Listen To Their Stories

When I think about getting older I often think about it like this:

Where life peaks somewhere in one’s 30’s and then gets progressively worse for the duration as one gets more wrinkly, gray and decrepit and less physically capable, and as all one’s hopes and dreams give way to the reality of inevitable despair.

But when I think about life in terms of storytelling potential, I think about it like this:

Where life just gets richer and richer, because the longer you live, the more stories you have to tell. Which is why I love talking to old people.

Yesterday I found this video on The Atlantic’s web site. Recently-revived archival footage from the ’50s of a game show, it features a man who was a small child when Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford Theater in 1865. You guys, this man was a witness to Lincoln being shot! I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought about Lincoln as someone in our country’s way-back history, someone who died generations before anyone we ever knew was born. A guy who only exists in textbooks. But here is a man who was alive probably after your parents were born, and he actually saw Lincoln get shot.

Stories are a bridge indeed, connecting generations with folklore and knowledge, as any culture reliant on verbal lore will tell you.  And people’s personal stories are among their most valuable possessions. They can’t leave them to you in their will, so if they’re willing to tell them to you now, jump on it.

Over the last few years my dad and I have started to exchange letters—real, handwritten letters on pen and paper, delivered via the good old-fashioned US mail. It all started when he got a computer. I thought email would be a great way for us to keep in touch from opposite sides of the country. No one in my family really likes to talk on the phone, and the other members of my family have taken to texting and emailing as a better way to keep in touch. I thought I could probably transition my dad as well, and maybe even teach him how to use Skype. It turned out, however, that my dad did not take to the computer thing. He was frustrated and did not feel inspired by it. His emails were rare and usually consisted of about one simple sentence:

“Jos, let me know if you get this.”

And then he’d call, to see if I got his email. We both eventually gave up, and our pen pal relationship began in earnest, which has turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to us. I have learned so much about my dad through these letters. He has told me stories of his childhood growing up in the projects of Worcester, Mass with nine brothers and sisters and no father. He has described to me what it was like to be a hippie in the late 60s, and how he met my mom at that student union of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where she batted her eyes at him early one morning. “You know how she is.” What? No I don’t!

His stories are bringing my dad’s entire life to life for me, and more than that, they are giving me a colorful description of a time that doesn’t exist anymore. They are helping me figure out who he is, and, in turn, who I am. You can read about such stories in books, yes but hearing them straight from the mouth of someone you know is different. It’s more real. It’s more poignant.

Before my grandmother died, I used to ask her questions about when she was young. How did she meet my grandfather? What was my mom like when she was little? How did you learn to drive? (My gramma learned to drive when she was about 7, because back then, where she grew up in Massachusetts, even kids worked the tobacco farms, and so my gramma learned to drive a tractor very young.)

Before my grandmother’s sister Beatrice died, I called her every day on the phone for months. I wanted to check in with her, let her know that I was thinking of her, give her a few minutes of company in her day. But more than that, I didn’t want to lose the chance to hear her stories.

Because once someone passes away, their stories are gone too. Listen to them while you can.