Our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
***
Hat’s off to the Journal of the Plague Year for featuring this quote recently.
When we tell our families and our friends, or even complete strangers our life stories, we may be seeking a connection — to them, to the past, to the future...But what about when we tell ourselves our own life stories?
Nurses and hospice workers attending to those who are dying often report that patients in one of their final acts, sometimes break into an unforced narrative about themselves and the parts of the lives they’ve lived.
Sometimes it’s as if they aren’t talking to the nurse or anyone in particular; rather it’s almost like they are talking to themselves before passing.
They might discuss the people they love most, or their regrets, their mistakes, their loves, or even their crimes — which is how some cold cases get solved.
Reporters thrive at moments like those and often hope for them in difficult murder cases that have long resisted solution.
But people also die suddenly or silently, taking what they’ve known with them to their graves untold. And even if they do talk, usually no one would record their final pronouncements.
Obituaries are our public memoirs. A life summed up with a list of relatives, accomplishments and a notice of when a service if any, will be held. Traditionally, local newspapers publish these mini-memoirs, but it is rare that any true narrative of the person’s life actually emerges.
Journalist K. Patrick Connor wrote an insightful book, “Dying Words,” about an obituary writer and obituaries that sheds light on this topic. With the decline of local news comes a decline in professional obituaries. For most people, it’s up to the closest survivors to do the deed.
That concept of dying people needing to tell a final narrative is so vivid in my mind that it is probably why I urge people to keep journals, and notes and letters and for telling their stories well before the end comes.
That story, fictional or non-fiction, at the end, is the unique recording of your time on earth. Others can and will tell it but it seems to me you should at least have a voice in the matter.
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