20 de diciembre de 2020

A Way With Words

In loving memory of Coleen Bette Nunes

While there are dozens, if not hundreds, of entertaining stories I could tell about my grandmother, I’d like to focus on the essence of stories themselves.

She never was short on words.

If nothing else, Grandma Coleen was a master story-teller. She infected me with that same love for language, for telling tales, using stories as a way to frame the world we live in.

Those who know me are aware that, as a child, I had a slight penchant for exaggeration. I had plenty of embellished anecdotes to share with my grandmother; she was no fool, and I’m sure she knew I was blurring the lines of reality to add some spice to my world.

But far from scolding me, she often encouraged me to take it even further: “What did so-and-so do next? Why do you think they did that? What did YOU do next? And what can you learn from what happened?” And I obliged, filling in the holes with fantastical details invented in my mind. While I’m sure she was entertained by my antics, she was also affectionately pushing me to examine my childhood make-believe world.

Grandma wrote and invented stories for children, too. She shared them with me, stories that harbored some moral treasure. Through well-pointed questions, she taught me to tease this treasure out.

What an important lesson to learn, to analyze one’s own story and the stories of other people. Because when you better understand your own story, you can better understand the stories of others. And when you understand these stories, you can empathize with the humans and the world around you. This means that words and stories have tremendous power for good.

As the years passed, I no longer needed to invent details to add spark to the stories I told her. Adult life hit me fast and overwhelmed me enough on its literal own. Over late-night phone calls (she always picked up the phone) and spontaneous in-person visits (she always opened the door), I continued to share my stories, now real-life stories, with her, and she would still ask me the same questions: “Why do you think they did that? What can you learn?” Sometimes her feedback was brutally honest. We all know she had no issues speaking her mind. I was, and am, grateful for that.

In turn, she also stopped telling me made-up children’s stories. Instead, she began telling me her own real-life stories, often with very difficult lessons to learn. She may not have realized it, but those, too, harbored a moral treasure that I take with me.

I now make my living working with words and telling stories, a testament to her influence. While it saddens me that I won’t be able to tell her my stories anymore, what I will truly miss is hearing her own.

Because her life was one heck of a story.

But here’s the thing: if you were a part of her life, her story is interwoven with your own. Which means we can keep telling her story, simply by living ours. I think she’d like that.

So, I’ll keep writing her story by writing my own. Living is the best way to say: “I love you.”

Anyway, it’s a good way to give her an excuse to keep talking.

She never was short on words.

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