My decision to leave the priesthood did that. My brother, who opposed the war, was able to stay with my father as a treasured son. I could not do this because my father and I carried this intense experience of the church like no other members of my family did. Memory itself is a function of the imagination. We remember our lives not as a video playback, but we are drawing up from the past what has meaning for us.
People remember the same events differently.
Memoir is not autobiography. I'm telling a piece of my life story centered around a certain theme, a certain key experience. The only way that my story has meaning for anyone is if I can render it subjectively. The point of my memoir is its subjectivity. It's not the only thing to read about Vietnam or the Catholic Church in those years, but if it has value, its subjectivity is its value.