It took more than 25 years for Heather Summerhayes Cariou to write Sixtyfive Roses (McArthur & Company, 436 pp.), a memoir that began, both in its inception and its narrative, with her sister’s death. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at the age of four, Pam Summerhayes defied doctors’ prognoses, which at the time gave her only months to live. She lived to be 26 years old.
From Pam’s story, and her own experiences living with the knowledge that her sister’s premature death was assured, Summerhayes Cariou set out simply to write, even without the expectation of a finished product.
"I wasn’t setting out to write a book in order to publish it," she says. "I wasn’t interested in the result, only in the process."
Out of that process, Summerhayes Cariou created a work that was an essential, personal exploration of the disease and its immeasurable effect on her family and, importantly, her parents, who founded Canada’s Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in 1953 (to which five per cent of the book’s proceeds will be donated). Its title alludes to the common childhood mispronunciation of "cystic fibrosis" as "sixtyfive roses" – one of Summerhayes Cariou’s most vivid memories of her sister’s early diagnosis. But despite her own acute emotional attachment to the work, she was adamant that her account remain as true to the events as possible.
"If I say (my sister) was in the hospital for 72 days, it was 72 days, not hours. I’ve done as much fact checking as I can," she says. "I’d call my parents at eight or nine at night, doing pop quizzes, basically. I got hospital records so I knew what dates were correct, got baptismal records: I was very scrupulous about fact checking and interviewing other family members, to make sure that my memories were at least factually correct."
In addition to culling historical records to ensure the accuracy of the book’s information, Summerhayes Cariou was also compelled to excavate her memories with equal rigour. With more than 50 years between some of the book’s events, even taking into account its decades-long creation period, the former professional actress found herself drawn to the physical world of her memories. In the acrid smell of mustard patches placed on her sister’s chest to assist breathing, or the salty taste of her sister’s skin (a symptom used to test for CF), Summerhayes Cariou found an indelible link between simple artifacts and her ability to recall memories now decades old.
"I was having a difficult time writing about one of the last Christmases that Pam and I spent together, and I wasn’t remembering it well because emotions were blotting it out," she recalls. "So I thought, ‘I’ll just start by describing the mixing bowls that we used to mix the cookies in every year.’
"I just started writing about the bowls and what we made in them, and out of that an entire window opened up in my memory that had been shut."
One of the greatest challenges Summerhayes Cariou found herself facing was the inevitable worry over self-censorship. Despite repeated calls to her parents, Doug and Donna Summerhayes, it was not until her mother impelled her to write "your own truth," without fear of its effect on the family, that she felt sufficiently freed to finish what would become the story’s final draft.
"Most of the other drafts were straight reporting, very strong narrative but no reflection," says Summerhayes Cariou. "And it’s through the reflection I was able to reveal my truth and my feelings."
Through foggy memory, self-censorship and even the objections of the American Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which holds a trademark on the term "65 Roses" (a fact that Summerhayes Cariou dismisses – "I’m referring to a word that came out of my sister’s mouth," she says), the first-time author faced a great deal before finally realizing her memoir as a completed draft. But after 25 years of challenges and successive improvement, Summerhayes Cariou finally published her story because its time had come.
"The cutoff point came when I was too embarrassed to have a dinner conversation and say I was still working on it," she says. "When it became too great a burden I said enough is enough. I’ll just have to put it out there."
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