Babette Fraser Hale's Blog

Honesty has become kind of a catchword in American discourse since, oh, around 2016. We seem unsure of what it is—what it should be, now. Even in the personal realm.

How much honesty prevails in our daily associations?

The question has broad effect in home life—and it occupies a central position in work life where it can be thorny, indeed.

That’s especially true for a writer.

For a writer of fiction and memoir, it may be the central question. Can a memoir tell the truth? Does truth play a role in fiction?

How much fiction is there in memoir, for that matter? In the true stories we read, in the biographies published about famous people.

When we socialize we often tell stories about outrageous characters we’ve known. Were the people really that outrageous, or do we dip into inky clouds of fiction when we tell their story? And how deeply?

You know the answer.

Just before he died, Texas columnist and novelist Leon Hale — WinedaleBooks , my partner and husband for forty years, asked me to write about him. I wasn’t sure whether it was a plea or an effort to grant permission. He understood that without some expression of approval from him I would not invade his privacy.

Maybe he’d known that the death of a beloved spouse inevitably reveals unsuspected secrets. That the widow’s imagination, fueled by the pain of grief and loss, would run loose, accumulating bruises and a few bleeding wounds. This widow, anyway.

He may have guessed that she would wonder how much honesty prevailed in the marriage, anyway?

Well, how much should prevail? Can there be a happy marriage with all warts and blemishes of the past revealed?

For it was a happy marriage.

I had to answer those questions and I did so in the only way I can. I wrote about them. The result is the memoir I mentioned yesterday.

THIS FAMILIAR HEART: An Improbable Love Story will be published next April by Winedale Publishing (ISBN 978-0-9752727-5-6).

Connection. Coming out of pandemic isolation in Texas, I longed for connection with other people. It was a need so intense it taxed my resilience.

My husband Leon Hale, beloved longtime columnist for the Houston Post and Houston Chronicle, had died in hospice on March 27, so my sense of isolation had two barbs for me to twist upon.

Surviving those months in Winedale, during which he was dying without palliative medical care, required much patience and perseverance.

For connection with others, I’d been relying on phone calls and Facebook friends.

My first discovery afterwards was that making connections can be hard for a new widow. Especially one who remains shy of crowded rooms, the usual location for socializing in large groups.

I’ve reached out to friends, of course. Also to fellow volunteers in various community nonprofits, trying to convert acquaintance into friendship.

I have ventured, toe first, into the unfamiliar waters of senior dating sites. I have made several friends that way—sharing texts that relate with honesty to someone else’s life can be a big help when your partner of forty years is no longer near. One person I met on such a site has progressed to phone calls and visits, very pleasant indeed. But in making friends this way, it is important, I think, to disregard questions of outcome and future expectations.

Better to stay in the present, focus on the present moment with an eye to what is most positive about it.

A major difficulty for me throughout my grief journey has been too much dreaming of the past—a source of so many tears of loss as well as memories of great happiness. I don’t want to lose a single memory from my marriage although time fades even the best of them.

To slow that fading, to slow the inevitable loss, I write. I have completed THIS FAMILIAR HEART, the autobiographical story of my long love affair with Leon Hale—for it was all of that until the moment he died.

The memoir will be published next April, ISBN 978-0-9752727-5-6.

Hi, this is Babette Fraser Hale.

Welcome to my new blog--about connection. Isolation during the pandemic, and my own situation following the death of my husband, Leon Hale, have led me to think deeply and long about the ways we connect with each other and with the places where we live. I hope you’ll join me in these explorations.