Telling Stories · Parenting Adult Children Today

Telling Stories

This is a long one, bear with me if you have the stamina!

As I enter into this program to come to an acceptance of what is (what I cannot control) and to change my approach to reaching out to my silent 40-year-old daughter, I am filled with sadness, confusion, and very real anger. The rest is up to her to reach out and respond, if ever. But I’m not there yet.

I am posting here a song by Tracy Chapman, with lyrics (below).

I view this song first as articulating the mutual misunderstandings (the fiction) between myself and my daughter, who has gone silent and “no contact” with my sons (her brothers), their wives, and me (and her niece, my granddaughter, was born yesterday but there are crickets from my daughter, which is totally out of character). But it would appear in her view that I am the main problem.

And I don’t know the reason for this silence for the past 21 months ever since my wife of nearly 45 years, her mother, had severe strokes that have left her paralyzed, with a trach and PEG feeding tube, unable to speak or do anything for herself – a trapped nightmare that I can only imagine and which pains me every day as I am powerless. She was an RN for more than 48 years and her patients included many who were in this or a similar situation. She repeatedly told me and her children that if she was ever in that situation to let her go. Now it is too late. I am angry and sad that I cannot uphold that very real desire because Arizona law forbids any consideration other than maintenance forever, trapped by the legal and for-profit medical system, because her condition is stable and not “terminal”. Anyhow …

Telling Stories (Tracy Chapman), which usually makes me tear up every time I hear it

There is fiction in the space between

The lines on your page of memories

Write it down but it doesn't mean

You're not just telling stories

There is fiction in the space between

You and reality

You will do and say anything

To make your everyday life seem less mundane

There is fiction in the space between

You and me

There's a science fiction in the space between

You and me

A fabrication of a grand scheme

Where I am the scary monster

I eat the city and as I leave the scene

In my spaceship I am laughing

In your remembrance of your bad dream

There's no one but you standing

Leave the pity and the blame

For the ones who do not speak

You write the words to get respect and compassion

And for posterity

You write the words and make believe

There is truth in the space between

There is fiction in the space between

You and everybody

Give us all what we need

Give us one more sad sordid story

But in the fiction of the space between

Sometimes a lie is the best thing

Oh the best thing

Is the best thing

At its core, for me, “Telling Stories” is about self-deception and narrative-making, the fictions that separate us. We all “edit” our memories and reinterpret events. And memories are faulty and can be redesigned. The “fiction in the space between” is that memory is not objective truth; it’s a story we tell ourselves. Sometimes we even cast ourselves as victim or hero to make sense of things and justify our pain on some sort of moral high ground. The song is also about how humans (individually and collectively) reshape reality into stories so that we can cope, connect, and survive, even when those stories blur or replace the truth.

When she writes between “you and me,” the song points to misunderstanding and projection as we all (1) invent motives and roles for others (“I am the scary monster”) and (2) reshape shared experiences into our own private versions of truth; conflict can arise not from facts, but from competing stories.

In this sense, relationships are shaped as much by interpretation as by reality. The song questions what truth even is. This points to the fact that we think we know another, but the other is in many ways a fabrication (a fiction) filtered through our own perceptions and beliefs. The “space between” suggests reality is never fully accessible, only interpreted. Sometimes there is real connection, or at least it can feel that way.

We need stories to live (some I can willingly buy into, others not at all), so the tension is that our stories can both distort truth and make our life more bearable. And “sometimes a lie is the best thing” implies that illusion can be comforting, stabilizing, and even necessary to keep going. And this illusion does not end until we return to the great mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wapCTd5fS2Y

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