How Stories Can Put Back the Pieces of Us
We hold the pieces of ourselves together through story. That’s why we tell them over and over. It keeps us whole. After my father was diagnosed with dementia, his stories broke apart and fell away from him into pieces. He lost hold of himself.
Before that, my father was held together by the stories he told, and those stories were constantly changing. I realize now he was telling the story of his life in all the many ways it could have gone. Sometimes, he got on a ship that took him from Greece to Canada. Other times, he didn’t, and he’d tell the story of what could have been. Those stories became real because they lived inside of him.
When you are an immigrant, you hold your story in pieces, hoping one day you can put those pieces together and find out who you are and how you ended up where you did.
In the weeks before my father lost his battle against dementia, he’d call me many times throughout the day. He was a man who hated talking on the phone, but now it was a lifeline. He’d call to ask me the name of his favorite restaurant around the corner or to tell a story from his past for which he could no longer find the ending.
He wanted me to help put the pieces of his story together because he knew I also carried this story.
This is what we do for one another. We carry, then carry on, each other’s stories.
So now, I tell my father the stories he used to tell me. Many of those stories have gaps since they were not told in full or they were told without an ending. These unfinished stories hang there waiting for me to fill them in because it’s not about the factual accuracy; it’s about the emotional truths these stories carry and the spiritual thread that knits them together.
I carry the pieces of my father’s story and can put them all together through Creative Experiencing. Through this process, I can bridge the space that grows between us. I can help him navigate his loss while surviving the loss of him. I can hold onto the most crucial parts of who he is: A man who loved to sit on the porch with a beer and cigarette after dinner and tell the story of how one day he got on a ship that took him across the ocean to a strange new world and everything that would have happened if he hadn’t.