Tell Your Story Before You Go

Tell your story.

You can write it with prose or poetry, novels or nonfiction. You can sing it, dance it, paint it, even photograph it or act it out on stage, but tell it before you go. Your narrative is unique, a one of a kind life - even if you think it's ordinary and anonymous, maybe even dull - it's your's alone and someone is listening, holding their breath, waiting to see how it ends.

The man in the wheelchair, unevenly propped up with pillows to maintain the balance his left side could no longer provide, stabilized with straps and slings, in need of a shave and barely a shadow of what he had once been, looked at me with resigned desperation. The stroke that had so damaged his thin body six months prior was still doing its evil work - after the therapy and the rehabilitation, he'd been sent home only to fall and shatter his good arm - it had become clear that he needed full time supervision and long term care. His wife, hysterical with anger, at the end of her emotional and mental rope and not well to begin with, unable to cope with one more day and unwilling to hire home health care, turned to a nursing home, an easy and out of sight, out of mind solution. The man in the wheelchair, once active and vibrant, funny and hardworking, had become a burden of immense proportion and he was given no say in the matter. His independence gone, his pride destroyed and his body turned traitor, he had only his mind left and even that was too depressed to function. The stroke had crippled him but it was the aftermath that crushed his spirit and as I watched him stare at the walls with glazed over eyes and an emptied out soul, I began to understand his wish that he'd died. This quiet, understated, agile minded man who had yet to see his sixtieth birthday had been abandoned to the care of strangers in order to keep him protected, safe, clean, fed and medicated. His hopes for recovery, once so optimistic and bright, were gone and his intellect was grayed out from disuse and neglect. Feeling guilty about being older and still intact, hating my own inability to help or comfort or promise better days ahead, I felt close to tears, anxious to escape this dreadful place, bitterly angry. Forcing down this despair, I reached for the crossword puzzle I had brought with me and began reading him clues. Engage him, the doctor had told me, provoke him and stir up his curiosity. Make him think and talk and use his mind.

Tell your story, I remembered an English professor telling us in a college creative writing course. Keep a journal and record everything. Write it down and pass it on, it's something you'll be glad to have one day.

You never know where the road will take you and you may never pass this way again, so tell your story. Tell me your story before you go.