Who will tell his story, or why I write.

Who will tell his story?  The last line of Hamilton has sent my brain on a journey. I think about Mike’s story.  I can tell the story of his valent struggle with Parkinson’s, determined until the end to live his life as he wanted, not as Parkinson’s dictated. I can tell the story of watching him connect with all the people his life touched.  I can tell the story of his love.  I can tell the story of our quiet moments, our shared humor and the incredible love we shared.  But I knew him only 20 of his 69 years.  Who tells the rest?   I didn’t experience him as the father he was, the brother he was or the child he was. He never kissed my boo boos, or sat for hours uncounted at my sporting events.   I cannot tell the story of his first marriage, other than the experiences he shared with me. And his inner life, his messages to himself; who shares those? 

          And who tells Amie’s story.  I carried her in my womb, feeling her grow and loving her before her skin touched air.  I saw her first angry cries, flailing her arms, pissed at her eviction from the warm, fluid nest she was outgrowing.  I watched her grow, often with those same angry flailings at the changes demanded by her maturing body and mind.  I observed her early efforts to change the world as she distributed “Stop Nuclear War” flyers to all the neighbors. I watched her adolescent struggles trying to find balance between the powerful woman she was becoming and the world in which she must survive.

          I watched Amie determinedly finish college years beyond those of her piers to become the teacher she desired.  And I marveled during her first years teaching the young ones, worried about their lives and trying to convey her love.  I struggled as she married, to understand that I was no longer her go to person.  I was losing parts of her story as Tony heard her innermost thoughts. I too struggle with change.            I walked with her, in labor too soon, worrying that pregnancy shouldn’t hurt.  I felt her fear as she took home that incredibly tiny infant who had stopped breathing the first time I held him.  And I trusted her strength to cope. And to cope again, when pregnant with her second, she spent the last month in the hospital worried about the two-year-old at home. 

          I observed her life with pride, unprepared for the day when she said, “I have cancer.  How do I tell my children?”  “Tony is preparing a visitor bed for you, but what if it is me who needs the bed downstairs?”  How do I comfort her when I feel no comfort? Where is that point when her story becomes mine?  Stories intersect.   I watch as she displays scanxiety facing the next picture of her illness, but I have the same symptoms.  And what of the stories of her children, her friends, and her partner in life?

          I think of the time I was leaving an unsavory court battle, entering the sunny street with a scowl engulfing my face.  A bearded, unwashed gentleman, with a bowl of whatever the soup kitchen across the street was serving in his hand told me to “smile.  The sun is shinning and you are alive.”  His statement has been engraved in my story for twenty- five years, but who besides me knows?  How many times have I entered someone else’s story without knowing?

          Who will tell my story?  I assumed that my children would tell my story.  But, I may outlive them.    Does my story really matter?  When my children, my grandchildren and my friends tell my story, will they match?  Probably not.  And, like others, who really knows my innermost thoughts?  And I realize as I write this, this is why I write.

          When I write, my thoughts take life.  When I write, those thoughts I rarely have the time or inclination to tell others appear on paper.  Those thoughts, swirling around and crashing through my brain become ordered, in a line; somewhat false, because life doesn’t happen in a line. When I write, I learn about my story, and if my writing survives me, will others tell this part of my story?