In the early pages of Arthur W. Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe: A socio-narratology, (© 2010 by The University of Chicago Press), Frank recounts a very short story by South American writer Eduardo Galeano titled “Christmas Eve” in which the protagonist, a young doctor, already very late for celebrations at his family’s Christmas Eve, takes a last pass through the ward to ensure everything is in order. A young boy bearing the pallor of impending death follows, slips his tiny hand into the doctor’s, then begs: “Tell someone, I’m here.”
Such a sad story. So evocative. So hopeless. A story I’ve returned to time and again. A story that’s attached to me like a barnacle, rising at odd moments. A story that makes me wonder – why?
Why this story? Why now? Why not in the times I’d read it before?
Because right now I’m taking Personal Stories and at its heart, “Christmas Eve” is a story about the need to be remembered, to be understood, to be seen, to be heard, if only for an instant.
See, a personal story is birthed in memory, a memory that sticks, a memory triggered at odd moments — by an image, a smell, a sound – because that memory is bathed in emotion, an emotion that needs to be processed. The events filed with the memory provide the emotion structure, give it form. Perhaps so the memory can be crafted into a story. A story that might be passed to a listener, a story that might attach to the listener like a barnacle, evoking the listener’s own distinct memory, the listener’s own emotion. An emotion that sticks. An emotion that demands, like the little boy in the story, “Tell someone I’m here.”
Mindy Tarquini is the award-winning author of three critically acclaimed novels that feature fables, foibles, fairytales, pandemics, past lives & lost loves. Find Mindy and her stories at www.MindyTarquini.com
(Photo Credit: Image by John Hain from Pixabay)
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