someday. To this day my brain is a well spring of limitless trivial information. I play a mean game of Jeopardy.

My particular passion was biographies. In elementary school I came upon a series authored by one Opal Wheeler. No relation that I am aware of. She wrote children's books about the lives of great classical composers. There is no good reason that I can fathom as to why I loved these books other than I enjoyed Ms. Wheeler's writing. I did enjoy classical music. And I enjoyed the Beatles and the Monkees and the Supremes. I don't play a musical instrument. I did have a rented viola (who plays the viola? Not me, that's for sure) that collected dust under my bed in one of the apartments we lived in on Parthenia St in Northridge. I was in the 4th grade at the time.

In my teens I became enamored with the biographies of the royalty of Europe. My favorites were the relatives of Queen Victoria, especially the Romanoffs (those precious martyrs of the modern Russian Orthodox Church). Then the lives of the saints and holy people became my constant companions. At some future date this will all become important to my story.

So now I offer myself. Good grief. A very good reason for offering a memoir is to offer hope. For most of my early life I was very isolated from others. Reading about the lives of other struggling souls somehow made my life more possible. Sharing our stories with others exposes our humanity and our strengths and our frailties. And our magnificence. It puts it all together for the writer, integrates it as my spiritual director often says ( he's a pain in the ass sometimes). At it's best it offers hope and possibility to the reader.

So...for all who have ears, hear.

My apologies in advance to all those who I might piss off in these pages. Most notably my children, who may not wish to hear some of this. Please know that a writer in some degree of sound mental health does not undertake a memoir for the sole purpose of making one's offspring mad or making themselves right. I also apologize in advance to my father and other forebears who have preceded myself into Glory. Wherever they are may they keep in mind that these are my own perceptions and do not necessarily represent the actual facts as they occurred. Time and space do have a tendency to become warped when one survives the lives we have had. I believe that once you have passed through the Veil, you know what really happened. You don't care about keeping secrets or being right or making up "stories".

God forgives us all. May we be as generous with each other.

Diana