Stories in the Attic
Somewhere in my house, maybe in a box in the attic, is a tape recorder with an hour of my great grandma's voice. A few years before she died, I decided in the middle of one of my obsession-with-genealogy phases that I wanted to make a record of what she knew about our Irish ancestors, one of whom had stowed away on a ship during the potato famine to make his way to America. I remember putting the recording aside and thinking, "This is important – I'll want to keep this." Having a record of Grandma T's voice seemed precious even while she was still there. And yet somehow I've let it get stowed away in a box in the attic.
It's depressing to think of how many stories get lost, either diluted by time and memory, forgotten, or made inaccessible once we're gone, locked in the shadows of our brains without any way out. My grandpa tells me stories all the time – he's an amazing storyteller, with the knack of making you see what he saw and hear the voices of the people he knew. And he's lived an amazing life, for all that he's spent most of it in small town Indiana. Every time he tells me a story I think, "I should write this down. I should remember this." And yes, his stories are in my head, but not all the details are there – the inflection in his voice, and laughter in his eyes, the sound of the Wabash, Indiana that existed 65 years ago that only comes across in the specific words he uses and the tone he gives the people speaking in his memory. I sat down today with the intention of writing down the story he told me yesterday at Easter, about his best friend from childhood who died early from cancer. Grandpa sat next to him in the hospital as he died, pushing the morphine button for him because he didn't have the strength to do even that at the end. "Women loved him," Grandpa told me. "His nurse fell in love with him, even knowing he was dying. At the funeral all his ex-girlfriends were hugging and crying."
But my version is flat and lifeless. It's just not working.
I texted Grandpa finally and told him I wanted to write down some of the stories he's told me, and would he mind talking more about them next time we're together? Maybe if I record him I can slow down and manage to capture it all, to immortalize him and what he means to me. Or maybe the knowledge that I'm writing about it will change his words, or make him feel too keenly the passage of time. I don't know. But I don't want his stories to end up in the attic.
It's depressing to think of how many stories get lost, either diluted by time and memory, forgotten, or made inaccessible once we're gone, locked in the shadows of our brains without any way out. My grandpa tells me stories all the time – he's an amazing storyteller, with the knack of making you see what he saw and hear the voices of the people he knew. And he's lived an amazing life, for all that he's spent most of it in small town Indiana. Every time he tells me a story I think, "I should write this down. I should remember this." And yes, his stories are in my head, but not all the details are there – the inflection in his voice, and laughter in his eyes, the sound of the Wabash, Indiana that existed 65 years ago that only comes across in the specific words he uses and the tone he gives the people speaking in his memory. I sat down today with the intention of writing down the story he told me yesterday at Easter, about his best friend from childhood who died early from cancer. Grandpa sat next to him in the hospital as he died, pushing the morphine button for him because he didn't have the strength to do even that at the end. "Women loved him," Grandpa told me. "His nurse fell in love with him, even knowing he was dying. At the funeral all his ex-girlfriends were hugging and crying."
But my version is flat and lifeless. It's just not working.
I texted Grandpa finally and told him I wanted to write down some of the stories he's told me, and would he mind talking more about them next time we're together? Maybe if I record him I can slow down and manage to capture it all, to immortalize him and what he means to me. Or maybe the knowledge that I'm writing about it will change his words, or make him feel too keenly the passage of time. I don't know. But I don't want his stories to end up in the attic.