All the Times They Told Me

My maternal grandmother, Ma, was a devoted story teller, who never told a tale she wouldn’t tell again. The family stories centered on long-deceased people who grew more mythical in each retelling. She talked of renowned musicians and acclaimed calligraphers. She retold stories of rolling green hills and curly-haired cousins. She described them as though they were standing before us, in the flesh, like she was narrating events in real time.

As I got older, I realized her stories were repetitive, script-like. When cooking, she’d talk about the best breakfast she’d ever had. Her uncle had fetched eggs, fresh from under a chicken, on his farm in the town of Reading, Massachusetts. She described the bucolic locale as far, far away from the mills and streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts, where she was born and spent her life. It wasn’t until later, I realized how close those places were. It was as if she didn’t know her location, or that years had passed.

If I was annoyed with my siblings, she’d talk about how much she missed hers, by then deceased or distant. Her rote stories always featured the same characters. Her glamorous sister owned a department store. Her brothers went to boarding school because they were so smart. One sister was a well-employed clerk. Another was known for her quick wit and flapper-era dance moves. She’d recall them all gathering around a piano and singing, while their father played his 200-year-old fiddle, which he brought across the ocean.

Once my grandmother died, my aunt became the family story teller. Her accounts stuck closer to reality, but still held some magic. She dispelled some embellished tales, but that also made the relatives more realistic and accessible. They were most of the things that my grandmother had described, but they were also Irish immigrant mill workers. Things weren’t as grand as my grandmother recalled, with her creative curation. But my aunt also let some highlights persist, and proudly boasted of their successes.

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My aunt shared her own stories, too. As a young woman, she was in the Air Force, rare for her time. She told of European bases and USO dances. She talked about raising her children in California and her dashing, now deceased husband. But then I noticed her stories were starting to follow a confusing pattern, too. Some well-told tales became jumbled and repetitive. She lost the script my grandmother had perfected, memorized, and drawn from as she deteriorated. My aunt was going blank, even as I, her rapt audience, fed her the lines.

I turned then, too late, to my mother. But when I asked her to retell a vignette, she, too, was already drifting in tangled memories. She forgot tales her mother had told so often that she’d huff loudly each time my grandmother began one. She also forgot her own childhood stories. I told her one of her opt-repeated accounts of the time she ran from snowball-wielding bullies into the safety of her church. She’d previously retold it to me so many times, I felt like I’d lived it. My heart would pound during her dramatic recollection of whizzing snowballs and fast-footed neighborhood boys with excellent aim, in pursuit. But when I told her, she seemed to have no idea that it was about her.

So I brought my mother to visit my aunt, hoping to ignite their memories by uniting them. Although they recognized the other, not much was said. I desperately showed them pictures of family members, hoping to lift their thickening fogs. But dementia doesn’t work that way. I finally sat quietly, trying to accept.

The next few years were worse, as they both became fragments of themselves, pieces far from their whole, only their faces keeping them recognizable.

And then they were both gone, twelve years apart in birth, but seven months apart in death. Their other sister was gone years before them. I thought the stories were gone too.

But in shifting through things they left, I heard the stories. And what I doubted, I found some written proof of in stashed letters, newspaper clippings, photos and notes. The accuracy was confirmed by an ancestry database, which I maneuvered successfully because of all the times they’d told a tale. When a name and location would match up, I’d silently thank them for being so repetitive that they’d drilled the details into my head.

Last summer my family and I stood in the streets once occupied by my great grandparents. We visited an old parish cemetery, trying to decipher through moss which headstones might belong to the stories’ characters. We drove past deserted, crumbling houses, one of which my distant family left behind. We were the first to return, more than 125 years after my great grandparents had left. I was only able to trace their steps because their story telling guided me. The history survived dementia, even if its human recorders couldn’t. And as the rain poured down on us in Northern Ireland, I realized I was now the story teller.

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This post was previously published on Medium.com.

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