the power of story

 

You know those stories, the things people say or do, the images that you can't get out of your head, that haunt you and keep you awake at night for days on end? I've had too many of those lately. Like last night. Kids in bed, husband flipping through the channels and stopping on the story of a man on a journey I can sympathize with but can't quite understand. A journey to a foreign land to die. Why does he need to leave home to die?  Why would he want to? Because this man has Lou Gehrig's Disease and he wants to kill himself and you can't do that legally in the US. I drop what I'm doing and focus intently on the screen. I am sickly fascinated and at the same time appalled by the story and the journey. Not the long plane ride but the journey to death and what it takes to get there. I want to understand. I want to relate, but as the story tragically ends all I can think is: we just sat here and watched a man die on TV.

 

It's usually not the television screen that haunts me. I've seen thousands of people die on TV (in Braveheart alone). It's not real, even when it is real. And it's not the words that torment: death toll in Japan rises to 9,500; 8.9 magnitude earthquake; devastating tsunami wipes town off the map. Or even the photos of floating cars and mouse-over aerial shots of where neighborhoods used to be. It leaves a sick lump in my stomach, but I can't wrap my head around the numbers or the images. It just doesn't feel real. Maybe I just don't want it to be.

 

What really keeps me awake at night are the stories. The individuals. The lives or one life. Like this one that tormented me for weeks. And still I can't shake it and don't want to. Or staying up too late last night making up for the hour I lost watching TV and uncharacteristically stopping by Facebook before going off to bed only to read that a girl--a woman--I went to school with has just died suddenly or is dying depending on how you look at it. It takes me longer than usual to process what I'm reading. Maybe it's the late hour, maybe it's the bizarre nature of where I'm reading about it--on Facebook of all places! I read that she inexplicably stopped breathing and was life flighted to a Houston hospital. That the doctors don't know what has happened to her or have any way to reverse it. That she is now being declared brain dead though her body will stay on life support for several days to make preparation for donating her organs. All this I learn in reverse time as I scroll down the page, wading through 200 shocked friends and commenters as they leave cheesy proclaimations of love and concern for the whole world to read, that is, except the woman for whom they are intended because she can't come to the computer anymore.  And among all the outpouring, even more shockingly, are family members posting four letter words back and forth to each other over who is a real sister to the dying woman and who is not.

 

So, I'm reading about the ventilator and her organs and imagining the hospital scene too vividly in my mind when I notice the date stamp right there on the page says 2 hours ago. I scroll back down. Notice that she has stopped breathing: 12 hours ago. My God, I think to myself sickened, this is all happening as I read it. And people are Facebooking it.

But I keep scrolling down until I find Misty's last post. To the wall of one of her 3 teenage sons where she writes, not knowing they will be some of her last words: I am so proud of the man you're becoming!! With 2 exclaimation points. And the date of the post: yesterday at 9:36 am.

I know there's no way I'm getting any sleep tonight. And I know I'm not the only one. So I go to bed to pray for the family--for those boys!--and do eventually get a few hours of sleep. Only to wake up this morning still haunted by the story of a woman I barely knew and didn't much care for in school, but who friended me on facebook at some point and who I accepted as a friend because we're all adults now and who cares about the stupid kid stuff of 20 years ago, but who's wall or profile I never bothered to visit until last night.

The stories of life are powerful. We must listen to each others stories and learn from them, but we must tell our own stories. And you must tell your story before its too late. Life is precious and it's a vapor. So, this is why I journal. Why I create. Because I have to. Because the stories are meant for someone other than me. But I may never realize it before my own journey ends. And that's ok. I do it in faith.

What any of this has to do with a half-sedated crowd or my new moleskine sketchbook, I don't know. But there you go. At  least I've told it. Because stories change people. I should know.

 

What story do you still have left to tell?

Comments

[Caroll D]

Beautiful post. Saw that TV program but couldn't watch it. At my age I think far too much about the end of my life. Far too many younger than me have passed. And I ask the questions that so many ask, what am I here for, why,....on and one. And what story do I still have left to tell?

[Barb]

I'm sitting here in a kind of a daze after reading your wonderful post. You've got me really thinking, focusing on things...things I didn't realize until just now, when you pointed them out. Thinking about my own story and how I need to tell it but how I am utterly paralyzed by the thought of actually doing so. Thinking about how petty people get when someone they know/love dies or is dying...or how the limelight seekers come out of the woodwork, too. Gosh, you really have my wheels turning at high speed this afternoon. I think I better pull out my journal or, maybe, a canvas.
Peace & Love,
~Barb~

[Paula]

Yes, yes, yes! We are "hard wired" for stories...to tell them and to hear them. And, if we don't do the telling, how can we be sure that someone else will get our story right? It's a huge reason why there are as many words in my journals as there is art.

[Franklin Tarver]

Making Sense Of My Life

Ever since I wore a younger man's clothes,
I knew wrong from right and I did what God chose. My eyes and mouth opened and I stretched out my skin, Found out very quickly 'bout the world I was in. A babe to a child from a youth to a man, Found someone to love and I stuck to the plan. Work hard in the soil shaped my good life like clay, If I did it all over I'd do it the same way. From Father to Grandfather like an old timeless dream, Done all I could do saw all that I've seen. All my days now are over so don't cry for me, life was a rich pageant it was better to be than it is not to be... That's what I did to make sense out of life.