Goodbye to the diaries of a big grumpy kid

SOME years ago actor Sheila Hancock stirred controversy by saying she had burned her diaries so they could not be read out of context after her death.

There’s a nod to this in the film Edie, about a regretfilled elderly woman, played by Hancock. In the film, Edie’s daughter reads her mother’s diaries and is upset by the contents. Arguably it serves her right, her mother is sitting in the next room. Nosey cow could have asked but she takes little solace when Edie explains the diaries were for herself, somewhere she turned when things were bad.

Hancock’s diary discussion resonated because I had done exactly the same a few years before. My diaries these days are about appointments and work, scribbled reminders to buy milk and make calls. Anyone reading them is more likely to be bored than upset. But for many years journals were where I turned in times of woe to say the things I couldn’t say elsewhere.

When I found them during a clear-out I was interested to read what had seemed important, but I was very aware that I only wrote when I was unhappy.

I didn’t need to vent when I was happy — so anyone reading them might think I was one permanently miserable wagon. I imagined my kids reading them without me being there to explain and concluding that I had been unhappy as their mother when they have been my greatest joy.

It also seemed spooky to keep that pointless mausoleum of misery. So, after I had read and remembered, it’s good to know how far you’ve come, I shredded them. All. And, rather than destroying memories it felt like creating space.