I was recently approached about sharing my stories concerning a person I once knew very well, a person whose reputation over five decades dwindled from beloved pastor to heartless cult leader. Today's blog is about sharing personal stories, our motives for doing so, and the outcomes we hope to see. More important, I want us to think about how telling a story, especially one that is based on strong emotion like shame or trauma, has the power to shape the story teller and influence the story's audiences.
First in my thoughts is that WE KNOW as fact that we cannot change what happened in our past. But our brains are complicated machines. We desire change even as we sit here writing or reading -- because we dream about improving our situations and relationships. Change is inevitable, whether we set the wheels in motion or something out of our control applies the necessary force. Desiring change in our tomorrow is natural and possible. Desiring change in our history is natural but impossible. Therefore, every story we tell is about an event that is cemented forever in our memories. But an event that is untouchable. The event has not vaporized; it remains very real to us. Perhaps the word cemented is misleading.
Because the second FACT is that our memory is our own, shaped by our perspective, our senses, and the emotions both surrounding and immediately following the event. We were never a mere camera on the event, like a drone's lens or a neighborhood closed-circuit television. We were a participant in the event, somehow, in some true measure. My memory of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, is as valuable as the scientists' or the astronauts' memories. However, my experience and my participation in it -- even my contribution or my appreciation -- is different by miles! I was sixteen years old, safe and secure in our home, thriving on the promises of big accomplishments. The moon landing meant to me that Clovis, New Mexico, was not the center of the universe...and that made me deliriously happy!
My memory of July 20, 1969, is only of that event, the moon landing. I cannot describe what I ate that day, the clothes I wore, the places I went. I know only as a certainty that I was in our living room in front of the RCA color television. Every other detail of that day can only be conjecture: I was seldom alone, I had four siblings, at least one parent was always at home; therefore, I likely participated in the big event with others, talking and laughing and questioning. That year, I had a boyfriend that I tried to break up with. I had a crush or two; teenage boys and the young airmen were starting to notice Me. I was in the church choir and sang alto in a quartet but, I loved Motown music because my sensuality was dancing circles around my mother's inhibitions. Therefore, I know that I was mostly very happy.
But a memory shaped by physical pain, sadness, or trauma is cemented in that pain or strong emotion. The memory is less about observable details than it is about the feelings that were experienced. Reliving the event is possible by accessing the emotions. My father was a veteran of WWII. When he was in hospice care at home, 86 years old, he began to relive some events, mostly the events of his childhood. We knew he had a happy childhood on a poor Texas farm with two parents and six siblings -- because his stories included much laughter and happy tears. He would sometimes speak as if he was in that farm house, and eighty years had never happened. But he also told stories about the fighting in Italy when he was twenty and twenty-one years old. Those stories were accompanied with much sighing and shaking, with deep sadness. I felt uncomfortable listening to those stories. But I relished knowing more about the father that we would lose very soon to the diseases of old age. Our father loved his childhood; however, he could not have known everything about his parents' sacrifices or the problems that they shielded from their children. Our father willingly spent two years of his young adult life in battle and seeing the worst of humanity. His greatest fears seemed to develop after Italy, when he waited to take part in the invasion of Japan. He was in survival mode for a very long time. His stories were not told to shape his adult children's opinions about the war. His stories were told to communicate that he was still alive, that he had lived experiences beyond our imaginations, that his weakening body could not suppress the memories, could not rewrite or change the events...but that he no longer believed in Silence.
I relive a phone call. Here is my story. My son-in-law had been critically injured in an accident. He was a cowboy. He was moving cattle with his foreman, both of them on horses, and the cattle caused his horse to stumble and fall, pinning him to the ground underneath the horse and saddlehorn. When the foreman was able to scurry the animals away from Buddy, he saw a young man who was unconscious but alive. He hurried to the ranch headquarters to phone for an ambulance. Of course he got help and they stood over Buddy for over an hour until the ambulance got there. He survived but with traumatic brain injury. Which meant that his behaviors and physical abilities deteriorated. Everything changed.
The phone call. I was home, either because it was the weekend or the evening. I was a school teacher. Buddy called our home because our daughter took the babies and moved in with us. She did this because she feared for their lives. In front of her, when the babies were in bed for the night, he would threaten suicide and wave a loaded firearm around. This frightful situation occured many times. Even though she asked Buddy's uncles to remove all the firearms from their home, the situation did not improve. I answered the phone and told Buddy that our daughter was not at home to talk. For several minutes, Buddy explained that he wanted his family back, that he was desperate to make everything better, that he needed his saddle returned so that he could ride again. I remember my loss for words of comfort; my daughter could not go back until her husband's doctor assured her that his depression and violent threats were under control. His loneliness for family and his losses -- the inability to do physical or mental work for a sustained period of time -- were so understandable that I empathized with his pain. I cried silently...because I wanted to hear him and say something helpful. Even though I do not remember why I could not promise to return his saddle -- had it been sold or stored away? -- I did promise to do something. What was it? If I promised only to make sure that our daughter called him later that day, then I contributed very little to Buddy's well-being. If I promised to find his saddle so that he could ride again on his family's ranch or on a job, I was taking steps toward helping him survive the pain he lived with every day. What I did say was not enough. In a very short period of time, weeks or days, Buddy took his own life with a handgun that his uncle agreed to leave in the house.
My memory of that event is shaped entirely in the worst that sadness can throw at us -- desperation. I was desperate to save our daughter and their babies; Buddy was desperate to live the love and life he once knew. I felt that the entire situation was out of control -- his accident, the brain injury, the spiraling events in which our daughter struggled to survive, my inability to solve the problems, to comfort and help Buddy. My love was not enough.
So what does sharing this story do? It gives me another chance to look at an event in which I had total participation. I hope that the story gives someone else insight to brain injury and suicide. I know that my story does not change the past or bring our Buddy back. My story will not become a YouTube video or a film or a book. Why not? Because I have no desire to punish anyone or to blame myself, I refuse to make the subject of mental illness or self-inflicted wounds or traumatic brain injury or Hopelessness about me. Anyway, the person who suffered most from the fateful event was Buddy.
Since that phone call, I have tried to be a stronger, more assertive woman. My purpose in reliving and retelling the story is in sharing that our villains often cannot be found, much less punished. Sometimes, the retelling is about saying I am still here; I have knowledge and experiences that prove I both failed and succeeded many times in life; I know the Truth that Others needed me and I did my best.