(cross posted onto savingallmybestlines.blogspot.com)
Am I passionate about sharing/saving personal & family stories.
To quote the much-missed Carson Tyler – you bet your booties, grandma!
Maybe it’s because I’ve seen the effect sharing stories has on the majority of older people.
Is it easy getting an older to tap into their treasure house of memories, to share them with others? With 9 out of 10 olders, no.
First of all, olders - make that almost everyone – tend to think of their stories as of little interest to others, inconsequential. Just little stories from long ago.
It typically takes another's genuine interest & lots of low-key cajoling to get most olders to open up. It rarely happens the first, or even fourth, time it’s attempted.
What is the value?
Stories can be an invaluable tool working with olders. Even the healthiest generally experience increasing isolation, as friends move or pass away. Remembering stories, valuing them & having them valued by others, helps keep many olders engaged with life. They have proved powerful tools working with folks suffering from memory challenges, providing connections when there might be their grasp on the here & now might not be as strong as it is on the back then.
Today's culture has become so automated & digitalized, we’ve lost many – perhaps most – oral traditions that were once commonplace.
When olders live with their children, sharing stories about grown sons & daughters was natural as dishes were washed or meals were made. There were countless opportunities to ask questions about early years, courtship, marriage.
The current barrage of distractions is so different from anything that existed before. Radio gathered families around it, which television did not. Today, computers & iPads et al make entertainment an often solitary experience. So different from the typical households of the 100 years ago, when entertainment was often as low tech as the family piano & story telling, tales of past adventures & triumphs, challenges & tragedies, resilience & victory were shared across generations.
Stories are not all sweetness & light. There can be pain there, too. Clients of mine lost relatives & dearly loved ones in World War II. My brother died when I was seven. Mom was widowed at 63. Both John & I have ridden financial roller coasters & wrestled with difficult relationships.
Who wants to hear sad stories? Truth be told, there can be a lot of power in stories of tragedy, loss & woe.
One tragic tale I heard from my Mom happened before she was born, a story handed down from her mother, about an uncle I never heard about until the final weeks of Mom’s life.
We did a lot of talking over those weeks, both at INOVA Alexandria (VA) & St. Mary’s (PA), especially when we thought she was on the mend. Maybe we’d been discussing medical advances. For whatever reason, she started telling me about her older brother, William – Willie – born after Uncle Al and before Uncle Bob.
Newborn Willie couldn’t accept his mother’s milk, couldn’t take a bottle. This was in the first years of the last century - there was no alternative, like there is now. My grandparents, in their late 20s, had to watch their sweet little babe ebb away.
Near the end, my grandfather refused to leave his tiny son’s crib. Finally, my grandmother went in, draped her arms around her bereft husband’s shoulders, and said – “Ben, come away. Let him go.” In tears, my grandfather let himself be led out of the room. Within the hour, Willie was gone.
Yes, it was a tragedy. Still, imagine a father’s love being so strong, it was kept a wee baby connected to this life. It happened over 109 years ago, to someone even my mother didn’t know – except through her mother’s stories. And it’s retelling is the only presence that little baby, my Uncle Willie, has in the here & now.
Am I passionate about sharing & saving such stories?
YES!!
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