When All That Remains Are the Stories

As the years pass by and our lives unfold, sometimes all that remains are the stories.

In my early years, my father worked long hours, and my mother would prepare dinner for my brother and me before he got home from the hospital. As we ate our dinner, my mother, ever the reading teacher, would read us stories, books actually, as we sat at the kitchen table.

It was there, without realizing it, that I learned to love good writing. From classics like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to more obscure titles like The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, my mother kept us entertained as darkness settled outside our kitchen windows. Mind you, the quality of her cooking would have been reward enough for us. But I can still see her in my mind’s eye, seated at the table, book in hand, and the sound of her voice as the chapters rolled on by.

Sure, I was entertained, but now, having raised two children myself, I know that the time must have felt special for my mother as well. The power of a well-written story, combined with the quiet bonding time between a mother and her children, was its own form of happiness and love.

I don’t ever recall my father reading to me. But I do remember him telling stories of his youth on the rougher, working-class side of Minneapolis. When he shared stories of the North Side and his colorful, rough-and-tumble family, my father’s hard exterior seemed to soften a bit.

Nothing, though, compared with sitting beside him at the Lincoln Delicatessen in Minneapolis when we visited his family most summers. Seated next to his older brother Shy, my father’s face would light up, and his shoulders would shake with laughter as his brother held court, telling one old neighborhood story after another to a rapt audience around the table. Such were the stories of my father’s youth.

In the final years of my mother’s life, her world seemed to slowly shrink to the walls and confines of her apartment. The depth and intent of her conversational skills scaled back as well, but not her storytelling. She had a basic rotation of 10 or more stories from her youth and adult life that was the basis of any conversation you would have with her. Often, the same story would make a repeat appearance in the same conversation.

Those stories gave her joy and comfort in the telling. I could see it in her eyes and facial expressions. She was transporting herself back to another place and time. On my last visit with her, over a dinner table, I gently prompted her to tell each story while I had the recorder set on my phone.

I treasure those audio files. Some days, when I want to hear my mother's voice again, I simply press Play. Now those stories, in her voice, transport me back as well to another place and time.

Perhaps storytelling is a genetic trait because I recognize that stories form the foundation for much of my own conversation and social graces. I worked remotely for most of my career. Dinners and evening conversation with work colleagues and clients, perhaps fueled by a helpful complement of liquid courage, often centered around stories of days gone past. Sure, they were often the same stories, repeated annually, but they still generated laughter, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging.

Years later, when I sat down to write A New Game Without a Scoreboard, I had a choice to make before a single word hit the page. Should I write a how-to-guide for retirement or instead a memoir of my own experience and stories of my personal transition into retirement? If my parents had still been alive at that point, I believe that their answer would have sounded in unison. Tell your story, they would have said.

Stories are the connective tissue that binds families together.

Long after careers end, homes are sold, and photographs begin to fade, the stories remain. They are the way our children remember us, the way grandchildren come to know people they never met, and the way we occasionally find ourselves transported back to another place and time.

So I'll keep telling mine. Around a bonfire at the lake, between games on the pickleball court, or in the driveway talking with friends and neighbors on a warm spring evening, that will be me talking up a familiar story.

I suspect, if you're honest, you'll keep telling yours too.

If this reflection resonated with you, you might also enjoy my book, A New Game Without a Scoreboard, where I explore many of these same themes of identity, purpose, connection, and acceptance in retirement. Learn more about the book