Looking for something else on the internet, I came across
this short piece by Jessica Handler about writing of loss and how she decided
if she should read her dead sister’s diary while she worked on her memoir:
I couldn’t deny that I had the rare opportunity to see into my beloved sister’s heart and mind. She was no longer here to answer my questions in person, and I missed her terribly. Maybe the answers would be on those pages, in her deliberate, rounded, cursive handwriting, but I couldn’t shake the mental image of my little sister not-so-playfully slapping my hand and laughing, telling me, “that’s private!” She wouldn’t have let me read her diaries if she were alive.
Read the rest in r.kv.r.y: http://rkvryquarterly.com/tips-for-writing-about-loss/