Thousands of Lives
In my ninth-grade acting class, Mrs. Pickett gave us an assignment which I will paraphrase because - quite frankly - it’s been a while. After pulling a chair in front of a bed she had summoned into our minds with a sweep of her outstretched arms, she told each class member to, “create a scene in which your father is dying and you tell him whatever you feel you need to. Imagine the deathbed and imagine him lying there. Try to summon up the real emotion you would have in such a situation.”
My memory of that day is hazy, but I’m confident that my performance went something like this: “Dad, I’m sorry you’re dying. That really sucks. Um, I think mom will be okay cause Cary and I will be around and everything. I’ll try to take out the trash and pick up my room. So . . . okay.”
I don’t recall Mrs. Pickett needing to take a moment to compose herself from the bittersweet pathos of that performance, but, in my defense, I doubt that the other students in the class were any better at evoking emotions other than extreme pedagogical frustration and disappointment.
Thirty-three years later I sat by the real deathbed of my real father, and I had a much better idea of what to say and what not to say. I knew how important it was simply to be present, just as I understood how much we were both losing. I think we both realized that the stories we told each other were important and needed to last.
My memories of that time are complicated - beautiful and awful all at once.
Of course the difference between my ninth-grade and adult perspectives came, in part, from the extra thirty-three years of relationship with my dad. But I know as certainly as I know anything that much of it also came from stories - from the hundreds of thousands of pages of fiction, poetry and drama I’ve read to the thousands of hours of movies and ridiculous sitcoms I’ve watched.
Stories transform us. They grow us. By inhabiting the actions and emotions of characters from so many unique circumstances, we live thousands of little lives. We discover love in the midst of war. We cheat on our spouses. We escape from slavery. We try to get away with perfect murders. We hunt epic white whales. In every character’s struggle we learn something about compassion, pride, courage, forgiveness, despair, honor, and terror.
At the end of all of those intimate encounters with characters and their stories, we come out the other side with empathy - that elusive treasure that helps us to understand those with whom we believe we have little in common. I honestly don’t know how I would have talked to my dad or processed his death without the lifetime instruction that stories afforded. And even now each new or re-read story teaches me more about that loss. Stories grow the past as well as the present.
I feel comfortable speaking for the English Department in wishing that your stories - the ones you tell and the ones you receive - expand your understanding of the world, heal your wounds, and give you the tools to navigate the most important story of all - the one you live.
Brad Johnson, Professor of English