Telling Other People's Secrets

I suppose I thought that staying with my childhood in my memoir I wouldn't fall into the trap that my husband's friend, Gerard Windsor, fell into. I didn't want a sister not talking to me from that point on. But maybe, I didn't think hard enough about it. I thought that all the grudges and secrets that I didn't know the answer to were part of my adult life but I was wrong. I am still talking to one of my sisters but only to wish her a Merry Christmas or a Happy Birthday.
I didn't realise that her attempted suicide was a secret. I suppose I thought my mother had told me so she had told everyone. I know that she liked to share news and gain sympathy and even to understand what had happened by talking about it. After all, I also lived through this event so I thought my sister's attempted suicide was common knowledge. But it is a pity that I didn't ask her first because in a way she had ownership of the event. She told me this anyway when I had given her a copy of my memoir to read in advance of publication but too late to change anything.
Now my Aunties and my other sister have remained very silent about me getting published.
The other person I am scared to have a coffee with although I didn't think about it at the time, is my father's niece; my cousin. I think her side of the family adored my father and wouldn't understand what I was on about. As I am living back in the city where he was born and trying to get to know him now that he is dead and to understand his side of the story, I think I have done a bad thing in the way I write about him.
I suppose that even if you know something has happened, and I do know these things, maybe secrets are worth keeping to protect the ideas of those around. Maybe, I don't have the killer streak that I think all good writers should have. They don't seem to have any regard for secrets.
The people I expected to read my Memoir have been strangely quiet, or they try to analyse it in a way that I don't want. It has not turned out as I expected. That's for sure.

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