stories...

I don't know why, but people tell me the randomest things, sometimes... Like the fact that "He was a chaplain for 30 years, and when he retired he became a part-time (paid, but full-time work) pastor at a church, and now he's thinking about retiring from that, only he's worried about having to move back here and he'll lose his network of people. I think that he'll be fine - there are still lots of people here that he knows and that care about him." Still, i understand the nervousness - we moved away from a city for just one year, and it was still an awfully uncomfortable fit returning. You can't go back. Or "she lived less than one block from the house she was born into, until she was over eighty. Then she felt like she'd rather be closer to at least one or two of her children, so she moved here." That has to be pretty strange. People talk about "finding themselves" as if there is only one answer; as if you can discover one way to define yourself for the rest of your life. Some people use geography, others relationships, but in the end, we all discover that nothing in this life is stable enough to attach us permanently. Still, to leave your place of birth after 80 years - to break all those ties and associations and memories - that's an awfully brave thing to do, i think. Or "she had a beau who absolutely adored her - she could do no wrong in his eyes. This annoyed her, and besides, he wasn't popular. So on prom night she threw him over for the popular kid, only to find out that the popular kid had a midnight curfew and so they couldn't go to the unofficial parties. Later, she hooked up the popular boy with one of her best girlfriends. They ended up getting married, he became a pastor, and they moved to California." How many hundreds of chickflicks are not based on stories just like this one? This is actually a story about my great-aunt, and my great-grandmother can't understand why she wouldn't stick with the boy who worshipped her. Personally, i sympathize with my aunt - anybody who thinks that way about me has to be pretty stupid. Or "my grandfather immigrated to the states because he was closely associated with Queen Wilhelmina, and had to escape the Nazi regime." I know WWII happened very recently. But at least here in the states, we seem to have escaped the worst of it and hence have escaped the memories. Our nightmares are of Korea and Vietnam. Or "he needed a chair with arms, so he could get up out of it - he was nearly 100, after all. Of course, a chair could not officially be provided, as the whole circle of sages (a.k.a elderly men meeting for coffee and gossip) was completely unofficial anyway. So a tattered green chair was pulled out of a dank storage room somewhere, and unofficially commandeered. Less than a year later, he died. His fellow philosophers viewed the chair mournfully, and decided the best thing to do was drape a black scarf acrost it. Of course, it gets awfully crowded in that tiny break room and there weren't enough chairs before. But no one wants to sit in his chair, so a replacement must be found. However, no one would want to sit in the chair that replaced his chair, either, so it has to be exactly the same as his chair, only not." I can understand that this would be annoying if you were the one that had to deal with the chair. But i also wonder how i would feel, if a good friend - who was also greatly revered within our circle - passed away, and i knew i wouldn't be far behind. Actually, i've always kind of liked the idea of public mourning - that you wear something to publicly acknowledge your grief for a proscribed amount of time, and then you can put it away and get on with your life. Of course, i know you can't just pack up your emotions and forget about it. But to, as a society, recognize that there is both joy and grief in life - a time for mourning and a time for dancing - seems to me important. In my experience we tend toward existential nihilism or utopian pollyanna-ism, both of which strike me as dangerously impractical. Or "i know it says budget, but actually, it's where we keep all of the coffee supplies." Is this not brilliant? There's some deep irony in here i haven't discovered yet, but i do know it's brilliant. Or "oh yes, they can! In fact, i used to own a dog that could climb trees. Only, he couldn't get back down. So he would bark up there until we came and got him." ... okay ...