Hey, what's the truth?

Every morning when I read the obituaries in the San Francisco Chronicle, I wonder what the REAL story is.

 I have to confess that when my dad died, my sister and I deliberated over very common obit words like "beloved" and "devoted."   The final version of his obituary was nuanced and, to our minds accurate, whether or not anyone else caught on.  It was certainly not complete.  We did not have a perfect family life. 

A memoir, though, is another story, and I'm on a memoir kick right now.  I recently finished "Losing Mum and Pup," by Christopher Buckley (Pup was William F. Buckley, Jr.,  and Mum was Pat Buckley, socialite extraordinaire) and "Reading My Father," by Alexandra Styron, daughter of William Styron.

Honey, these families were a MESS.  Christopher Buckley tries to cover it up by citing the number of books his father wrote, the important people he knew, and how driven he was. His mother, Pat, was a compulsive, if witty, liar who went through periods of not speaking to her son or husband (otherwise known as "Ducky.")   Christopher seems bedazzled by his parents, but then his own life is much more complicated than he presents it in the book.  He's estranged from his wife, has an out-of-wedlock child whom he refuses to see, and a new girlfriend he bops around New York parties with,  none of which he happens to include.

Alexandra Styron  on the other hand, just comes out and says her father was impossible to live with.  He drank, he was depressed, he was verbally abusive, he was distant.  I did not read her book with dubious, raised eyebrows, because it rang very true, as complete as she could make it.

There's a creepy ad for cemetery plots on TV right now that ends with, "Every life is a story."  This is true, and I'm thinking that if you dig around enough, every life is an interesting story, somewhere beyond the obituary.