Chaplain's Corner

Reminiscing is a natural pastime. It happens at family gatherings. You can probably recall almost immediately stories that are told and retold almost every time your family gathers. It maybe a story of something funny that happened or it may be the story of some tragic experience. Often for those enjoyable stories the conversations will be rolling long and someone will inevitably say, “remember the time that…” and the story gets told, everyone laughs and enjoys the experience. The story becomes a bonding agent that holds the family together.

When I was a young man in my first pastorate, I had moved from Denver, Colorado to Strasbourg, Saskatchewan; from a city of almost 3 million to a country town of almost 900. My parents lived in Pennsylvania, my closest sibling was in Arizona and my wife and I and our first born were “orphans” in a new country, in a new profession, among a new people. The folks of the church I served were a warm bunch; they were good at inviting us to family affairs, Christmas, birthdays, other gatherings throughout the year. They appreciated how alone we were and how we needed “family”.

But after the first few of these affairs, my wife and I both realized that although we were present, we really weren’t a part. Not because we were being excluded, but because the stories so often told were stories with which we were unfamiliar. We weren’t there when these things happened; the enjoyment that the retelling so obviously brought to the family was something we couldn’t relate to. You know what I’m talking about; we have all been on the “outside” of these family times at one time or another.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn a lot about these people from being at these gatherings, from hearing their stories and from hearing them again and again. I learned from these stories what these folks valued, what they enjoyed, who the “friends” and the “foes” of the family were. I learned about subjects that needed to be avoided or approached with the greatest of care and other subjects that were wide open to discussion. I learned who the sensitive members of the family were, how the “object of the story” (usually one member of the family) dealt with having their embarrassing moment recounted so often. I also noted the grimace that would at times subtly appear of the face as the “object of the story” prepared, one more time, to have a failure or a misstep repeated and laughed at by the other members of the family.

Now although I don’t have a great history of family gathers, even our small and infrequently gathered family has its stories. Recently I have been doing a bit of reminiscing on paper; in fact last I checked it has become something of a book as it is now nearly 100 pages long. I began the project three years ago and have picked away at it over the years not really knowing what I intended it to become. Interesting, over this period of time I have been actively recording the stories of my life (at least the ones I remember) I have learned some pretty important things.

I have learned that the stories I remember, when looked at as a whole instead of just in parts; reveal some themes that run through my entire life. In my life there are a lot of stories related to anger. I remember vividly an incident when I was in the first grade. I had come home from school to the babysitter, a young teenage girl who insisted that we watch American Bandstand instead of my favorite after school cartoon. Like most 6 year olds I got up and changed the channel. Remember the days before remote controls? Of course she was bigger than I was so she grabbed me, pushed me outside and locked the door so that she could watch her show in peace.

That afternoon it was raining, it was damp and cool and I remember vividly standing across the street from the house, looking in the window and seething with anger, an anger I had no means of discharging because I was just a six year old brat and of course my Mom would believe the babysitter’s story over mine. That day I remember just stuffing my anger back into my soul; an awful choice that I would repeat over and over and over again for many years. As I reminisce on paper about my growing up years, these “anger stories” and the stuffing of the anger back into my soul seem to pop up quite regularly. Believe me, this reality has been fodder for many a counseling session.

There are other kinds of stories as well. Funny stories, stories about my siblings, about my grandparents, about family vacation and the Christmas mom and dad bought us boxing gloves – a gift my mother lived to regret. You have your stories, everyone has their stories. What I am discovering is that I am, to a significant degree, a product of my stories. You see the story rarely is absolutely factual. Many of these stories are exaggerations of what really happened. Others take on a deeper meaning, a meaning nobody involved in the event could ever imagine, for the meaning is one that “I” have given the story, a meaning that I give to help me make sense of what happened that may be hilarious to others, but was deeply painful to me.

So what? Well, another thing I have learned is that these stories are very important. The stories I hear, reveal very important things about the person who is telling the story. The stories lead me to questions, the questions lead to other stories and in a little while I have learned some really essential things about the person I am caring for. This is true whether a person is of sound mind, mentally ill, or in the midst of a losing battle with dementia. It is especially important when we listen to the incessantly repeated stories told by people with dementia.

Too many, the story told for the 20th time in the last 20 minutes is annoying. If we have been in these situations and we thought it would do any good we might want to shake the person and say, “Please, stop – I have heard that story now over and over again.” But I would challenge you to push past the annoyance and ask the question, “What is the theme of the story being told?”. For whether the person is cognitively sound or suffering from cognitive deficits, the stories are important clues to the needs and longings and hurts and dreams of that person.

Of course we all know that some are great story tellers and others well can hardly tell their stories at all. This is also instructive if we are willing o pay attention. You might think me a good story teller; after all, I am quite verbal (at least on paper). The truth is I am a very poor story teller. My stories, if I try to tell them are terse, choppy, more like a condensed news report than a story. Why? Well, as I was growing up, no one much seemed to care about my stories. I never felt heard, the things I wanted to tell stories about, like the dead groundhog that I drug home in the morning when I was 8 years old, only got be a scolding.

If you care for a person who cannot tell his or her story, maybe it is that no one ever cared to listen; no one was ever interested in the stories of that life. If I can encourage anything in terms of reminiscing, I would urge you to seek out people in your life who are poor story tellers and show an interest in their stories. Ask them to tell you their stories, any stories, listen and encourage them, for they are often embarrassed by the difficulty they have in expressing themselves. Be curious; value the other’s experiences, hurts, joys, struggles, and accomplishments. For even the quietest person, if given a chance, if given the space, if given the time, if valued and respected has stories to tell that will enrich their lives as they tell them, enrich our lives as we listen and enrich the relationship and allow it to grow and develop.