“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to uncharted lands.”
HELEN KELLER
The Story of the Story Ark
Tynan Grierson, Founder
I had a friend tell me how, just after her parents died, she manically tried to find this one voicemail her mum had left her.
It was maybe a 10 to 15-second clip of her mum saying that thing, that little expression, she always used to say.
And I remember her saying she’d give any amount of money to get just that bit of her mum’s voice back.
Until I’d lost a parent myself I couldn’t fully get it.
I thought I did, but it was just an idea; I’d nod along and picture that part in that book, that passage of that poem, or the scene in the movie set to that super sad song all designed to approximate the feeling of losing someone like that.
But then I lost my Dad, and with that every chance I might have to hear his voice again. To hear him say that thing again, or tell that joke or that story again. And I finally got it.
When I was a kid, my sense of connection to somebody, my sense of knowing them intimately, was in their stories.
I would cue up my grandfather like a jukebox to tell me stories of his time in the war.
Of his RAF bomber being shot down over the sea, his entire crew bobbing in the water, kicking their legs to keep from freezing or drowning, and falling prey to sharks as they awaited rescue overnight, of getting scooped up by a fishing boat, dragged off to prison camp, of horse’s head and eyeball soups and the things he endured and the things that pulled him through.
I must have asked him to tell me that story every time I saw him. In his voice and in his telling, it made me feel like all the big scary overwhelming things in the world weren’t so insurmountable, that everything might be ok, and I too would live through whatever troubles will find me.
I had a picture of him in his uniform when he passed, my grandmother beside him. I had his cap; the pilot’s cap he wore.
But without the stories. Without the voice, they’re bloodless. They’re mementos, not memories.
I wouldn’t have known to hope for more when I was a boy of 8 or 12 years old, but that I was grateful for the memento of my Grampa’s hat. But reflecting now as a man, it was his voice that could bring the cap to life.
That rumpled old cap, my Dad’s money clip, his watch or his best pair of boots; it’s only when you lose that person and their voice that you rub these totems, like a Genie’s lamp in the hope that they’ll tell you their story.
These were the stories of war; and that generation, as we know, is disappearing. The stories of survival; and those who witnessed the realities and atrocities of holocausts and history are likewise disappearing. But beyond all the grand, sweeping, romantic shit; these were stories of love and resilience, and they’re echoed in innumerable stories we quietly lose the thread of every day.
My Dad suffered from a degenerative brain disease that meant his stories were gone before even he was.
I’d look at pictures of my Dad, as I pre-grieved this person I was losing. Of younger days when he was himself, and I knew what I wanted was more than the pictures or the totems could offer.
I wanted for this person I love and have lost to talk to me, to hear the smile in his voice or to hear him laugh when he told his favourite joke, or to say the thing he always used to say; to tell me a story.
If I could give anyone that gift, that’s what I created The Story Ark for.
Ty