ABSTRACT
The act of writing memoir is a complex endeavor for many reasons, not least because of the ethical stumbling blocks the author may encounter at various stages of their writing journey. Memoir that relays the author's grief experience is certainly no exception; to write about grief involves revealing intimate details about the life and death of a loved one. Some memoirs draw on intertextual epistolary additions to their narratives to give the other a voice, by incorporating their letters, emails, and other forms of text. When the relational subject of a memoir is dead, this can complicate rather than simplify the memoirist's dilemma. While the term 'epistolary' traditionally refers to handwritten letter correspondence, many contemporary scholars now incorporate modern forms of communication, such as emails and text messages, in their definitions of epistolary. It is the hallmark of epistolary language in general to make statements in order to elicit responses from a specific addressee.
