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24 April 2016
"I Could Never Do What You Do!" Why They Ought to Give
You the Blue Ribbon: Stories on the Edge of My Mind
Harold Ivan Smith, DMin, FT
International Conference on Grief June 8 2016
haroldivansmith@gmail.com
University of Wisconsin at La Crosse
Introduction
John Edward Huth, physicist, Harvard took up kayaking
• Joseph Getz interviewed a Marshall Islander named Isao about their
word, Wiwijet, for anxiety at being lost as sea.
“A navigator who becomes lost and does not receive help [from a
benevolent spirit] to discern the direction toward land will lose his mind
and continue to sail until his death.”
Huth, John Edward. (2013, The lost art of finding our way)
Today’s “glide path” of death. “Joanne Lynn, geriatrician, College of
Medicine, Ohio State University [cited in Neumann, 2016, 16]
Those on the glide path, too, need a “benevolent spirit”!!!
“People must be given an opportunity to hurt out loud.”
Lady Bird Johnson
People must be given opportunities to tell their stories!
“No one will know I was here.”
Joel Grey as Dr. Alexander Ball: The Practice
Episode: Nothing to Fear. 2009
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S.C. Pastor Braves Floodwaters to Save Casket for Grieving Family
M. Alex Johnson
As the floodwaters rose in Ridgeville, South Carolina, people on the bank
watched a casket---floating away from the cemetery of New Canaan
Methodist Church —wedged in trees in the stream.
Pastor Wayne H. Reeves watched, too. For hours. The casket had been
forced up out of the ground by the historic floods inundating the Palmetto
state.
Tired of waiting for anyone else to do something — and with the family of
the deceased grieving along with him — Reeves donned wading boots,
walked out into the brown, waist-deep water and began pushing the casket
back to dry ground.
"I waited all day, and nobody did anything, so I decided, out of
respect for this family, I would do whatever's necessary."
A Dorchester County sheriff's deputy told him not to do it: too dangerous!
But "that's not who we are. This is America, and we're not like that."
"You've got all these family members standing out here, and there's moms
and dads and aunts and uncles out there in the water," he said. "If that was
my mama or my dad, I'd walk through hell and high water, and today it
happened to be high water."
Reeves said he knew the dank waters probably harbored dangerous
bacteria or snakes, but he said he had to help.
"I'm going to go home and take a hot bath and wash with a little bleach. It'll
take care of that, but this family's already hurt enough, and I don't want
them to hurt anymore."
I don’t know about that pastor’s theology, but I know that he has a gigantic
heart!
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A piece of wisdom from Maya Angelou:
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what
you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Interview, Beautifully Said Magazine (2012)
Sometimes, I think waders would be a good symbol for those who care for
the dying, the dead, and the bereaving.
Robots in Japanese CARE [nursing] homes. . . 10 widows die a day,
Japanese phrase [cite] for lonely widow. And difference in US?
Kodokushi means “lonely death” -- when you die alone and no one finds
your body for days or even weeks.
In Tokyo 4,000 senior citizens die alone each year.
Herships, Sally. (2016 March 8). Japan's long-term care dilemma:
Immigrants or robots? NPR Marketplace.
Some people fear bridges—this particular bridge.
I have a mild anxiety disorder called gephyrophobia——ja-fire-a-phobia
“He was so afraid to die. . .”
Nurse caring for Walt Disney
Professional bridge escorts
Isn’t that something of what we do in deathcare: serve as guides for
the final bridge?
Human stories in death care resemble the Olympic rings. Some element in
your story overlaps my story; something in our stories overlaps a stranger’s
story.
“If I talk long enough, you will say,
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‘Oh, that is my history too.’”
Maya Angelou, Talk of the Nation, (2011 February 1)
As some mothers/grandmother took recipes to the grave, others took
secrets. Too many take stories to the grave with them.
Tendency to discount stories:
Woman: “Were you in the war?”
Soldier at Truman Memorial Day: “I was just a grunt soldier. . . . No stories.”
Woman: “Oh, no. Everyone has a story. So, what’s yours?”
Some die with a notion that their story was “nothing” compared to the tales
of heroes, athletes, celebrities, or, perhaps, even the person next door or
down the street.
Story: Rusty and Bill Esposito Hurricane Andrew, August 1992
The troubling hospice death is when the young die the “premature” death.
Q: What did Abraham Lincoln & Walt Disney share?
A: Fear of dying before making “a mark”
Lincoln’s "irrepressible desire" to accomplish something while he lived. He
wanted to connect his name with the great events of his generation, and
"so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that
would redound to the interest of his fellow man." No mere wish, Lincoln
said, but what he "desired to live for."
I will live after I’m gone. . . in my stories & 16,000 books!
I listened to Joseph Calafino for 75 minutes tell stories about Lyndon
Johnson---kept 600 people at the Truman Forum in stitches. [Pill bottle]
Some experienced family members growing tired of hearing the story,
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“Here, she/he goes again. . .” [I am so done with Edmonton tee-shirts]
Ancient question: If a tree falls in a forest but no one hears it, was their
sound? If no one hears our story, is it still a “story?”
“The-dipping-the-toe-in-the-water” story: Will you take a bite?
Deathcare—in whatever setting---should be a place that offers hospitality—
mekom hanekhama--to stories, especially stories that are:
Porous
Tattered
Threadbare
Toxic
Seemingly, surely untrue [Dale Peck]
A string of confused details
Deathcare: hospice/funeral home/clinical practice/bereavement groups
offer opportunities for grievers to learn:
how to tell stories,
how to listen to stories, [EXERCISE: Vanilla Waffers]
how to remember stories, and
how to treasure stories.
In a society that de-values stories deathcare re-values stories
“Once upon a time. . .” vs “Do you remember the time. . .?“
Or “Now, there’s more to that story. . . .”
Conjugate story: I story, you story, he, she, it stories.
“There are 7 million people in this city and each one has a story.
This is one of them.”
Opening for Naked City
"Wouldn't you like to learn what dying is like, since you're going to do it?
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Our patients are talking while it's happening. It's like you're standing there
watching a preview of coming attractions.”
Maggie Callanan
“It is possible that if I had not gone to jail and been able to read and listen
to the stories of many people. . . I might not have learned these things.”
Nelson Mandela
The psychologist, Erwin Yalom, theorized the concept of “rippling.” Later in
life we evaluate:
• Did my life have meaning?
• Did I make a difference?
• He concluded after seven decades as a psychologist
“Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates— often without
our conscious intent or knowledge— concentric circles that may
affect others for years, even for generations.”
Erwin Yalom, Staring at the Sun
Accumulating grief:
“As caregivers and counselors go through life the number of losses in both
their personal and professional lives accumulates and
the distance to their own death diminishes.”
David Crenshaw (2007) 234
Therefore, counselors must “attend to their own sense of woundedness.”
ADEC 2016 keynote: “Being with Suffering: Navigating the Caldron of
Illness and Death,” Cynda Rushton, VP at Johns Hopkins:
“Do you know of any health institution that provides this?”
The Mirror Effect of Another’s Death:
• Triggers our own past losses & traumas
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• Reminds us of our own worst fears
• Stirs our own existential anxiety
We all have a story to tell
We all have a story that needs to be received or escrow-ed.
 Our society needs to rediscover active storying, particularly during the
dying and the living.
Walt Disney to his nurse, Hazel George: “I have something I want to tell
you. . . .”
 Everyone has a story that needs to be offered hospitality because in
that storytelling, hospice staffers may find hope, insight, and
encouragement.
 Deathcare offers opportunities to say: “Your story counts!”
Man in line at the Truman Library. . . “I owe my life to that man.”
 Tell it!
“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life.
We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully,
but also to live until you die."
Dame Cicely Saunders in Neuman, 2016,
 Humuhumu
Objective 1: Describe ways contemporary culture expresses
discomfort with dying and death & interrupts story flow.
“The most basic fear all humans share: the fear of dying.”
Lee Lipsenthal, Half-Eaten Sandwich, 3
Discounting realities:
“It seems there is a joke among bioethicists. America, they say, is the only
place on the planet that thinks of death as optional.”
Barbara Shelly, Kansas City Star, 11 June 2013
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“Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles,
consuming various juices and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets,
and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death
and prolong life as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now
defines a culture time: what I call the American immortal.”
Anne Neumann, The Good Death, 208
Prolonging comes at a cost:
•
•
•
•
We are blinded from living now
We put off attending to regrets
We forget that all life is like a carton of milk: it comes with an
expiration rate.” [Neumann, The Good Death, 208-209]
Freud: Loved standing outside in England
Romantic idealist
“I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it
nor the unfinished gardening.”
Michel de Montaigne.
Cited in Galen Strawson, “The unstoried life,” 284
Fatalism:
 “When it’s your time to go. . . .”
 “Must not have been her time to go. . . “
 “I thought I was a gone-er!”
“Mrs. Roosevelt, it’s not your time until the good Lord says so.”
Nurse
“I am a storyteller. . .”
Walt Disney
Disney wanted to recreate main street of Marcelene, MO. Yet in his
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“realism” he ignored a critical element: the funeral parlor & cemetery.
Technology: Cryogenics
Number of people who say: “Walt Disney was frozen?”
Ted Williams’ head floating in a vat of liquid nitrogen in Phoenix [July
5, 2002] at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Williams’ shaved head is in a steel can filled with liquid nitrogen. Williams'
body stands upright in a 9-foot tall cylindrical steel tank, also filled with
liquid nitrogen. [Looks like it should have been a batting stance]
That will be $136,000 please: Check or credit card? Frequent flyer miles
Impatience:
Impatience with talk about death
Impatience with dying
Impatience with grieving [Story of the “sad” conference at Hilton]
Today’s “glide path.” “Joanne Lynn, geriatrician, College of Medicine,
Ohio State University [cited in Neumann, 2016, 16]
“It is easy to get access to world-class treatment.
It’s much harder to reject it.”
51] Lisa M. Krieger on her father’s death (Neumann, 2016, 51)
“Suicide and accidents aside, death is increasingly becoming a series of
treatments, therapies, drug courses, and experimental trials that address—
or prolong—the remaining illnesses.”
Anne Neumann (2016, 52)
“In many ways, by pushing dying patients into futile tests and treatments,
by avoiding difficult conversations, by ignoring the costs of pain, we are
denying those who need these resources a chance to live.”
[Neumann, 2016, 50-51]
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“. . . not only are precious medical resources being used to torture dying
patients. That would be bad enough. But that use prevents applying their
benefit to patients who are not dying, whose lives can be improved and
saved.
Anne Neumann, 2016, 50
“In our collective effort to avoid death at all costs, we are all complicit in a
painful and costly phenomenon that has developed over the past five
deceases: a funneling of medical resources away
from those who need them.”
Neumann, 2016, 51]
Use of euphemisms as “stool-softeners”:
 “expired. . . .”
 “kicked the bucket”
 “bit the dust. . . .”
“bought the farm. . .”
“cashed in one’s chips. . .”
“gave up the ghost. . .”
Objective 2: Model basic storytelling techniques
“He was telling us what it was like to be him and we were moved.”
Wendell Berry’s Nightlife & Tol Proodfoot
Alexander the Great took his scribes to the battlefield
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
Sir Winston Churchill
U.S. Grant, dying, sitting on the porch in Mt. Auburn NY trying to finish his
memoirs. People came to watch him write his story—and die!
“Just the facts, mam.
Just the facts!”
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Sergeant Joe Friday, Dragnet
Robert Neimeyer identifies two story elements: [ADEC, 2010]


“the event story”
“the back story”
“The king died”? Event story
“The king died following the death of his beloved queen”? Event
story.
“The king died of grief following the death of his beloved queen: Back
story.
 Every griever has both event & back story—and stories deserving
thorough vigorous exploration and reflection:
 Pre-dying
 Dying
 Post death
Flush with Snow White profits, Walt and Roy Disney moved their parents
from Portland and gave them a home in North Hollywood. (Thomas, 1994,
146). Good boys!
In looking at houses, Roy reminded Walt that elderly people frequently
complain about “being cold.” The plus for the purchase was that the new
house had “a good heating system.” (Gabler, 2003, 303) Flora, however,
complained: “We had better get this furnace fixed or else some morning
we’ll wake up and find ourselves dead.” (Gabler, 2006, 303). Walt dutifully
sent a Disney Studio maintenance worker to check out the furnace.
November 26, 1938, barely a month after moving in, a housekeeper found
Flora Disney dead on the bathroom floor: asphyxiated! The housekeeper
and a neighbor dragged Elias out onto the lawn--thus, saving Elias’ life. An
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investigation, found that “a lid on the air intake had slipped, recirculating the
exhaust into the house.”
Walt was devastated!
“. . . locked himself in his office, refusing to see anyone, including
Lillian, until it was time to leave for the funeral, after which he
returned home and refused to discuss
the subject of his mother’s passing.”
Marc Eliot, 1992, 111
“It may have been the most shattered moment of Walt Disney’s life.
Though he seldom exhibited emotion outside the studio, he was
inconsolable---a misery deepened no doubt by the fact that she had
died in the new home Walt had given her, and
by the culpability of his own workmen.”
Neal Gabler, 2006, 303
Back Story? The wrong parent died!
“The hospice worker does not always have time to be the primary
listener that day; but look for someone who can be.”
Vickie Mears, MSW, Crossroads Hospice
 Recruit hospice volunteer listeners:
Old science Q: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears. . . .?“
Run an ad: “Story-Catchers Needed”
For busy caregivers too, too easy to cut-to-the-chase: “Oh, this is
story 1—1A----1B. . . .”
An insight from biblical narrative:
“Then Jesus turned toward the woman and said to Simon, ‘Do you
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see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any
water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them
with her hair.’” Jesus [Luke 7: 44, NIV]
Do you see this hospice patient? Do you see this griever?
It is possible to do the charting and never see this patient?
It is possible to see this patient and never chart?
Six degrees of separation
“With each first death the whole world is lost, and yet with each we are
called to reckon our losses. Each time we mourn, then, we add another
name to the series of singular mournings and so commit what may be
called a ‘posthumous infidelity’ with regard to [p. 200] to the others. Every
death we add to our list of deaths is both a first death & a unique death.
We cheat each preceding death when we mourn a new one, yet they are in
a string of mournings that constitutes one emotion: absence. How do we
mourn? We remember, we say the names, we follow rituals that give form
to each unique death. We mark each death. And we tell stories.”
Brault & Nass, in Neumann, The Good Death, 199]
Barriers to Being “Blue Ribbon” Care-ers & Story-Receivers:
Pandemic of ADT: attention deficit trait
ADT behaviors:
• Distractibility
• Inner frenzy
• Impatience
“When you are confronted with the sixth decision after the fifth interruption
in the midst of a search for the ninth missing piece of information. . .and the
twelfth impossible request has blipped unbidden across your computer
screen, your brain begins to panic, reacting just as if that third decision
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were a bloodthirsty, man-eating tiger.”
E. M. Hallowell (2008) 8
“ADT is a very real threat to all of us.
If we do not manage it, it manages us!”
E. M. Hallowell (2008) 19
Story: Trying to Do the Job Alone!
“Do you understand what is happening to you?”
Paul Kalanithi, MD, When Breath Becomes Air
In hospice where do staff/volunteers exchange & make sense of story
slices?
“An authentic human encounter that can happen only when two
people share the same physical space.”
E.M. Hallowell
Recommendations from a Blue Ribbon veteran [Lois Wagner, RN]
•
•
•
•
Sit down!
Hush up!
Stop trying to fix things!
Be still for a while.
Intentional acts of a “blue ribbon-er”
•
•
•
•
Defuse noise & racket
Reserve “think time”
Fast from electronic intruders
Invest in a massage [E. M. Hallowell, 2008, 8]
Turn off the TV news
 “If it is not charted it is not done!”?
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“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho
It's off to chart we go
We keep on charting all day long
Heigh-ho. Heigh-ho”
Dwarfs’ Marching Song, Snow White,
Tom Waits/Frank Churchill
Chart-er
“I chart, therefore I am.”
Paraphrase, Descartes
“If if ain’t charted, my work’s not done. At this rate, I’m so far behind,
I’ll never get “Hospice Worker of the Year!”
Well, maybe next year or the year after that.”
Irony: Those who supervise and scrutinize your work do not see the—this-patient have to be convinced by the documentation you provide
 Some data is readily quantifiable, i.e., like blood counts or vital signs.
 Hospice has to find a way to quantify all care – physical, spiritual,
emotional, psychosocial.
“Excuse me, your story is interfering with my charting!”
“I know you’re talking but I’m done listening to you.”
Tee-shirt quote
Story of an elderly Missouri farmer:
“He was just a farmer. He didn’t do anything special.”
The paperwork got done but they missed the story!
Poststory: Florida Hospice 2015 Conference: “My dad survived
Dachau! Please tell that family, “Thank You.”
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Reality: Not all gifts come in Tiffany boxes.
Some come disguised in a story.
Maid to AIDS patient:
OBJECTIVE 3: Develop a personal “This is why I work in hospice. . .”
narrative
In a death-phobic culture which emphasizes facts, graphs, charts,
percentages, obituaries and which strings facts: date of birth, date of
death, graduations, weddings--details which are unlikely to capture
the particular-ness of an individual.
The Mirror Effect
 How easy is it--in the quantifying & the charting---with numbers,
percentages, details and graphs---to miss the patient and the
patient’s stories?
 Is this what Dame Cicily Saunders had in mind in starting hospice?
 Alternative: En-Training
“Writing memoir is a way to figure out who you used to be and
how you go to be who you are.”
Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir
 Engine [the death/loss] + 3 page boxcar
Prompts to jump-start a story:






The day I came close to quitting!
The most incredible patient/client I’ve ever met. . .
The most irascible patient/client I have met (so far). . .
The most incredible narrative I have heard. . .
The most incredible family I have met. . . .
If I had known then what I know now . . .
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



The question I wish I had asked. . . .
The best lesson I ever learned from client/patient is. . .
What patient/client made me laugh the hardest. . . .
What is the funniest thing I have witnessed in hospice?
The “I Remember. . . .’ Technique [Joe Bernard, 1970)
“I remember when my father would say: ‘Keep your hand out from
under the covers’ as he said goodnight. But he said it in a nice way.”
“I remember the first patient that died. . . .”
“I remember the patient whose pain was off the charts. . . .”
“I remember the family that wouldn’t let the patient “go”. . . .”
“...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell
ourselves about what happens. Events matter little,
only stories of events affect us.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati
Every patient has a story! Every caregiver has a story!
Your story as a caregiver/clinician counts!
Write it! Now!
Story” Having dinner with Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mother
I was talking about movie Selma.
“Caregivers may perform a number of concrete functions,
but the essential product they deliver is themselves.”
C. Joinson (1992)
Deathcare is not rocket science---it is stepping into roles our ancestors
performed. . . and would easily have understood.
“I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything, but I can do something.
And that I can do, I ought to do. And what I ought to do,
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the grace of God, I shall do.”
Edward Everett Hale
“I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment.
Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off
illness and death.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson and Reagan---great storytellers.
Success of Joel Osteen---he begins sermons with a story
”They won’t talk to me if all these men in dark suits are standing around.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Occasionally, I skim The Wall Street Journal. One day I notice an article
about a new 1,112 page anthology of Ray Bradbury stories. Buried in that
article, I found that Tom Nolan had asked the famed author the source of
his stories. Bradbury answered,
“All my stories are me.”
“When I was 8 years old, I was at the beach in Waukegan and a little girl
was building a sandcastle with me. She went in the water and she never
came out. She drowned. It was my first experience with death. It upset me
terribly. . . .Years later, I remembered that, and I wrote about it; it was
called “The Lake.” It was published in Weird Tales. And all around the
world, people wrote to me about that story; and my career was started. I
was 26 years old.”
Cited in Nolan, 2010 March 30, n.p.
Some historical stories rest close to the surface; others are deeply
imbedded like coal deposits deep below Appalachian mountains.
J.M. Coetzee acknowledges that some grievers cannot distinguish between
experience and fiction; thus, interactions between humans involve barrages
of “fictions,” which often “serve our own interests” better than facts. [2015,
50, 60]
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Collusive fictions
Conflictive fictions (or contradictory)
Consolidating fictions
“Give me the facts, Ashley, and I will twist them
the way I want to suit my argument.”
Winston Churchill [in Jasanoff, 2012, C6]
Role: Diffusing the fictions
What am I pretending not to know about my fiction?
Walt Disney spun several narratives about the creation of Mickey Mouse,
about his childhood, and about his father’s violence. Certainly, neither Roy
nor sister Ruth remembered childhood as Walt described it. (Watts, 1997,
431) Over time, Roy “grew annoyed” with Walt’s tendency to exaggerate, at
times fictionalize, the family narrative, particularly tales about beatings and
stealing money the boys had earned.
Roy “would sigh, shake his head, note certain people’s talents for
embellishing stories, and say exasperatedly, ‘That’s Walt.’”
Cited in Watts, 1997, 431
The cliché, “This is my story and I am sticking with it.”
Embracing a fiction may thrust a griever into direct conflict with another coexperiencer’s “truth,” memory or fiction
“The stories we tell about our lives may not be an accurate reflection of
what really happened, indeed they may be more remarkable for their
inaccuracies than anything else.”
J. M. Coetzee, 2015, p. 63
Not surprisingly, some grievers become trapped in their fictions.
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The more times a fiction is “spun,” the deeper the story rut. Indeed, the
clinician’s task may resemble miners sifting for gold nuggets. Coetzee
raises the critical question: How is the clinician or the griever to distinguish
between an event and the interpretation of that event?
One notable case in point: Walt’s war stories. Walt Disney was too young
to serve in World War I; but he learned he was eligible to serve in the Red
Cross’ ambulance corps, if he forged a document. During training in
Chicago, two of his friends died from influenza; Walt survived a bout of
influenza. (Thomas, cite, 46) Those facts are woven into several
biographer’s narratives.
The way he interpreted the story. . .
However, after Disney concluded that “the Communists” had stirred up a
strike against his studio in 194l, Walt had an “epiphany.” He wrote
Westbrook Pegler, a right-wing columnist, knowing that whatever he told
Pegler would end up in print, a quarter-century later as an introduction to
his assertion that the country was threatened,
“I was shocked into the realization that Democracy which, as a kid in
1918, I went to fight for in France, was gone.”
First, seventeen was not considered “a kid” in 1918.
Second, the war was over before Walt shipped out.
Third, he drove an ambulance and did not “fight.” Actually, he spent a lot of
time drawing cartoon images on ambulances and enjoying Paris.
Walt had a knack for “versioning.”
Which version was more rooted in historical fact?
Which version did Disney Inc. considerable more desirable?
“. . .as he often did. . .would later tell two versions of what happened next—
a prosaic version that was probably closer to the truth and a heightened
one that was more compelling.” (Neal Gabler, 2006, 57)
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Disney, Gabler argues, “had spent his young life creating an alternative
reality as a compensation for the hurts he felt he had suffered.”
Neal Gabler, 2006
Had he never hired his brother Roy, there would have been no “I-wasthere-remember-er” to challenge his fiction. Roy, however, had little
incentive to amend the narrative, since his younger brother had made him
wealthy. (Watts, 1997, 431)
Navigating the fictions
Over time, Roy “grew annoyed” with Walt’s tendency to exaggerate, at
times fictionalize, the family narrative, particularly tales about beatings and
stealing money the boys had earned. Roy “would sigh, shake his head,
note certain people’s talents for embellishing stories, and say
exasperatedly, ‘That’s Walt.’” (Watts, 1997, 431)
In grief counseling, clinicians have to, at least initially, rely on the selfreported autobiographical details and interpretation of the client; a clinician
may come to suspect or conclude the version is porous. This is a troubling
complaint given the explosion of memoir or “life writing.”
Mary Karr argues, after thirty years of writing, reading and teaching
memoir, that “
“The best minds warp and blur what they see” (Karr, 2015, cite)
J.M. Coetzee acknowledges that some clients cannot distinguish between
experience and fiction; thus, interactions between humans involve barrages
of “fictions,” which often “serve our own interests” better than facts! (2015,
50, 60)
Ever heard the cliché, “This is my story and I am sticking with it.”
Embracing a fiction may put the griever into direct conflict with another coexperiencer’s “truth,” memory or fiction.
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Difference between a narrative cul-de-sac & labrynth
Blue-Ribboners often know the pylons of prayer:
“God, where are you in this?”
Sister Joan Chittister
“God, stay close.”
Rabbi David Wolpe
All that we ought to have thought
and have not thought,
All that we ought to have said,
and have not said,
All that we ought to have done,
and have not done;
All that we ought not to have thought,
and yet have thought.
All that we ought not to have spoken,
and yet have spoken.
All that we ought not to have done,
and yet have done;
For thoughts, words and works,
pray we, O God, for forgiveness.
--A Persian prayer, 700 BCE
CONCLUSION
John R. Barletta, retired Secret Service Agent, assigned to White House
detail. After Reagan retired, Barletta assigned to ride horses with him.
Tough assignment: Watching Reagan’s mind go.
One morning driving to Los Angeles Country Club for lunch & round of golf
with friends.
RR: “Now, where are we going again?”
23
JB: “We’re going to have lunch at the club with friends, and
Then we’re going to play golf.”
RR: “Now, John, where are we going again?”
JB: ‘We’re going to have lunch at the club with friends, and
then we’re going to play gold.”
Agent Barletta: Ten times. Now Barletta left out part about lunch.
JB: “We’re going to the golf course.”
THEN
JB: “We’re going golfing. . . “
Minutes pass. Reagan taps Barletta:
JB: “Now what!!!?”
RR: “John, I know I’m upsetting you, and I realize I should know where
we’re going, but I don’t.”
Barletta wants to slink down. Barletta apologized. At the club:
RR: “I know I’m supposed to meet some people, but for the life of me I
don’t remember who they are.”
JB: “Mr. President, I will be right with you. I am going to walk you into the
dining room, and you are going to know who they are.”
Barletta put his “arms on Reagan’s upper arms to reassure him that it
would be all right.”
JB: “There they are, Mr. President.”
RR: “Yes, I do know who they are.”
“Have something to say.
Say it. And then sit down.” (In our case, take questions!)
Louis Howe’s guidance to Eleanor Roosevelt
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“the best therapies the mind could conceive + with the kindness,
attention, and friendship of the human heart.”
Dame Saunders (in Neumann, 2016, 26)
Blue-Ribboners do not have initials behind their name.
Blue-Ribboners offer kindness, attention, friendship & story-reception!
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